Court partners with new patron
The nationally recognized Garland County Juvenile Drug Court has a new carrot for encouraging compliance without resorting to incarceration.
The court announced its partnership last week with the dive team responsible for the Adam L. Brown Underwater Memorial at Lake Ouachita. The custodians of the Fearless Rock Memorial Fund, the divers placed the memorial near the upstream toe of Blakely Mountain Dam in 2013 to honor Brown, a Lake Hamilton alumnus and U.S. Navy SEAL chief petty officer who was killed in action while serving in Afghanistan in 2010.
The Brick Smith Polar Bear Scholarship will allow the drug court to provide a graduate of its Helping Each Other Reach Our Sobriety program
with dive gear and training for scuba certification.
Fearless Rock founder William Stevens said it’s about a $2,000 annual investment made in honor of Smith, a Fearless Rock member who died while sky diving in Morrilton earlier this year.
“Brick would want people to learn how to scuba dive,” Stevens said. “We called him the polar bear because he always dove deeper than us. Where he went, the water was always colder.”
The H.E.R.O.S. program rewards participants with lessons or activities that further their interests if they meet behavior and academic requirements stipulated in their accountability agreements. Kamo’s Kids Foundation, the drug court’s primary patron, pays for the activities.
The dive scholarship provided by the Fearless Rock group is the latest incentive at the drug court’s disposal.
Whether it’s music or dance lessons, or a day on Lake Ouachita with a fishing guide, the incentive-based approach has markedly reduced the number of children the court has placed in the county’s juvenile detention center and the Division of Youth Services Correctional Facility in Alexander.
It is a practice other jurisdictions are working to emulate, said Chris Burrow, director of the Garland County Juvenile Drug Court.
“We’re now a mentoring drug court, a model drug court for best practices,” he said. “We think outside the box and offer different sanctions and incentives. We went almost two years without a DYS commitment. Drug courts are revamping and trying to do this.”
Suni Nichols, the recipient of the first dive scholarship, has been cutting her teeth as the dive team’s tender. She’s learned how to assemble the team’s gear, maintain its dive logs and pilot its boat. Once she’s mastered the basics, the team will help her get a scuba certification and outfit her with her own dive equipment.
Stevens said the apprenticeship is teaching Nichols useful lessons, including how to be accountable to others and to put their needs before hers.
“The biggest thing is that she’s learning how to be part of a team,” he said. “It’s not about her when we’re underwater. It’s all about us. She sees that, and she’s able to be part of that team and see when we’re underwater that we have to rely on her. And she knows that.”
Fearless Rock member Eddie Rogers III said he can empathize with those caught in the vortex of addiction. Escaping the self-destructive spiral often requires the affirmation of others, he said. He hopes the dive team can provide that encouragement.
“As a recovering addict myself, I know that when you go through the system, you get beat up so much just by your own head,” he said. “One of the hardest things to find sometimes is somebody who believes you are trying to change, or who believes in you.
“Sometimes all you need is one or two people who believe in you and give you a hand up instead of standing over you and judging you.”
Stevens said Fearless Rock’s participation with the juvenile drug court proceeds from Brown’s struggles with substance abuse referenced in “Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown.”
Brown’s mug shot from the Garland County Detention Center appears in the book, which the H.E.R.O.S. program requires many of its participants to read. The biography credits Brown’s incarceration as a pivotal point in his recovery.
“He overcame some addictions during his dark times and was actually (at the detention center) for a time,” Stevens said. “We had always talked about doing something with Adam’s legacy because Adam was about giving back to the community.”