A part-time Donora police officer has been arrested for stealing 133 stamp bags of heroin that were seized as evidence after the execution of a search warrant.

James B. Johnson V, 29, of Monongahela, was charged Tuesday with several drug offenses, theft, obstruction, tampering and misapplication of entrusted property.

The charges were announced today by the Washington County district attorney's office.

Authorities accused Officer Johnson of stealing the evidence following an Aug. 10 seizure.

Police said Officer Johnson admitted to the theft and said he took the heroin "for his personal consumption."

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[photo] (JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer) Mayor Jim Kenney speaks to the media after attending a meeting about the task force he's asked to develop a plan to address the opioid crisis in Philadelphia, the meeting took place at 801 Market Street, January 11, 2017.

Drug overdose deaths in Philadelphia surged to 900 last year - nearly a 30 percent increase in a single year - as the nation continued to grapple with an epidemic of opioid use and abuse.

City health officials Wednesday announced the numbers as Mayor Kenney convened a 16-member task force comprised of health and law officials.

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Last weekend's frightening and widely reported string of overdoses in Philadelphia - nine deaths in 36 hours, according to police - was just part of what officials suspect was a devastating five days that left 35 people dead.

It started Dec. 1, when 12 people died between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. "We have never seen that before," said Sam P. Gulino, the city's chief medical examiner.

Then came four more deaths last Friday, seven on Saturday, nine on Sunday, and three on Monday. The total could still rise, as deaths that initially appeared natural are investigated for drug links.

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[photo] (ED HILLE / Staff Photographer) William McMonigle and Amy Zaccario of Havertown, who both lost their fathers to heroin overdoses in Philadelphia, are now planning the funeral of their best friend, Sean Jimenez, who died of a heroin overdose in Kensington on Monday.

At home in Jenkintown, Sean Jimenez had a decent job, a woman who loved him, and two young sons who bore a striking resemblance to Dennis the Menace, just as he did when he was little.

Gallery:

But Monday night on a Kensington sidewalk, Jimenez had nothing but the clothes on his back, a few dollars in his pocket, a cellphone, and a drug addiction that apparently took his life. He was pronounced dead there at 11:10 p.m.

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[photo] Photo by Don Sapatkin / Staff Dr. Thomas C. Barone, a family physician, practiced in Center City until the State Board of Osteopathic Medicine suspended his license after four current and former patients died of opioid overdoses. Photo taken following his testimony at a reinstatement hearing in Harrisburg on Sept. 16, 2016.

Don Sapatkin covers a wide-ranging public health beat and doubles as deputy health and science editor. He joined the Inquirerin 1987.

The Pennsylvania Board of Osteopathic Medicine refused Wednesday to let Thomas C. Barone, a pain management physician whose prescribing practices were linked to the deaths of four patients, return to his Center City practice.

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Charito Morales, a registered nurse and advocate, leads a group through "El Campamento," a camp of homeless drug users under a railroad bridge in Fairhill. (TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer)

Mike Newall has been writing for the Inquirer since 2010. Originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., he has been writing about Philadelphia crime, courts, politics, and neighborhoods since 2003. Before joining the Inquirer, he was a staff writer and columnist for Philadelphia Weekly and Philadelphia City Paper. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and dog.

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Charles Cutler is an internal medicine specialist from Norristown.

Want to know what's important in medicine today?

Ask Charles Cutler, an internal medicine specialist from Norristown who last month was sworn in as the 167th president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society.

The society's 16,000 members are physicians and medical students throughout the state. Among the issues it promotes are leadership, education, and public health.

Cutler, a member for 35 years, belongs to numerous other medical organizations, including the Board of Trustees of the Montgomery County Medical Society. He is a member of Einstein Physicians Norriton, a part of the Einstein Healthcare Network.

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[photo] Dr. Deepak Ariga holds a needle favored by drug users in Hammond on April 9, 2015. (Jim Karczewski, Post-Tribune)

An HIV outbreak in Scott County, Ind., has infected 106 people. Can needle exchanges stem the tide?

An HIV outbreak in Scott County, Ind., has infected 106 people thus far, and despite reservations, Gov. Mike Pence green-lit a 30-day needle exchange program to stem the tide.

But public health advocates say the exchange program should be extended to really make an impact and expanded across the state as such programs have been shown to be effective in stemming the tide of HIV and hepatitis C infection among IV drug users.

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[photo] A sign points to the entrance the Community Outreach Center in Austin, Ind., on April 4, 2015. (Tyler Stewart, AP)

State and local health officials began a needle-exchange program Saturday in a southeastern Indiana county where an HIV outbreak among intravenous drug users has grown to nearly 90 cases.

Scott County's needle-exchange program was created through an emergency executive order signed last week by Gov. Mike Pence in an attempt to curb the state's largest-ever HIV outbreak. That 30-day order temporarily suspended Indiana's ban on such programs, but only for the southeastern Indiana county about 30 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky.

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A syringe is pictured along West Main Street in downtown Austin, Ind., in Scott County on Tuesday, March 24, 2015. (Christopher Fryer / AP)

Years ago, William Cooke sensed a crisis building. The only doctor in rural Austin, Indiana, noticed that intravenous drug use was soaring in his town of roughly 4,300, where 23 percent of residents live below the poverty line. He feared that people addicted to injectable painkillers might be plucking used needles off lawns, shooting up -- and passing them on.

