NEW TOOL TO FIGHT DRUG USE
City police join growing effort to help those overdosing
Starting next week, Madison Heights police will have a new tool to help people who overdose on drugs.
Like more than 10 other police departments statewide, Madison Heights police is creating a Comeback Quick Response Team.
The program was started through Families Against Narcotics to help those battling opioid and other drug abuse dependencies. It focuses on following up within 72 with people who have suffered a drug overdose.
Last year Madison Heights police responded to 53 emergency calls for drug overdoses.
“We need to break the cycle” of addiction, said Madison Heights Police Chief Corey Haines, “instead of just getting there, giving them some Narcan and getting them to the hospital.”
The follow up Quick Response Teams are composed of a plainclothes officer, and certified peer and family recovery coaches to guide people and their families to resources for help.
Drug overdoses have been climbing nationally for several years and have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the national Centers for Disease Control.
There were 81,000 overdoses nationally during the 12 months preceding May 2020, the CDC reports.
Madison Heights police Sgt. Jeff Filzek presented the comeback team approach to higher ups in the department after hearing about it.
He said it was the first plan he encountered that offered a way to help people with addiction.
“It’s been clear … that jail was not the answer, but part of a repressive failing cycle,” Filzek said.
Berkley Public Safety, Ferndale and Waterford in Oakland County are among about a dozen police departments statewide so far to establish quick response teams through Families Against Narcotics (FAN) to follow up with people after they have overdosed. The effort started as a pilot program last year with the Sterling Heights police department.
“I’d say we get about four to six overdoses a month on average,” Filzek said. “A lot of them involve people in their 20s who live with their families or others. It’s been very frustrating.”
Madison Heights police most often have contact with people struggling with addiction either through 911 overdose calls or shoplifting crimes, which is the most common crime in the city.
“We see the same cycle,” Filzek said.
There’s a crime or an overdose response followed by an arrest or hospital run.
“What we are doing is not working,” he said. “For so many years we repeat the cycle of arrest and incarceration.”
Linda Davis, a former Macomb County district judge and executive director of FAN, said the only way to effectively tackle substance use disorder is at the community level.
The quick response team approach has been successful in other towns, such as Huntington, W.Va., where overdose ambulance runs dropped 40 percent, according to FAN.
“Often people hear the word addiction and it scares them,” Davis said, adding that addiction often starts with exposure to drugs — either from young people experimenting with their peers, or with legally prescribed drugs for common medical problems such as pain.
Only about 10 percent of those suffering from addiction at any given time seek or have access to treatment.
“For anybody in Madison Heights suffering from this substance use disorder this program is here to help you,” Davis said.