Hope Initiative signals shift from arresting to helping addicts
The Roanoke Times | July 21, 2016
Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea warned that there’s a killer in the Roanoke Valley, and anyone can become a victim.
Between July of last year and this month, drug overdoses claimed the lives of 12 people in Roanoke, Roanoke County and Vinton, he said Thursday. Another 76 people overdosed, but survived, according to police data.
“Anyone suffering from any kind of substance abuse, opioids, meth, and other addictions, including alcoholism — please let us help you here,” Lea pleaded.
Under the police department’s leadership, and in partnership with about a dozen public safety and health care providers, Roanoke Valley Hope Initiative will launch Aug. 8. The program signals a shift away from arresting those suffering from addiction, and instead helping them.
“Let this valley stand together and help those who are suffering from addiction of any type,” Roanoke Police Chief Tim Jones said. “This program is designed to do two things: get individuals the treatment they need and enhance the quality of life here in the Roanoke Valley.”
On the second Monday of each month, between the hours of 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., people seeking help with any substance abuse disorder can drop into the Bradley Free Clinic at 1240 Third Street S.W. They can also go the police department on Campbell Avenue on Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Right now, the program only serves adults. The program serves people from anywhere, not just in Roanoke.
Addicts can turn in their drugs and paraphernalia without fear of arrest, as long as there are no arrest warrants out on them. The program is not intended to be a diversion from arrest — if an officer conducts a traffic stop and finds drugs on someone, that person can’t cite the Hope Initiative to avoid arrest.
Police will pair participants with one of the initiative’s “angels,” volunteers who will guide them through the intake process and offer them moral support. The Bradley Free Clinic will work to get each participant into a treatment program that best suits his or her needs. It could take a day or several days to get someone a bed, which could be as close as somewhere in Virginia or as far as Florida. Treatment can include inpatient and outpatient services, detox programs and residential treatment programs.
“It is a treatable, chronic disease,” said Cheri Hartman, with Carilion Clinic’s department of psychiatry. “And with treatment, there is hope.”
Someone who relapses can return to the program. Hartman said they’ll track who is returning, why people are relapsing and who is succeeding.
The biggest challenge will be funding the initiative. The police department does not want treatment costs or lack of insurance to deter anyone from seeking help. Hartman said all the partners will mobilize their resources to get people into treatment programs, but they are also seeking donations from the public.
A second chance
The Hope Initiative is the first of its kind of Virginia, but the approach is being used around the country after agencies started importing the strategy from a fishing village of 30,000 people in Massachusetts.
Gloucester Police Chief Leonard Campanello had had enough. In March of last year, he heard another resident had overdosed and died after taking heroin. The city lost four people to drug overdoses in just three months.
So he crafted a message and posted it to the police department’s Facebook page. “If you are a user of opiates or heroin, let us help you,” he wrote. “We know you do not want this addiction. We have resources here in the City that can and will make a difference in your life. Do not become a statistic.”
The response to the post made him realize it was time to stop arresting addicts and start helping them.
“It’s a change in philosophy, so you have to get people on board with the idea that addiction is a disease and not a crime,” Campanello said.
He announced the Angel Program, which takes the same basic approach as Roanoke’s Hope Initiative.
“It’s a journey that we all feel very responsible for,” Campanello said. “We made a promise to the citizens of Gloucester, and extended it to anyone who needed help.”
It’s too early to say how effective the program is in curbing heroin and opioid use in Gloucester, but Campanello believes the department is seeing a promising start to the program. In its first year, 460 sought treatment through the program. They came not only from all over Massachusetts, but from other parts of the country.
“People are getting a second chance,” Campanello said.
That’s not to say all cases work out. On the wall of Campanello’s office hangs a photo of a woman who went through the program but died of a fatal overdose.
“It exemplifies and magnifies the difficulty of this disease,” Campanello said.
But the program offers hope to people who may not otherwise seek treatment. After the program’s inception, interest quickly grew. The department opened a nonprofit called the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative, which supports other police agencies interested in implementing similar programs. More than 100 law enforcement agencies have adopted the initiative, including Roanoke.
