AURORA | Aurora area police and justice officials are headed in separate, new directions to combat opioid addiction and deaths, all intervening in the lives of people they contact as part of their jobs to help offset often lethal consequences.
A new program at the Arapahoe County Detention Center aims to help inmates battling opioid addiction start on the road to recovery.
The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office has started a new treatment program for inmates who are already receiving medication to fight an opioid addiction. The jail will no longer place them in withdrawal protocol and instead help them continue their treatment program, said Arapahoe County Sheriff David Walcher, during a town hall on opioid addiction on June 21.
“This was a gigantic difficult task. We started a medication-assisted treatment program within the jail. This doesn’t happen everywhere,” Walcher said. “When they come off that methadone, it’s very dangerous (for the inmate).”
Walcher said the Sheriff’s Office is working with three different providers to provide inmates with medication like methadone to continue treatment. A patient who is trying to fight an opioid addiction who has medication taken away can suffer life-threatening withdrawal symptoms. Walcher said this program would help those inmates and help decrease the medical liability for the jail as well.
“We have no idea how many people will be helped via this program. We don’t have a clue yet,” Walcher said. “But our commissioners have been very supportive of literally every program we have done so we can try to help these people who are methadone and get off opioids.”
Walcher said that along with the new program, inmates who have been identified as suffering from an opioid addiction are given a dose of Narcan, a drug that can treat an opioid overdose, as they leave jail. Teresa Hogan, community outreach director for the Harm Reduction Action Center, said people with opioid addiction leaving jail are 129 times more likely to die of an overdose than the general public.
“We book into our jail 18,000 people per year and we try to identify individuals who are high risk to overdoses on things like heroin and we work with them,” Walcher said. “And if we know that and when they leave the facility, we’ll give them Narcan. We’ve had one save we know of. I’m sure we have more saves out there.”
At the same time, Aurora police and area prosecutors announced they’re pushing for more home visits by social workers or health professionals to homes where children are particularly at risk of developing opioid addiction.
The voluntary visits, law enforcement officials say, could help address an opioid crisis that they say caused a 91-percent spike in the number of Colorado babies born with opioid withdrawal from 2012 to 2016.
We know that home visiting programs reduce a child’s exposure to abuse and neglect, but we can’t forget the importance of those visits in preventing opioid abuse. Home visiting programs give kids the right start in life,” Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith said in a statement Friday.
Smith and other law enforcement leaders released a report Friday during a press conference at the Arapahoe County district attorney’s office detailing the state’s opioid issues. The group, dubbed “Fight Crime: Invest in Kids,” is made up of law enforcement from around the state, including Aurora Police Chief nick Metz.
Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler said the home visits and other techniques for reaching
“We’re taking measures to address this crisis through law enforcement and action in the courts,” he said in the statement. “It’s prevention though – starting in early childhood – that is the missing piece of the puzzle.”