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. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom