Offering Care Before Cuffs – By Katelyn Newman (usnews.com) / Oct 19 2018
A Florida pilot program will give people addicted to opioids the option to enter treatment instead of jail.
As communities try to address the drug scourge plaguing the nation, Miami’s finest are training to send those suffering with opioid addiction to treatment instead of a jail cell.
Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina announced the new initiative – the Collaborative Law Enforcement Addiction Recovery, or CLEAR, program – at a news conference at Miami’s city hall on Monday.
“I’m hoping it’s successful because then the county and other cities across the state of Florida, other departments, can adopt a similar program and then we can really be cooking and save more lives,” Colina tells U.S. News. “We’re not going to solve this by just sticking people in jail.”
On average, 115 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With a little more than $1.6 million in funding from two separate federal grants, Colina says the three-year program is scheduled to launch in May 2019.
“It’s really a game changer because the vast majority of that money is going to go to the people who need it,” Colina says.
Eldys Diaz, executive officer to Colina and the program director, says if a person found in possession of personal use amounts of opioids denies the treatment option, the officer will follow standard arrest procedures.
“There will be no legal penalty associated with program refusal, and the arrested person will have all of the rights and opportunities afforded to them normally through the criminal justice system,” Diaz says.
Colina spoke to U.S. News about the pilot program and its collaboration with several health care partners. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does Miami’s problem with drugs and addiction compare to other cities across the U.S.? What are you seeing on the ground?
We have a problem with drug addiction in general. A lot of our homeless population, they’re homeless because they either suffer mental illness or because they’re dependent on drugs and that consumes them. We’re not like other cities that have just been devastated with overdoses because of fentanyl. We have overdoses here (and) I don’t think we’re doing as bad as others, but we don’t want to wait to get there because we certainly do have a problem.
Tell me about the CLEAR program. What’s the goal?
The idea, of course, is we want to try to save as many lives as we can. We know that this is a law enforcement problem, but there’s no law enforcement solution – it doesn’t work to just put people in jail. That has solved nothing. But perhaps there’s a medical solution.
Instead of being arrested you can sign a binding agreement with us that you will receive treatment, and that we can treat your addiction, we can follow you throughout the withdrawal process.
What’s included in the binding agreement?
Essentially, what you’re saying is you recognize you have an addiction problem, right, because that’s important to us that you think, “Hey, it’s true I have a problem.” You recognize that you essentially don’t have control over your own body and mind, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing (drugs). You are not a seller, because we don’t have any sympathy for the people that are peddling poison. You are a user, so you have to have a “user” amount of drugs on you. And then you agree that what you want is to be clean and be free of this disease, because at the end of the day that’s what it is. I know people will think, “Well, those people don’t have willpower.” No, it’s not that, it’s that this overtakes your mind and your soul. And so, you agree to those things, and then we want to help you, and working together hopefully will get people help.
The people who enter the program may have a “small amount of opioids” on hand – what does that mean?
So no one misunderstands: (A person who goes through the program) is someone who has a “personal use” amount of drugs, not someone who wants to go out and sell and try to get more people addicted – we don’t have any sympathy for those people. Someone who is an addict, who purchased or is using a “personal use” amount of opioids, that’s the person that we’re looking to help.
The program can only treat 100 people over the course of three years. How do you decide who gets into the program?
When (our officers) come across somebody who is using drugs, opioids – instead of arresting them, you offer them the program. Once we’re at capacity, we’re at capacity. But it’s going to be that simple. We go to a call, someone – an officer – is dispatched. We go somewhere where there are homeless people, for example, and they’re sharing a needle and they’re using drugs – those are the people that we want to try to help. And I’m hoping that we have success and then private dollars will want to come in to help us not only sustain the program but expand it.
Research shows that the ideal amount of treatment is between 18 and 24 months, but people who participate in the CLEAR program will only be treated for 12 months. Are there plans for after a person leaves the program?
We have a social services element attached to the program where we’re hoping that as you become clean and as you become healthy, we’re then able to offer, through other departments, resources – whether it’s job placement, whether it’s shelter if you were homeless, for example. So the idea is that as you become clean, we help you through other departments that we already have to kind of help you get your life back on track.
One of the challenges that we have is that there are a lot of people that are homeless that are shelter-resistant. So, it isn’t just the fact that they don’t have a job or they can’t make ends meet so they live out of a van,… but a lot of these folks are shelter-resistant because of their addiction and/or mental illness.
For the people that are legitimately in search of permanent housing, we’re going to be able to help those people through short term shelter, then transitional shelter and then hopefully to the point that – whether it’s themselves or their families – they will be able to get off the street and live somewhere where it is a normal, healthy life. It’s going to be fluid – it’s just going to depend on the individual. I suspect that we’re going to have people that want to be free of their addiction and not necessarily want shelter. Ultimately, the more people we can get off the street and the more people we can help free from that terrible addiction, the better off we all are as a community.
Minority populations may be leery of receiving help from police officers. How do you plan to work on mending those relationships?
For us in Miami, we don’t care where you came from, what your status is – we just want to help you. And this doesn’t even have to be about drugs or addiction. You raise your hand to flag down a police officer because you need help, my officers know they’re going to help you and not inquire, what your status is or where you came from, or any of that. You know, what is your heritage, your nationality, male-female, white-black – we don’t care.
What I’m asking the public to do is look at our actions. Forget what we’re saying, look at what we’re doing. We’re going to help you. That is our job and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do everything that we can do to make sure that Miami can become one of the safest cities in the country, in every respect.
