A new program in Vermont’s capital city will pair law enforcement with opiate abuse treatment providers in a project that the local police chief likened to a “taxi service.”
Under Project Safe Catch, police will help people who turn in drugs and paraphernalia to law enforcement to connect with the region’s treatment programs, without facing charges of drug possession.
“That sounds small, but it’s not,” Deborah Hopkins, executive director of Central Vermont Substance Abuse Services, told an audience of several dozen people at a community forum Tuesday in Montpelier where she and Montpelier Police Chief Tony Facos outlined the program.
The forum, held at the high school, brought together local law enforcement, statewide officials and front-line workers to discuss ways the region and the state are fighting the opiate addiction epidemic.
Hopkins outlined the “three-legged stool” approach the region and state are taking. The effort combines treatment, law enforcement and prevention.
Hopkins noted that Washington County is lucky in many ways. Central Vermont has a variety of opiate addiction-related services, from a treatment “hub” at Central Vermont Addiction Medicine in Berlin through to a wide range of support groups for family members and prevention efforts.
Under the new program, people will be able to come to the police station and deposit any illegal substances and paraphernalia into a secure box. Police will then provide that person transportation to the region’s substance abuse treatment services that are appropriate.
The project doesn’t necessarily mean that any person found with illegal substances will not face criminal charges, according to Facos. Someone with considerable amounts of drugs found in a traffic stop likely will face charges. But police will flag up to prosecutors if a person reports having a substance abuse problem and wanting treatment, he said.
People who come forward to police with substance abuse issues also will not get to skip to the front of treatment waiting lists, Hopkins said.
The waitlist can be substantial. As of this week, 65 people were in line for treatment at Central Vermont Addiction Medicine, Hopkins said, noting that clinicians often carry very heavy caseloads in an effort to keep up with demand.
Hopkins emphasized that the partnership between law enforcement and treatment centers will be an important symbolic step, creating a “pathway” from the criminal justice system to the addiction medicine systems.
“This piece is going to help the drug community see that police are not just out to criminalize them,” Hopkins said.
Facos said officers would act as a “taxi service” — helping locals tap into the network of addiction services already on offer in the community.
The department is still working out some of the issues, and it will likely be several weeks before the program is up and running, according to Facos. He’s optimistic it will be an important symbolic step to show that police are committed to the health and well-being of the community.
“That’s really our goal,” Facos said. “To get people healthy.”
Annie Ramniceanu, who heads Vermont’s pretrial services system, said after the forum that there could be potential for collaboration with local law enforcement on Project Safe Catch. The pretrial services program potentially could work with police to monitor data from the project after it rolls out, she said.
Attendees raised concerns about the availability of prevention and education services in the city, as well as about the accessibility of drugs through schools and among teenagers.
The concept for the forum arose out of a City Council meeting in the fall, though no city councilors participated Tuesday. When community members raised questions about how the school system is involved, facilitators asked if there were school board members in the audience. None raised a hand.
Many Washington County legislators were in the audience, as was Mayor John Hollar. The audience also included several key figures in the state’s effort to curb opiate addiction, including U.S. Attorney Eric Miller of the District of Vermont.
Miller said he tries to show his support for efforts to combat opiate addiction around the state. He praised the multipronged effort to fight a problem that he said crosses boundaries of income, race and geography.
“In our approach we need to cross traditional boundaries as well and bring all of these sometimes separate components together,” Miller said.
Judge Kevin Griffin, of Washington County Superior Court, also attended. Griffin said he increasingly uses alternative justice approaches in cases that involve substance abuse.
Washington County’s treatment court is one valuable resource, he said. Another is pretrial services. “The traditional court approach is mindlessly obsolete,” Griffin said. “We issue orders to say, ‘Stop being sick.’”
