Breaking Down Barriers: Diversion program thrives on cooperation, embraces skeptics
ALAMOSA, Colo. — Addiction is not a crime, yet many battling addiction end up with a criminal record because their addiction pushed them to break the law. In some cases, they might steal items from a store. In other cases, the crime they’ve committed is merely possessing the drug they’re addicted to.
The people who face this situation oftentimes live on the fringes of society, according to Andrés Guerrero, the manager of the Overdose Prevention Unit for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
“A lot of them don’t have insurance, don’t have addresses, don’t have a home,” he said. “And there’s a lot of incarceration, a lot of going in and out of county jails.”
It’s something that city leaders in the southern Colorado town of Alamosa noticed happening in their community, and in 2016, they set out to do something about it. In 2018, city leaders secured a state grant to fund a program called Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD.
Under the LEAD program, when a police officer responds to a call involving a non-violent offender who may be battling addiction, that officer can choose to refer the person to a treatment program, diverting — and eventually dismissing — criminal charges against them as they begin treatment and work toward recovery.
But according to Chief of Police Ken Anderson, not all of the officers in his department have embraced the program.
“Cops don’t like change,” he said. “If you don’t go into this with open arms trying to understand why we’re doing this, you’re probably not going to accept it.”
Some officers view the program as a “get out of jail free card,” Anderson said, and therefore have been reluctant to refer people they’ve arrested to the program.
“We’ve introduced this to all our new officers,” Anderson said. “But you can’t force feed them. If you do, they won’t make a referral, plain and simple.”
Having resistance from some police officers has not derailed the program though. Allowing individual officers to make the decision whether or not to refer someone they’ve arrested to a treatment program is just part of the cooperation required to make the program a success, according to City Manager Heather Brooks.
“At all times, police maintain their discretion, as does the district attorney’s office,” Brooks said. “It’s still the officer’s decision if he or she wants to write a ticket or not. And once the ticket is written, it’s up to the district attorney’s office how they want to enforce that.”
Cooperation among many agencies is necessary in order for the program to work, according to Brooks, and in Alamosa, the program has support from the mayor’s office, the city council, the police department and the 12th Judicial District Attorney’s office. And with so many people and agencies involved, it’s natural to have differing viewpoints, according to Brooks, but they’ve made the LEAD program a success by working together and finding common ground.
“The interesting part of LEAD is that it brings people together that, per their professional backgrounds, may have very different ideas on how the criminal (justice) system should work,” Brooks said. “So we’ve got the district attorney’s office at the table, with the public defenders’ office, with our case managers, with law enforcement, but it’s an environment where everyone is respected, and it’s us working together to move our community forward.”
And while some police officers are still opposed to the program, others who once opposed it have changed their minds, according to Carey Deacon, the LEAD program manager for the city.
“We have had some that were just dead set against it,” she said. “There was one officer in particular that was like that, and then he started dealing with this person over and over again. He decided, what’s it going to hurt for me to try this? Once he tried it, it opened the floodgate for him, and now he’s a huge believer and one of our biggest advocates.”
Removing obstacles
No matter how much support LEAD has from police officers and city leaders, it can still be difficult to convince those struggling with addiction to utilize the program, especially when police officers are involved, according to Chief Anderson. His officers have encountered a number of people who are nervous to discuss their addiction and drug use with those in law enforcement, which makes it difficult for officers to know if someone might benefit from treatment programs.
“Some individuals look at it as a snitch program, but we are not looking to gain information from you. We’re looking to help you,” he said. “We are not looking for stats. We don’t care about stats. We care about helping our community, and I think this program is probably the best thing we’ve got going.”
People battling addiction aren’t always treated well by other members of society either, and previous bad experiences can prevent them from seeking help, according to Guerrero with the Colorado Department of Public Health.
“A lot of the folks that inject drugs are treated very poorly by social services, by hospitals and by ERs,” he said. “When they feel comfortable in a place, that’s where they’re going to go for help.”
Colorado health officials have worked hard to make more of those comfortable places available to people across the state, mainly in the form of facilities known as syringe service programs. The facilities, once known as needle exchanges, now offer a much larger range of services beyond providing clean needles for safer injection. The facilities help connect people to treatment services, offer HIV and hepatitis C testing, and they can help people find housing and transportation as well.
Opening a syringe service programs facility requires approval from county leaders though, and it’s been a struggle for state officials, particularly in some of the rural communities that need the facilities the most.
Luckily for those behind the LEAD program in the San Luis Valley, county leaders in the area backed the idea of a syringe service programs facility in Alamosa, which opened its doors to the community in February 2018.
“It was a long time coming, and lots of people in Alamosa worked hard to make it happen,” Guerrero said.
LEAD and syringe service programs operate on a harm reduction model, and the model does have its critics. Guerrero said he’s been accused of enabling drug use, but he sees his role quite differently.
“I’m enabling people to stay alive until they can get the help that they need,” Guerrero said. “(Addiction) is a medical condition that can be treated successfully, if they get the chance.”
The harm reduction approach has economic benefits too, according to Guerrero, because it’s less expensive to offer treatment to those with an addiction than it is to incarcerate them.
“People’s attitudes are starting to change a little bit. They’re starting to realize that you cannot just lock people up for substance issues, because when they come out, they still have those issues,” Guerrero said. “It’s expensive, and it’s not effective.”
This story has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, solutionsjournalism.org. The next installment will highlight some of the program’s successes and how city leaders accomplished them.