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It's an uphill battle

[photo] (John Dole / Scripps Research Institute) Kim Janda of the Scripps Research Institute is shown in front of a board that depicts molecule drawings of heroin and cocaine, with the structures of vaccines that potentially could target those two drugs shown beneath.

In one picture, H. Joseph "Joey" Ressler is smiling at his mother and lifting her off the ground. In another, a selfie, he's grinning like a little kid as two motorcyclists roar up from behind. He was just 24, and the future seemed limitless for the happy, talented young man.

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A Richland woman died Wednesday in her apartment from a suspected heroin overdose, leaving her 3-year-old son alone in the residence until police found him.

The woman was identified as Lauren Wilson, 34, of Thomas Village in the 5600 block of Community Center Drive.

Police were called Wednesday afternoon by Ms. Wilson's mother because she was unable to contact her daughter by phone, Northern Regional Police Department Chief T. Robert Amann said today.

Police found Ms. Wilson's body and a syringe.

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Recent headlines tell it all: "9 dead from apparent heroin ODs over weekend in Kensington area"; "Medical examiner: Philly overdose surge may have killed 35 over 5 days"; "New Jersey's overdose nightmare hits a new peak"; and "Growth in the use of opioids is fueling a nationwide epidemic of deaths from drug overdose".

Heroin mixed with fentanyl - or heroin alone - may be responsible for this surge in overdoses. In the past, Philadelphia typically had three overdoses a day and they were not all fatal. Last June, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office confirmed nearly 700 drug-related deaths in 2015, twice as many deaths as there were from homicides. At the current rate, 2016 will end with even more.

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It looks like pot. It smells like pot. But it's hemp, marijuana's legal cousin, and it's taking over the Bluegrass state.

Across the rolling hills of Kentucky, which just two decades ago was the most tobacco-dependent state in the country, farmers are planting less of the crop after rising health concerns shrunk demand. Instead, they're increasingly turning to hemp and have more than doubled sowings of the cannabis variety in 2016 to become the No. 2 producer in the U.S., trailing Colorado.

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[photo] Heather Skorinko had hoped to grow industrial hemp on her North Whitehall Township farm, but the state's restrictive pilot program will lock out most family farms, she said. (APRIL BARTHOLOMEW/THE MORNING CALL)

Industrial hemp returns to Pennsylvania in 2017. So why are advocates so riled up?

Too often in recent years, Heather Skorinko has struggled to make money growing corn and soybeans on her North Whitehall Township farm, which has been in the family for more than 120 years.

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Pa. Physician General Dr. Rachel Levine during a meeting with the staff of the Twin Lakes treatment facility near Somerset for people suffering with alcohol and substance abuse.

Pennsylvania's avalanche of opioids that rolled from factories through pharmacies to medicine cabinets, and then tumbled into the streets with tragic results, may finally be slowing thanks to pressure on the prescribing practices of its doctors.

This year, the long-lagging state caught up with the regulatory steps of many of its neighbors, as Gov. Tom Wolf and legislators from overdose-plagued districts wrote new laws. Initial data suggests that attention to the overprescribing of opioids - widely blamed for starting addictions that progress to heroin use - has started to affect doctors' decisions.

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The 44-year-old mother who answered the door in Lincoln-Lemington on the evening of Dec. 15 had the "pin point" eyes of "someone who has recently used opioids," a Pittsburgh police officer wrote.

The officer was responding to a 911 call suggesting child endangerment. "I do suffer from using heroin and I'm trying to stop, but I keep using," the woman admitted, according to the officer's affidavit. She led police to the makeup bag under the throw pillow, where they found six stamp bags of heroin and three hypodermic needles, the officer wrote.

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[photo] Toby Talbot / APWith prescriptions dropping in the United States, companies have started to promote OxyContin and other opioid drugs in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

A former adjunct associate professor at Temple University has helped a leading maker of opioids promote potentially addictive pain medications in new foreign markets that have not yet seen an overdose crisis like that in the United States, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found.

The physician, Joseph V. Pergolizzi Jr., is based in Naples, Fla., and has not been affiliated with Temple since June 2014, the school said.

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Two young parents died of apparent drug overdoses in a Pennsylvania home about a week ago.

Left alone in her bassinet, the couple's infant died three or four days later. Authorities said 5-month-old Summer Chambers died of dehydration and starvation, the Associated Press reported.

She and her parents, Jason Chambers, 27, and Chelsea Cardaro, 19, were all found dead Thursday in a home in the Kernville neighborhood of Johnstown, about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Officials with the Johnstown Police Department were unavailable for comment Saturday.

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[photo] MICHAEL BRYANT / Staff PhotographerCharito Morales, center, with Homequarters and Friends, passes out hot chocolate and candy to those that ask for it at 2nd and Indiana as part of a holiday program on Monday, Dec. 19.

The sun gave off no heat and just a flash of orange light as freezing do-gooders sang Christmas carols Monday evening in Fairhill to an encampment of homeless heroin addicts.

The singers, many from Home Quarters and Friends, a nonprofit faith-based community group, stood on the edge of the infamous El Campamento, a tent city of 75 to 120 addicts beside the Conrail tracks.

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