Pubdate: Sun, 16 Aug 2015
Source: Albuquerque Journal (NM)
Copyright: 2015 The Associated Press
Contact:  http://www.abqjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/10
Author: Philip Marcelo, the Associated Press

TOWN TAKING NOVEL APPROACH TO WAR ON DRUGS

Police Providing Heroin Addicts With Support, Rehab

GLOUCESTER, Mass. (AP) - The young woman nursing a fresh black eye 
has come to the police station in this old fishing city for help. But 
she's not looking to report a crime or seek someone's arrest. She 
wants help kicking her heroin addiction.

"It was better than the alternative," says the woman, in her mid-20s, 
as she waits wearily for her ride to a detox center, after a long 
night that involved a stint in the emergency room, wrestling with the 
early pains of withdrawal and, finally, sleep in a police holding 
cell. "I just knew if I was let go, I'd just go out and use."

Gloucester is taking a novel approach to the war on drugs, making the 
police station a first stop for addicts on the road to recovery.

Under a policy launched in June, heroin and opioid addicts who 
voluntarily turn themselves in at the station are fast-tracked into 
treatment services through a team of police officers, volunteers and 
trained clinicians.

They aren't charged with a crime, and much of their treatment cost is 
covered through public and private insurance, grants by service 
providers and by police using money seized from drug dealers.

They can even hand over drugs and drug paraphernalia to police, no 
questions asked.

As of Friday, police say 109 addicts have turned themselves in 
seeking help, 16 percent of them hailing from out of state and about 
70 percent of them men. All have been placed into drug treatment 
programs at a total cost of about $5,000 to the department.

The policy, which experts say is unique in the country, has thrust 
this city roughly 40 miles north of Boston into the debate over what 
role police should play in a national heroin epidemic that has hit 
New England particularly hard.

"It's the next logical step in the so-called war on drugs," says 
Gloucester Police Chief Leonard Campanello, a former narcotics 
officer who launched the effort. "We need to change the conversation."

Police departments across the country are testing new approaches. 
Select officers in Seattle, for example, are allowed to redirect 
low-level drug and prostitution offenders into treatment rather than 
arresting them and sending them to jail.

"Jail does nothing to help them stop abusing drugs," says Darrel 
Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Nationally, heroin-related overdose deaths nearly doubled from 2011 
to 2013, when more than 8,200 people died, according to recent data 
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom