Melvindale City Council approves police chief’s request for overdose team

 

By SUE SUCHYTA

Sunday Times Newspapers

MELVINDALE – The City Council approved Police Chief Chris Egan’s request for a Face Addiction Now / Quick Response Team to help combat drug overdoses, during the March 18 council meeting.

Face Addiction Now is a community-based organization and resource that helps close critical gaps in addressing substance use by offering educational programing, distributing Narcan and providing information about recovery programs.

The Quick Response Team an initiative of FAN, provides community-based wellness visits for people whose lives have been negatively impacted by substance use, and provides access to Narcan and other harm reduction resources.

QRT provides peer and family support services, as well as help navigating resources for detox and other recovery options outside of the criminal justice system.

Egan said the program was successful in Allen Park.

He said that currently the Police Department is using the free resources of Hope Not Handcuffs, another FAN initiative.

“Most people don’t feel comfortable walking into a police station and saying ‘I need help from the police,’” Egan said. “So, we have our mobile crisis unit and we teamed up with the Guidance Center where we get calls for a run and we can get them in touch with treatment.”

He said a FAN/QRT overdose team is the next step for the Police Department.

“Someone has an overdose, and we actually send out a team that goes to their house,” Egan said.

Jeff Filzek, senior advisor of law enforcement and training for FAN and a recently retired Madison Heights deputy police chief, said communities are being decimated by the opioid crisis.

“We brought the program into Madison Heights and it’s been a success since Day One,” he said.

Filzek said there are 23 communities in Michigan that utilize the Quick Response Team.

“We were able to make contact with over 90 percent of the people or families that had an overdose incident in their home,” he said. “Out of those 90 percent of people we made contact with, we were able to offer some sort of help or service to over 70 percent of people.”

Filzek said that during a four-year period, Madison Heights reduced its overdoses by 53 percent, and reduced overdose deaths by 61 percent.

He said the program is successful because the services come to those needing them and doesn’t require people to walk into a police department for help.

“With the Comeback Quick Response Team, the individual in your police department will keep track of all the overdose incidents in your city,” Filzek said. “They will go out once a week, they will have a police officer who we will train on how to handle these incidents, we’ll provide a peer recovery coach that will be with that person throughout the recovery process for as long as it takes, and we have family recovery, because families are suffering through this process as well.”

He said the team is willing to give the help to people who want it.

“The goal of the game is to keep someone alive for as long as we can to get them help and save their life in the long run,” he said.

Egan said FAN will train a team of police officers. He said it is an amazing program and he has the money to start it and hire a FAN employee to work with the Melvindale Police Department to run the program.

He said former Police Chief Dan Jones applied for funding, and the department has $137,597 to use to support the program. The funding will also cover training programs in the schools and the community.

“To me, it’s a win-win, and Public Safety approved it at the last meeting to hire the person in,” Egan said. “He will be our case manager, paid by FAN, and we reimburse ourselves.”

Face Addiction Now can be reached at 833-202-HOPE and online at FaceAddictionNow.org.

The Quick Response Team can be reached at 877-890-1777 and online at ComeBackQRT.com.