Heroin Addicts Offered Help Without Threat Of Criminal Charges In Ocean County

If you are addicted to heroin and have decided you want help, Ocean County law enforcement is offering another option: turn yourself in, turn over your drugs, and you can go to treatment evaluation without facing a threat of charges or jail.

The “Heroin Addiction Response Program” (HARP), announced Monday by Prosecutor Joseph D. Coronato, Brick Police Chief James Riccio and Manchester Police Chief Lisa Parker, is the first of its kind in New Jersey.

The program begins this week in Brick and Manchester and will be available two days a week — on Wednesdays in Manchesters and on Thursdays in Brick. It is available to anyone regardless of what town they live in, said Al Della Fave, spokesman for the prosecutor's office.

Those fighting addiction can go to the Manchester Police Department on Wednesday or Brick Police Department on Thursday to seek immediate critical help in fighting drug addiction. The pilot program is being run in partnership with Preferred Behavioral Health in Lakewood and Integrity House in Toms River, and will allow substance abusers to go to those addiction services providers for treatment evaluation.

“It is my mandate that Ocean County law enforcement treat all those suffering from addiction with compassion, care, and concern while providing resources to assist in their recovery." Coronato said. "This is another valuable partnership with health providers that is a substantial addition to support our three-prong approach in combatting the opiate epidemic through education/prevention, enforcement and treatment."

The program is the latest initiative from the prosecutor's office. Coronato became the Ocean County prosecutor in March 2013, just as the heroin crisis was taking off, and has pushed for a number of approaches to battle the epidemic.

Ocean County was the first to equip all its police departments with naloxone to revive overdose victims. That initiative has been expanded to all of Ocean County's high schools. After hearing from officers on the street that reviving overdose patients was leading to repeat overdoses, Coronato led the effort to roll out the county's Recovery Coach Program, where a recovery coach — someone who has recovered from addiction and been trained to help others — meets with an overdose patient in the emergency room to encourage them to go into treatment, and follows patients for eight weeks regardless of whether they accept treatment or not, in an effort to help them truly recover.

Coronato also has pushed for a number of law enforcement initiatives, including a digital pawn shop registry and tighter pawn shop rules to track items that may have been stolen and increased staff and efforts of the prosecutor's office's drug investigation units to arrest drug dealers.

Coronato has repeatedly said that enforcement isn't the only solution to the heroin crisis.

"We can't arrest our way out of this," he has said.

That's where the HARP program comes in. The premise of the program is simple: any person who voluntarily goes to either the Manchester or Brick police departments and asks for help with addiction to heroin or opiates or any substance will be immediately screened for potential participation in HARP, Della Fave said.

Although HARP is primarily designed to apply to persons who present themselves at the station, an officer who encounters a person outside the police station believing they would benefit from HARP has the discretion, based upon their training and experience, to the bring an individual to the police station if the person consents to the voluntary screening process.

The officer/shift supervisor, upon completion of the HARP screening process shall provide transportation for the participant to the designated provider as soon as reasonably possible.

"It’s the generous commitment of Behavioral Health and Integrity House along with Brick and Manchester PDs proactive community outreach that makes this all possible," Coronato said. He hopes other police departments and health providers will join in so the program can be spread throughout the county.

Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato. Karen Wall photo