CONSTABLE LEADS CHARGE FOR CHANGE
Matt Ingrouille is not a conventional cop. The Saskatoon police officer was raised by a single mother, housed in a one-bedroom apartment he shared with foster children. After joining the force, he was quickly promoted to the drug unit and has become one of the loudest voices in Saskatchewan calling for the upending of the country’s drug laws. Ingrouille, who now works in the police service’s guns and gangs unit, is also a director at Say Know, a drug education project that brings together activists, community organizations and law enforcement to change the conversation around addiction. Ingrouille and his organization have become key players in a polarizing but deeply pressing debate on how Saskatchewan and Saskatoon should respond to the twin crises of an increasingly lethal opioid supply and surging crystal meth use. He spends his workdays tracking down gang members and sits on the board of AIDS Saskatoon, which is hosting the province’s first safe consumption site. When he’s not on the clock, Ingrouille and the other Say Know directors visit a wide swath of organizations to give presentations on drug use that are rooted in empathy and reality rather than fear. “The community is so hungry for an organization like ours,” Ingrouille said. “I’m turning down requests weekly for presentations. There’s a real need for a conduit to bring people in this city together.”
BACK TO SCHOOL
So how did a former drug cop become a voice for drug policy reform? When the opioid crisis began to strike British Columbia, Ingrouille started wondering if the arrests he was making were translating into lives saved. He was also developing sources on the street who could help him as an officer and began to notice they all had similar life stories: A history of abuse, time in the foster care system and mental illness. So when Ingrouille was put on a rotation that had police officers travelling to different schools teaching kids about substance use, he wasn’t inclined to read from the script. “I was really questioning the stats (in the presentation),” Ingrouille said. “And I didn’t understand why police were even making the presentation, because I’m not an expert on mental health or drugs.” So he got in touch with old informants — former dealers and people who use drugs — and helped them make a presentation instead. It was a success with audiences, who praised it for being honest, “straight-up” and cohesive. One of Ingrouille’s superiors wasn’t convinced, however, and dropped the presentation. Ingrouille remembers the initial frustration of trying to make change within his profession, but his fellow officers saw value in his work. The police officer’s association put its support behind the presentation, which evolved into Say Know. The program’s name is a riff on “Just Say No,” a common phrase used to discourage recreational drug use, only it substitutes knowledge for abstinence. “Once I’ve learned something I’m not going to unlearn it,” Ingrouille said. “If I learn something that I can use and share, I almost feel like I have an obligation to use and share it. Say Know has almost worked as a creative outlet for the regimented day-to-day roles in policing.”
LEARNING
Ingrouille is the face of Say Know, but the program’s heart and soul look and sound a lot like Keith Bowering and Tina Thebeau.
Bowering has made a career working with the most vulnerable people in the city: First at the Lighthouse and now at Sanctum 1.5. Thebeau is a Métis writer and public speaker. Both are members of Say Know’s board of directors. A decade ago, Bowering was selling and using meth and Thebeau was also fighting an addiction. Bowering was frequently let down by the health care system. Once, he was three or four minutes late to a detoxification appointment — one he had spent weeks mustering up the courage to attend. The staff made him wait 10 minutes in the lobby, then told him he had arrived too late and had to leave. If it wasn’t for someone in the medical system who vouched for him, Bowering wonders if he would have ever successfully kicked his addiction. Thebeau was bounced around foster homes, many of them abusive. Once, she landed in a home she actually liked with supportive, loving parents — but she says social services removed her from it without explanation. “If you’re in hell, you can manage,” Thebeau says recalling the incident. “But if you go from hell to heaven, and you get thrown out of heaven and go back to hell, it shatters your soul. You don’t recover from that.” Thebeau began drinking. Then smoking pot. Then, one day, a girl she was with stuck a syringe in her without her permission. She remembers a low point when she collected used needles in a house and ran water through them to capture the residue of leftover drugs. “I figured if I injected it I would get something,” Thebeau said. “That’s how stupid I was. Who would do that?” Thebeau was eventually diagnosed with hepatitis C, which inspired her to stop using drugs. She credits her recovery to her own resolve and the comfort she found in faith. When she was cured, the first thing she asked her doctor was whether she could still donate her organs. Both became part of Say Know after appearing on its podcast, also called Say Know. Ingrouille had started the show with support from the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse. Bowering read about Ingrouille in a news article. A mutual friend introduced them and Bowering appeared on the show. “They said ‘You have got to meet this cop,’ ” Bowering said. “Sometimes I just sort of roll with the punches and see where things take me.” On the episode where Bowering appears, you can hear Ingrouille adjusting the laptop he uses as his ad hoc recording station. His voice is low and careful, rarely betraying any shock. He sounds like a police officer. Bowering, in contrast, is confident and hilarious. He tells Ingrouille about “moffee” — a mix of coffee and crystal meth — and the time he was kicked out of a 7-11 for preparing it. Later, when Thebeau later appeared on an episode, it marked the first time anyone had ever asked her to share her story. Bowering and Thebeau have both turned a corner on their previous lives and both believe in putting what they went through to good use. Ingrouille says he and other directors keep Say Know grounded in the experiences of people who have actually used drugs. “That’s the thing about our board,” Ingrouille said. “They’re as real as it gets. You can’t really question their street cred.” Bowering says presenting with Say Know can be interesting. He remembers a presentation in a gym with 200 kids, all of whom were more preoccupied with the free hotdogs. He and his tiny mic ended up chatting with a group of grandmas instead. Another time a program for a presentation with the Saskatoon Police Service described him as a “former meth trafficker,” which still makes him laugh. Bowering says there have also been high points, moments where things click between people who would never normally be in the same room. “I decided to be open about it to give me a purpose to use all that time I wasted. All that shit I went through.” Bowering said.
A FOOT IN EACH CAMP
As overdose deaths and methamphetamine surge across the country, many people who use drugs have become advocates, pushing for measures like safe consumption sites, needle exchanges and safe-supply options to reduce fatalities. Sometimes politicians, business owners and police services appear on the other side of the debate. The conversation has become vast and polarizing with very little room in the middle. Ingrouille, uniquely, has a foot in each camp. “The fact that he has a uniform makes a really big difference,” says director Marie Agiortis. She’s another Say Know director and member of Mom’s Stop the Harm, a national advocacy group of mothers who have lost children to opioid overdoses. She’s been an advocate for reforming drug policy since her son Kelly died of an overdose in 2015. Agiortis has met with federal and provincial staff across the country and believes initiatives like Say Know, focused on education, are part of the key to ending stigma around drug use. She and other directors think Ingrouille’s voice has managed to carry, in part because he can empathize with both law enforcement and activists. “He has a voice and a heart and an ability to negotiate. He sees the life and love in people and finds that different versus when he is truly in danger. He’s a great guy. The more I get to know him, the more impressed I am.” Agiortis said. The work has not always been easy, but when Ingrouille thinks back to when it all began — when his idea for real community presentations at schools was shot down — he recalls a letter he received from Saskatoon Police Chief Troy Cooper last Christmas that thanks him for bringing his perspective to the job. Ingrouille says the new generation of police officers is changing and he hears more and more people talking about doing their work differently. “I know that so much of what our profession has done for generations has been damaging,” Ingrouille said. “This is a sort of an outlet to lift that veil and contribute some of the lessons that I’ve been able to learn. Hopefully someone else can learn from it.”