As the number of heroin-related crimes continues to rise, Madison Police Chief Mike Koval said it’s time to control the “spiraling problem.”

He said heroin overdoses and deaths have been increasing for a while, but it has been most prominent over the last three years, including a 50 percent increase in heroin deaths from 2011 to 2012.

While the Madison Police Department cannot track every burglary or property theft to see if it is connected to drug use, Koval said they do see a correlation in property crimes and the prevalence of heroin in the area. The drug is now in the purest form he has seen, which increases the addictive quality and makes it harder to come clean. Koval said he would prefer the primary method of handling drug addicts to happen outside of jail.

“For those who would exploit others by the manufacture, distribution and exploitation of heroin, we’ve got a place in the jail for them,” Koval said, “but I wish we had better strategies in dealing with those who are addicted, something short of the criminal justice method.”

Koval said he thinks the expectations for the police are unnecessarily broad in terms of effectiveness in handling drug use in the city. He said he would like to see more people willing to steer and direct loved ones or friends into treatment interventions and programming to help overcome dangerous addictions.

City of Madison Police Lieutenant Jason Freedman has spent 17 years working on the Dane County Narcotics Board and said he has seen firsthand the toll heroin takes on its users. He said most heroin addicts begin using the drug between the ages of 19-25.

Freedman said the majority of heroin addicts begin by abusing prescription opiates, often after being legally prescribed the opiates when they were a younger teenager following an accident or minor surgery.

“There’s a certain percentage of people in any population who are prone to addiction,” Freedman said. “At some point if an opiate addict isn’t able to get treatment, they will turn to heroin.”

Freedman said it is difficult to assess precisely how widespread heroin usage is in Dane County because the data is only as good as the input. Not every heroin overdose gets noted properly in records, some are never reported to the police and sometimes they are misdiagnosed, he said.

However, he said the problem is clearly not going away anytime soon. In 2007, there were 17 heroin overdoses in Madison; in 2010 there were 83 and in 2011 there were 145. Since 2011, there have been about 100 overdoses in Dane County every year and about 10 to 15 deaths, he said.

“Historically we went from a relatively minor problem to one that exploded and it’s stayed at a high level,” Freedman said.

Koval said this sharp increase in heroin-related incidents in Wisconsin has made it a central issue of discussion among legislators and officials trying to stop it from continuing to grow.

As a life-saving measure, Koval said first responders will carry Narcan, a drug designed to combat opiate overdose. The drug is administered on the spot and can potentially save lives.

Even with Narcan, Koval said, people who overdose still continue to use the drug after their near-death experiences.

“Even in those instances where we have brought pulseless non-breathers back from the dead, ironically we still see frequent fliers, even through the Narcan administration,” Koval said. “That’s a testament to the insidiousness and the addictive qualities of the drug.”

Brenda McIntire contributed to reporting in this article.