Filling Rikers isn’t the answer
The concept is similar to CompStat, a data-driven crime-mapping program that helped the NYPD drive crime to historic lows. l Bronx addicts have access to drug-testing strips, ensuring they don’t get a surprise hit of the deadly fentanyl increasingly used to cut heroin or other drugs. l A public service campaign will spread word of the state’s Good Samaritan Law, which allows anyone reporting an overdose (including the victim) to call 911 without fear of arrest. l Advocates are waging a battle for supervised injection facilities where active drug users can shoot up in a location safer than an alley or an abandoned building. l Lifesaving naloxone is available without a prescription at Walgreens drugstores in 33 states, including New York, in an effort to help stem overdoses. City cops saved 80 overdose victims last year on Staten Island using the opioid antidote.
Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon, whose borough sits behind only the South Bronx in per capita city opioid deaths, is among the law enforcers supporting a new way of dealing with those at the bottom of the drug world's food chain.
“The attitude has changed, and it’s a positive thing,” he said. “We have family members or neighbors, relatives and friends who are suffering from this crisis . . . . Many of the police officers who lived out here on Staten Island, they were personally affected by the crisis.
“And they welcome a new approach. It’s hitting their community, their family, their neighborhoods.”
The NYPD believes filling Rikers Island with addicts is not the solution.
“We want to make a distinction between the person that’s bringing drugs in, polluting a community, versus somebody who’s an addict themselves that’s selling to support their habit,” Shea said. “Do we arrest that person? Absolutely, we do.
“But if we have to choose a case, we’re going after the case that has a bigger impact. We don’t want the drug kingpin, the El Chapo, getting diverted out of the system.”
Dealing with the problem takes a village of agencies, part of the new approach to the vexing plague. The RX Stat meetings offer a wider range of suggestions and possible solutions, as folks from all sides of the issue share their thoughts. The meetings are convened by the NYPD, the Health Department and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program — a federally funded enforcement initiative run by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
“In between, there are lots of small meetings,” said Susan Herman, NYPD deputy commissioner for collaborative policing. “Everyone’s coming together to save lives.”
The changing approach to opioid abuse comes in response to the sobering statistics in the nation’s largest city. From 2000 to 2015, the rates of fatal opioid overdoses — including from heroin and pain pills — tripled across the five boroughs.
Cops investigated 1,370 opioidinvolved deaths last year, far more than double the combined number of New York homicides (311) and car wrecks (220).
Shea cited a pair of cases that underscore the difficulties of dealing with drug addicts who feel like they have no options when it comes to getting help.
“We had a case where we interviewed somebody,” he recalled. “A week later, that person was dead. We have cases where pregnant women, with their significant other — we respond, and he’s dead. Same house, eight hours later — now she’s overdosed.”
The HOPE program is designed to change that dynamic. Drug possession suspects are offered a chance to get clean instead of getting a rap sheet. To be eligible, suspects must be arrested for misdemeanor drug possession, provided they have no significant criminal history or outstanding warrants.
A peer coach is teamed with the defendant to steer the drug user to a local recovery center within seven days. If the defendant is determined to “meaningfully engage” in the program within 37 days, the district declines to prosecute and the case disappears.