Addicts to get help from cops, counselors in unique, new program

Howell police Chief Andrew Kudrick said the Overdose Prevention Act helps save lives, but doesn't help addicts get treatment. Watch video

HOWELL -- In what's believed to be the first program of its kind in New Jersey, Howell police who arrest a drug addict or respond to an overdose will now be joined by a drug treatment counselor to get continuing help to the addict as soon as possible.

When one of his officers was injured in a car accident while responding to a heroin overdose, Howell police Chief Andrew Kudrick Jr. went on a social media rant about gaps in New Jersey's Overdose Protection Act that don't address treatment for the addicts.

Even before Officer Heather Scherbinski injured her hand in a car accident on the way to that Feb. 1 overdose report, Kudrick was working on ways to close those treatment gaps through an initiative that has now become protocol at the department.

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"The Overdose Protection law was created to save lives - and it has - but there's consequences. Something more needs to be done," Kudrick said. "I understand the intent of the law, but it's definitely flawed. The law has to be amended to get immediate medical treatment."

In his Facebook post the day after the crash, Kudrick said that as heroin overdose reports increase, so do the chances of injury to an innocent bystander or emergency personnel rushing to the call.

"It's only a matter of time before a police officer or another innocent person gets seriously injured and/or killed responding to a heroin overdose," he said in the post.

Enacted on May 2, 2013, the Overdose Protection Act grants immunity from arrest, prosecution or conviction to a person who reports an overdose or stays with the overdose victim. The idea behind the law was to get help to the overdose victim as soon as possible.

But the law does not require the users to go into treatment. It's not uncommon for police departments to respond multiple times to revive the same overdose victim. Kudrick said he knows of one case in town where officers revived a woman four separate times from heroin overdoses. The fifth overdose was fatal.

"If we had something that would mandate treatment, maybe she would be alive today," Kudrick said.  

Last year, Howell police used Naloxone 16 times to counteract heroin overdoses, however, five of those attempts were unsuccessful, he said.

Since heroin use in New Jersey has exploded, the state has struggled to find ways to provide treatment for users. There are in-patient programs and intensive outpatient programs, but patients and providers have complained the programs aren't long enough and there aren't enough beds.

In Howell, a town of 55,000 residents living in 63 square miles, five police officers are now assigned to a crime-suppression team, which responds to all overdose calls and conducts follow-up investigations from drug arrests.

Also dispatched to those calls will be crisis interventionists from the Farmindale-based Coming Full Circle Loud N Clear Foundation, whose task will be to counsel the users and their families about available treatment options, Kudrick said.

He said that because Coming Full Circle has connections to treatment facilities, its counselors can get the users help quickly.