On the Job 

In his second statewide meeting dealing with Ohio’s opioid crisis, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine encouraged the audience of more than 1,300 social service providers, public safety officials, and others to share ideas and build on existing programs to make a difference.

“What I want to accomplish, and what I hope, is that everyone who comes here will get at least one idea that they can take back to their community,” DeWine said. “The way we can make progress in regard to this horrible opiate epidemic is at the grass-roots level; that’s where the fight is, and where people can make a difference.”

Among the five sessions during “Ideas in Motion — Fighting Ohio's Drug Epidemic,” one focused particularly on criminal justice.

Panel member Chief Deputy Rick Minerd of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office said his agency’s HOPE (Heroin Overdose Prevention & Education) Task Force has found success through partnerships.

The HOPE Task Force combats the heroin epidemic through law enforcement, education, and prevention.

“When we go out in the field and investigate fatal and nonfatal situations, we go out as a partnership with social workers from Southeast Healthcare and also some of the family support organizations. We go out as a team,” he said. “So from a law enforcement standpoint, we are extracting information that will lead back to arresting the supplier. But at the same time, we are linking families up with treatment options to get them out of the situation they are in as far as substance abuse.”

To make a task force successful, law enforcement officers have to open their minds to information sharing and partnerships, he said.

“Cops, in general, are cynical,” Minerd said. “They are used to driving people to jail, not to a treatment appointment.”

But working toward solutions is good for law enforcement, he said.

“This is the best form of community policing out there,” Minerd said. “We are working with the most at-risk segment of society and we are doing it alongside people from the treatment side.”

Among the task force’s community partners are emergency medical services, the ADAMH Board of Franklin County, Maryhaven, and Netcare.

The task force has had success with overdose victims, he said. Seventy percent of them will schedule an appointment with Southeast Healthcare’s wraparound services after an overdose, and 55 percent to 60 percent will show up for the first appointment.

Meanwhile, from the law enforcement side, Minerd said, “We haven’t stopped doing policing. Last year we indicted 25 to 30 people for charges such as corrupting another, involuntary manslaughter, and trafficking.”

Dennis Lowe, commander of the Fairfield-Hocking-Athens Major Crimes Unit, said he has found that good data could be useful in targeting those who most need help.

His unit began working with a private company to develop a smartphone app for first responders. When they respond to an overdose, they can geotag the location to provide detailed real-time information about overdose trends so resources can be dispatched to those areas.

Judge Fred Moses of the Hocking County Municipal Court shared the success of his county’s drug court and Vivitrol program.

“Our program is voluntary,” he said, “but I’ve had people call and snitch themselves out to get in.”

He has seen what a difference medically-assisted treatment can make. “We’ve only had three cases of recidivism in four and a half years,” he said.

"The great thing for us is the community involvement," Moses said. Everyone in the past three classes to graduate from the program has found employment.