In response to a warning issued to police by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration last month, the Groton Town Police Department and its Regional Community Enhancement Task Force members have discontinued the practice of testing heroin-like substances at the scenes where they’re found.

Since the task force was formed in February in response to an “unprecedented” January string of heroin overdoses, some of its members have used field testing as a way to quickly identify the substances they’ve seized — and to recognize that the powerful opiate fentanyl is a growing problem for the region.

Last month, the DEA sent a strong message to police: fentanyl can kill you, too.

In a lengthy release accompanied by a video, DEA officials called it “prudent” for police not to field test any substance they believe may contain fentanyl, citing two New Jersey detectives who had a severe reaction after inhaling a tiny amount of airborne fentanyl.

“You actually felt like you were dying,” Atlantic County Investigator Dan Kallen said in the video. “And it was just, it was just a little bit of powder that just puffed up in the air. It was just a very minuscule amount, and that’s the scary thing about it.”

For Groton Town police, who recently had a fentanyl exposure scare of their own, Chief Louis J. Fusaro Jr. said it was an easy decision upon receipt of the DEA warning to instruct officers to stop the practice.

“We’re not going to expose officers knowingly to toxins they don’t need to be exposed to,” he said.

He explained that several Groton Town officers, not just those on the task force, regularly come across heroin.

Increasingly, that heroin has been laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s at least 30 times stronger than heroin and in pure form resembles heroin and cocaine.

In May, state Chief Medical Examiner Dr. James Gill said deaths from fentanyl-related overdoses could go from 188 last year to a projected 332 this year — a more than 75 percent increase.

Recently, Fusaro said, a Groton Town patrol officer whom he did not name felt ill after performing a field test and had to undergo a series of measures to make sure he or she didn’t face any additional risks.

“It may have been unrelated,” Fusaro said of the officer’s illness and the field testing that came before it. “But out of an abundance of caution, these substances need to go to the lab and be tested under controlled conditions with scientists that have a higher level of training.”

Fusaro said he doesn’t expect the change in policy to have a huge impact on the criminal justice process.

Field testing, he explained, results in a presumptive identification of a substance, not a definitive one.

Even when field testing was in use, officers had to send samples to the state lab afterward.

Field testing “expedited our understanding of what the substance is that an officer has,” Fusaro said. “But our job as police leaders is to provide an atmosphere that’s as safe as we possibly can make it. (Fentanyl) is just another hazard officers face every day that may not be completely recognized.”

In addition to being dangerous to inhale in even the most minuscule amounts, the DEA warning states, fentanyl also can enter and wreak havoc on the body by way of one’s skin, making it “an unusual hazard for law enforcement.”

DEA officials warned officers to be particularly cautious during undercover buy-bust operations, as simply touching the substance can result in absorption through the skin and, within minutes, lead to health issues such as disorientation, coughing, sedation, respiratory distress and cardiac arrest.

Although the DEA didn’t ask officers to cease such operations, it did suggest they take extra precautions with K-9s, which are “particularly at risk of immediate death from inhaling fentanyl.”

DEA officials, calling fentanyl and the health issues it's causing “an unprecedented threat,” also urge those officers who must take a field sample to use gloves and a dust mask or an air-purifying respirator.

That the DEA had to issue the warning, Fusaro said, “explains what we’re going through.”

“It explains why so many people are dying,” he said, reiterating fentanyl’s potency.

“We’re at the crisis point," he said. "I wish I could tell you things were getting better through the efforts of the task force and officers nationwide trying to do what they can to effect change, but it doesn’t appear to be getting better despite our best efforts.”

l.boyle@theday.com