A black hole
Lt. Bill Breedlove said that when he was a sergeant overseeing the Roanoke Police Department’s narcotics division more than a year ago, a majority of the cases they saw involved heroin. He said a single hit of heroin costs $20 to $30 in Roanoke, and some people they saw used a dozen times a day. Along with addiction came more acts of crime, typically theft.
When he became a lieutenant, he researched what the police department could do to address the problem. That’s when he stumbled upon what was happening in Gloucester.
“It’s taken several months to get this together here, and it’s great it’s happening,” Breedlove said.
Even with the Hope Initiative, Jones said the department is still “dedicated to putting those who manufacture and who distribute this poison to our community in jail.”
U.S. Attorney John Fishwick said his office supported the Hope Initiative.
“Those who are using drugs and have addictions, we want them to land on their feet,” he said. His office will continue to prosecute serious drug dealers, he said.
The heroin scourge has been a particularly rude awakening in Virginia.
A report from the Virginia Department of Health estimates more than 1,000 Virginians died from legal and illegal drug overdoses last year. Heroin was linked to nearly 250 deaths in the state. Fentanyl, a prescription opioid that is up to 100 times stronger than morphine, claimed an estimated 221 lives, more than any opiate-based substance other than heroin.
Just this week, Vinton police opened an investigation into a death on Vale Avenue, Chief Tom Foster said. The department is waiting on the final report from the medical examiner’s office on the official cause of death.
Warren Bickel, director of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute’s Addiction Recovery Research Center, said that 23 percent of people who try opioids or heroin become addicted.
“In some ways I really think that this disease of addiction, it’s like falling into a black hole,” he said.
The heroin and prescription drug epidemic is what motivated Chelsea Kunkel to get involved with the Hope Initiative as an angel. She’s a pharmacy technician at the Bradley Free Clinic. She also has a family member who suffers from addiction.
“They need someone to lean on in their time of need,” Kunkel, 27, said. “I want to be there to encourage them to move forward.”
Janine Underwood, executive director of the Bradley Free Clinic, understands addiction: Her son died last summer after overdosing on heroin laced with fentanyl. She said she’s pleased to have the clinic on board with the Hope Initiative.
“It is time for us to stand together, take action, take on this epidemic and reverse the number of overdoses happening each day,” Underwood said.
Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea warned that there’s a killer in the Roanoke Valley, and anyone can become a victim.
Between July of last year and this month, drug overdoses claimed the lives of 12 people in Roanoke, Roanoke County and Vinton, he said Thursday. Another 76 people overdosed, but survived, according to police data.
“Anyone suffering from any kind of substance abuse, opioids, meth, and other addictions, including alcoholism — please let us help you here,” Lea pleaded.
Under the police department’s leadership, and in partnership with about a dozen public safety and health care providers, Roanoke Valley Hope Initiative will launch Aug. 8. The program signals a shift away from arresting those suffering from addiction, and instead helping them.
“Let this valley stand together and help those who are suffering from addiction of any type,” Roanoke Police Chief Tim Jones said. “This program is designed to do two things: get individuals the treatment they need and enhance the quality of life here in the Roanoke Valley.”
On the second Monday of each month, between the hours of 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., people seeking help with any substance abuse disorder can drop into the Bradley Free Clinic at 1240 Third Street S.W. They can also go the police department on Campbell Avenue on Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Right now, the program only serves adults. The program serves people from anywhere, not just in Roanoke.
Addicts can turn in their drugs and paraphernalia without fear of arrest, as long as there are no arrest warrants out on them. The program is not intended to be a diversion from arrest — if an officer conducts a traffic stop and finds drugs on someone, that person can’t cite the Hope Initiative to avoid arrest.
Police will pair participants with one of the initiative’s “angels,” volunteers who will guide them through the intake process and offer them moral support. The Bradley Free Clinic will work to get each participant into a treatment program that best suits his or her needs. It could take a day or several days to get someone a bed, which could be as close as somewhere in Virginia or as far as Florida. Treatment can include inpatient and outpatient services, detox programs and residential treatment programs.
“It is a treatable, chronic disease,” said Cheri Hartman, with Carilion Clinic’s department of psychiatry. “And with treatment, there is hope.”
Someone who relapses can return to the program. Hartman said they’ll track who is returning, why people are relapsing and who is succeeding.
