Front Line boost to towns’ bottom lines

We recently expressed our support for a program adopted by the Lowell Police Department that helps prevent unnecessary arrests and trips to hospital emergency rooms.

Called the Jail Diversion Program, it incorporates the use of clinicians who work alongside police to determine the outcome for those individuals better served by a mental-health solution, rather than arrest and incarceration.

Established in 2003 with the Framingham Police Department, the program now has 15 municipal members, with Lowell being the latest.

According to figures released by the Jail Diversion Program of the Advocates agency, the human-services organization that helped bring this innovative concept to Lowell, the program pre-empted 19 arrests or emergency department visits from July to September.

Those 19 diversions also netted an estimated savings of $71,560 that would have otherwise gone for criminaljustice and health-care costs.

That’s significant, since this program relied on grants for start-up capital. But for it to survive, it must prove its worth as a self-sufficient enterprise able to pay its own way.

We also have mentioned another local program, the Front Line Initiative, which integrates a mental-health component among several area police departments to provide help for people in need of services.

Police departments in Tyngsboro, Tewksbury, Billerica, Chelmsford and Dracut interact with various community partners to provide behavioral-health and substance-use assistance.

While aware of several success stories, we didn’t know the program’s financial impact on the five communities’ bottom lines.

However, a recent Tyngsboro Select Board meeting highlighted the initiative’s considerable combined savings.

There it was disclosed that the Front Line Initiative has saved taxpayers of the five communities an estimated $8 million from 2018 to 2021.

Since joining the organization in 2019, Tyngsboro taxpayers have saved $108,000 through the Initiative, which is also funded solely through grants.

In the last 18 months, the Initiative has received 285 referrals from Tyngsboro, 85% of which were noncriminal, according to Front Line Initiative Executive Director Matthew Page-shelton.

Numbers of referrals for the five communities from 2018 through October 2021 were 5,835; of those, 78% were noncriminal.

Developed several years ago to meet the demands of the opioid crisis, the Initiative has evolved to provide a broad array of services to the five communities, the most important of which is the availability of mentalhealth professionals alongside police officers in emergency situations.

The Front Line Initiative provides “access to clinical services and educational opportunities to all members of the communities we serve regardless of insurance, socioeconomic status, gender identity, sexual preference, age, race, and there is no requirement that they be police involved,” Page-shelton said.

The prevention component of the Front Line Initiative focuses on youth through ongoing engagement with schools, communities and civil organizations.

At the forefront of national efforts to de-escalate mental health and substance abuse interactions between police and the public, the Initiative has caught the attention of U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, whose district includes Tewksbury.

It’s obvious that these Greater Lowell communities have successfully applied cutting-edge solutions that can distinguish between mental-health and criminal behavior — at considerable cost savings to their communities.