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New ‘quick response’ team to urge drug addicts to enter treatment
Sterling Heights police will team with substance abuse counselors to make house calls to encourage drug addicts to enter drug treatment programs under an initiative announced Monday to combat the opioids epidemic.
As a result of the partnership, called COMEBACK-Quick Response Team, three-person units composed of a police officer, a peer recovery coach and a nurse will visit the home of any resident where police officers, firefighters or paramedics treated an overdose survivor within the previous three days. Their mission is to show compassion, concern and respect to addicts, and assure them treatment is immediately available for those who want it.
If the individual refuses, the program officials will leave information behind for them or a family member to review. Within a couple of weeks, team representatives will make follow-up visits, hoping the addict is willing to receive help.
The COMEBACK-Quick Response Team initiative is a partnership between Families Against Narcotics (FAN), the Sterling Heights Police Department and the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office.
Linda Davis, executive director of FAN and former 41-B District Court judge, said the initiative can help fill some of the many existing gaps in substance abuse treatment by reaching out to overdose survivors directly and inform them they can be immediately placed into rehabilitation and recovery services quickly instead of being left on their own to find treatment.
Officials added most addicts who are arrested on drug-related crimes will suffer a relapse within 72 hours. They want to at least contact the addict around that time.
“This problem cannot be solved by locking people up and throwing away the key,” Davis said as officials announced COMEBACK-Quick Response Team on Monday at the Sterling Heights Police Department. “If we don’t treat the addiction, it’s just a revolving door that goes around and around and around.
“We know addiction can be treated, but what we need to do is make access to treatment easy,” she said. “As long as they’re not violent offenders, we will try to work with them.”
Sterling Heights Police Chief Dale Dwojakowski said six city police officers will make house calls on Tuesdays and Fridays, starting this week.
A second phase of the program will involve people arrested for simple possession of narcotics. Before those suspects are released from custody, the team will inform them about treatment and offer to immediately place them into a rehabilitation center. If the person agrees, prosecutors will not press for continued incarceration and the individual’s sentence following a possible conviction will be deferred.
Deaths from opioid overdoses have more than tripled in the last five years in Macomb County, county Prosecutor Eric Smith said. Smith, who has been with the office for 27 years -- including the last 16 years as the elected head -- said the willingness of prosecutors to defer cases while defendants are in drug treatment programs shows a dramatic shift in the approach by law enforcement that he would not have predicted several years ago.
“Building more prisons and putting people behind bars is not the answer,” he said.
Dwojakowski said approximately one-half of crime in the city is linked to drugs and people breaking the law to fund their addiction.
Sterling Heights police recorded 14 overdoses in 2014; 65 in 2016 including seven deaths; 106 in 2017 with 12 deaths; and 82 in 2018 with 15 fatalities.
Dwojakowski recalled an incident in which a man in his 60s and addicted to a pain-killing opiate following surgery was near death when emergency crews arrived at his home last summer. The man had consumed a 1-month supply of the drug within three days, and was unresponsive as his wife and daughter were screaming while officers administered narcan, which can dramatically reverse the effects from an opioid overdose, and CPR. After a third dose of narcan was administered, the man abruptly sat up.
The COMEBACK initiative is a pilot program locally that is modeled after a similar program launched five years ago in Huntington, West Virginia. Afterward, the number of drug overdoses in that city plunged 70 percent and crime dropped 50 percent, officials said Monday.
Locally, it was put together after FAN obtained a $90,000 grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that was funneled through the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Sterling Heights was eager to be the participating police department to help launch it on the street. The grant will pay for overtime for the six officers assigned to the program, which runs to August.
Davis hopes it can be expanded across Michigan. If funding can be obtained, she predicts it will make a huge dent in the opioid crisis.
Sterling Heights Mayor Michael Taylor said city officials are excited to participate in the COMEBACK-Quick Response Team initiative.
“The old way of acting is not working anymore,” said the mayor, noting that addicts should be treated with compassion. “The old way, you treat people like animals – you through them in cages and say, ‘Get better.’”
Clinton Township-based Medstar Ambulance launched a similar program in December 2018, in which paramedics try to help overdose victims kick their habit.
Last week, Medstar announced it will partner with the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office and Care of Southeast Michigan to enhance outreach within seven Macomb municipalities as part of its Mobile Integrated Health program. Residents who have received an emergency intervention and who did not respond to initial calls about follow-up resources will now be contacted in person. That contact will be provided through an unannounced visit from a Macomb County Sheriff’s deputy and a peer recovery coach from CARE of Southeast Michigan who will provide additional information and resources, as well as provide referrals for additional medical care services.
“The Macomb County Sheriff’s Office is proud to participate in the Macomb County Outreach program, ensuring that members of our communities find a road to recovery and sobriety," Sheriff Anthony Wickersham said.
The Medstar program is the only one its kind in the State of Michigan, and one of only a few across the country, integrating EMS or paramedics to connect residents with addiction to community volunteers, medical professionals and peer recovery coaches, officials said.
“In the evolving healthcare environment, innovative EMS agencies recognize that we have the ability and the responsibility to do more than respond to 911 requests, said Kolby Miller, Medstar CEO.
Monday’s announcement in Sterling Heights was made on the third anniversary of Hope Not Handcuffs, which was started by Families Against Narcotics. Eighty-three police departments in Michigan have signed on as participating agencies in which a person suffering from drug addiction can walk into a police station, request help and be steered immediately into a treatment program.
Thus far, more than 3,800 addicts have been steered into drug treatment programs through Hope Not Handcuffs, said Davis, who worked as an assistant prosecutor before she became a judge.