The biggest challenge will be funding the initiative. The police department does not want treatment costs or lack of insurance to deter anyone from seeking help. Hartman said all the partners will mobilize their resources to get people into treatment programs, but they are also seeking donations from the public.
A second chance
The Hope Initiative is the first of its kind of Virginia, but the approach is being used around the country after agencies started importing the strategy from a fishing village of 30,000 people in Massachusetts.
Gloucester Police Chief Leonard Campanello had had enough. In March of last year, he heard another resident had overdosed and died after taking heroin. The city lost four people to drug overdoses in just three months.
So he crafted a message and posted it to the police department’s Facebook page. “If you are a user of opiates or heroin, let us help you,” he wrote. “We know you do not want this addiction. We have resources here in the City that can and will make a difference in your life. Do not become a statistic.”
The response to the post made him realize it was time to stop arresting addicts and start helping them.
“It’s a change in philosophy, so you have to get people on board with the idea that addiction is a disease and not a crime,” Campanello said.
He announced the Angel Program, which takes the same basic approach as Roanoke’s Hope Initiative.
“It’s a journey that we all feel very responsible for,” Campanello said. “We made a promise to the citizens of Gloucester, and extended it to anyone who needed help.”
It’s too early to say how effective the program is in curbing heroin and opioid use in Gloucester, but Campanello believes the department is seeing a promising start to the program. In its first year, 460 sought treatment through the program. They came not only from all over Massachusetts, but from other parts of the country.
“People are getting a second chance,” Campanello said.
That’s not to say all cases work out. On the wall of Campanello’s office hangs a photo of a woman who went through the program but died of a fatal overdose.
“It exemplifies and magnifies the difficulty of this disease,” Campanello said.
But the program offers hope to people who may not otherwise seek treatment. After the program’s inception, interest quickly grew. The department opened a nonprofit called the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative, which supports other police agencies interested in implementing similar programs. More than 100 law enforcement agencies have adopted the initiative, including Roanoke.
A black hole
Lt. Bill Breedlove said that when he was a sergeant overseeing the Roanoke Police Department’s narcotics division more than a year ago, a majority of the cases they saw involved heroin. He said a single hit of heroin costs $20 to $30 in Roanoke, and some people they saw used a dozen times a day. Along with addiction came more acts of crime, typically theft.
When he became a lieutenant, he researched what the police department could do to address the problem. That’s when he stumbled upon what was happening in Gloucester.
“It’s taken several months to get this together here, and it’s great it’s happening,” Breedlove said.
Even with the Hope Initiative, Jones said the department is still “dedicated to putting those who manufacture and who distribute this poison to our community in jail.”
U.S. Attorney John Fishwick said his office supported the Hope Initiative.
“Those who are using drugs and have addictions, we want them to land on their feet,” he said. His office will continue to prosecute serious drug dealers, he said.
The heroin scourge has been a particularly rude awakening in Virginia.
A report from the Virginia Department of Health estimates more than 1,000 Virginians died from legal and illegal drug overdoses last year. Heroin was linked to nearly 250 deaths in the state. Fentanyl, a prescription opioid that is up to 100 times stronger than morphine, claimed an estimated 221 lives, more than any opiate-based substance other than heroin.
Just this week, Vinton police opened an investigation into a death on Vale Avenue, Chief Tom Foster said. The department is waiting on the final report from the medical examiner’s office on the official cause of death.
Warren Bickel, director of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute’s Addiction Recovery Research Center, said that 23 percent of people who try opioids or heroin become addicted.
“In some ways I really think that this disease of addiction, it’s like falling into a black hole,” he said.
The heroin and prescription drug epidemic is what motivated Chelsea Kunkel to get involved with the Hope Initiative as an angel. She’s a pharmacy technician at the Bradley Free Clinic. She also has a family member who suffers from addiction.
“They need someone to lean on in their time of need,” Kunkel, 27, said. “I want to be there to encourage them to move forward.”
Janine Underwood, executive director of the Bradley Free Clinic, understands addiction: Her son died last summer after overdosing on heroin laced with fentanyl. She said she’s pleased to have the clinic on board with the Hope Initiative.
“It is time for us to stand together, take action, take on this epidemic and reverse the number of overdoses happening each day,” Underwood said.
