By Joe Mahoney
The Daily Star
ONEONTA, N.Y. — Cooperstown has been called America’s Perfect Village, but the job of its police chief, Mike Covert, requires him to see a darker side of the community.
It has its drug addicts, he said in an interview, as well as all the problems that go hand-in-hand with substance abuse — small time drug-dealing and the occasional overdose and emergency-room visit.
With his own hands, he has spared a 17-year-old boy from being a headline on the obituary page, administering life-saving Narcan to a teenager who had lapsed into unconsciousness after overdosing. The local rescue squad has done likewise with other overdose patients.
And although local police have taken numerous drug users off the streets in recent years, the problem of addiction has not only failed to abate, it has become more widespread, Covert said.
After learning of a fresh policing strategy begun in a coastal Massachusetts city this year that has drawn widespread praise, Covert decided to find out more about the Police Assisted Addiction Recovery Initiative. That’s the program that was created by Gloucester Police Chief Leonard Campanello in a community wracked by an opiate epidemic.
The PAARI enables police agencies that participate in the strategy to take direct action against addiction by offering amnesty to drug users who turn themselves into police and ask for help.
“If they come to the police station, if they truly want to get help, I will get them help within 24 hours,” Covert said.
He said many local families have an anguishing common bond they are not aware of because the topic is too awkward and painful to discuss — a son or daughter with an addiction, a niece or nephew or grandchild who has overdosed.
“It’s something people aren’t going to talk to their relatives about over Thanksgiving dinner,” the chief said.
For the program to be successful, he said, it’s important that the treatment resources are available in those moments when a desperate addict is willing to admit she or he is on a downward spiral and needs help, Covert said.
That is why, he said, he has been in conversations with administrators at Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, the county’s opiate task force, the office of District Attorney John Muehl and the LEAF Council on Alcoholism and Addictions in Oneonta.
By brainstorming on strategies for getting addicts into rehabilitation, Covert said he and the representatives of those groups believe they can be more effective in luring in those who may be willing to come forward and ask for assistance in straightening out their lives.
“Right now, the waiting time is four to seven weeks, and that can be an eternity for an addict,” he said.
Otsego County Sheriff Richard Devlin said the village chief’s move to take an alternative strategy to addiction could help bring heroin and opiate users in from the shadows.
“We have a huge addiction problem, so we’re looking at different ways to address the issue,” he said. “We’re certainly open to new ways to help people get back on track.”
Muehl, the Otsego County District Attorney, has also welcomed Covert’s effort.
“I’m interested in anything that could work with this epidemic,” he said. “I’ve changed a lot of my strategies when it comes to opiate addicts. They’re different than other kinds of addicts.”
Those who peddle small amounts of heroin in order to feed their own cravings for the drug will also be eligible for the amnesty program — provided they go to the police, Covert said.
Both he and Muehl said that anyone dealing significant quantifies of the drug for their own profit will continue to be prosecuted aggressively.
“Those are the ones who don’t touch the stuff themselves,” Muehl said. “They’re the ones I send to prison.”
Taking another page from the Gloucester initiative, Covert envisions addicts entering recovery will be each assigned an “Angel,” a volunteer trained by the LEAF council and approved by him.
“We don’t want any foxes in the hen house,” he observed.
Covert said he has also been reaching out to local companies to try to line up support for the initiative, just as Gloucester Chief Campanello has managed to tap a vein of generosity from people who understand the gravity of the opiate epidemic.
The chief said he hopes to have the program up and running by the end of the month
“If one person comes to my door and asks for help,” he said, “then I will have been successful.”
Copyright 2015 The Daily Star