Morris County Sheriff Gannon starts mobile and jail help units
James Gannon was a cop for 33 years but, by his own admission, he didn't understand the thoroughly democratic scourge of drug addiction until he became a politician.
Well, not exactly a politician. Gannon was campaigning for Morris County sheriff last year when he went door-to-door in suburbs, cities and semi-rural areas.
"I knocked on 9,000 doors," he said. "And the thing that concerned people the most was drug addiction."
Behind those 9,000 doors, Gannon heard thousands of stories about family secrets and shame. Stories about people needing help or people for whom help, sadly, never came.
"Everybody seemed to know somebody," Gannon said. "Everybody had a story."
Since 2012, Morris County has seen nearly 250 overdose deaths. Add to that the number of people who were arrested or entered rehab programs and extrapolate this into the social network of a county -- through all families, friends, classmates and acquaintances - and, yes, it seems everybody knows somebody.
"My whole career, I saw drug addiction from the criminal side," Gannon said. "But when I campaigned I saw it impacted all genders, all races, all towns, all socioeconomics.
"It became my top priority when I took office," he said.
Gannon's idea was take addiction and recovery information out to the public, rather than the public have to search for the services. This included the public that spent time in his jail.
His plan involved creating a mobile drug awareness and recovery unit, dedicating one wing of the county jail to drug offenders to connect them with services, and issuing identification cards to the homeless so they, too, could seek treatment.
Gannon was sworn in on Jan. 2, 2017. By April 3, the "Hope One" van was on the road, making its first stop on the Morristown Green, handing out literature, arranging for treatment and training people in the life-saving use of naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote.
Using drug forfeiture money, Gannon took a former Morris S.W.A.T. van, stripped it of any law enforcement insignias, and had it painted with a purple ribbon, the awareness symbol of the opioid crisis.
"Our first day out, a couple of the people who always hung around the Green came up," Gannon said. "They were our first two customers, and both are in recovery now."
Since then, the van has been out almost 100 times and the Hope One staff has made about 3,000 contacts, which Gannon described as people seeking information or help.
Nearly 800 people have been trained in the use of naloxone, and go home with a free dose, paid for by a state grant through the Center for Addiction Recovery, Education and Success (CARES) in Rockaway.
"We were out in a strip mall and this man stops by and he just starts welling-up," Gannon said. "He tells us his son is addicted and he wants to be trained in Narcan (a brand of naloxone) because he knows it might save his son's life someday. These are the kind of contacts we make every day."
During a drug awareness seminar at Whippany's Memorial Junior High School two weeks ago, the Hope One staff trained several groups of people in emergency naloxone use.
In the group were moms and dads, brothers and sisters, and friends. This mixed demographic had only one thing in the common: the fear they would one day find their addicted loved one dead.
"I think we (Hope One) are one of a kind," said Alton Robinson, the chief recovery specialist at CARES, who is a regular on the Hope One rounds. "I don't know of another in the country. Now we have other counties coming to us, because they see it is working."
Newark Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose invited Gannon to his office in December to give a presentation, and Essex County plans to begin its own Hope One-style program in March.
"It's a great idea," Ambrose said. "You bring the services to the places where people need it. We'll be at Penn Station and Military Park and some of the other places we know where people need help."
Help is the operative word, one that many people don't associate with law enforcement. So, Gannon decided the Hope One truck had to be civilian-friendly. Not only were the law enforcement logos removed, but the sheriff's officer assigned to the unit is dressed in plainclothes. Gannon wants there to be no confusion that Hope One is there to help. Coffee is put out, among the literature.
"Every conversation begins with a cup of coffee," Gannon said. "When we can talk, we can open up the pathway of services to people who otherwise might not know how to find them or were turned away from one place or another. Because our network with all the (rehab) facilities, we know where the beds are."
Since the start, the mobile Hope One effort has arranged rehabilitation for 52 people and mental health services for 60. It has issued county IDs to 140 homeless people, so they can get services.
It goes to places where people in the target population gather: train stations, parks, malls and libraries.
"There are a few homeless camps we know of, so we go there," Gannon said.
Along those lines, his warrant squad now offers rehab awareness information and the jail has a wing devoted to getting people help.
Gannon said 3,100 people came through the Morris County jail last year. Of those, about half were addicted to drugs or alcohol.
"We've put an outpost for county human services at the jail," he said. "I like to call it giving them a warm hand-off from the jail to help them find places to live, to work if they're able, to find treatment, and get them their high-school equivalency, if they need it. We find the higher level of education, the lower the level of recidivism."
And, in the end, that's what it is really about. Reducing crime, not through arrests, but through preemptive treatment and services.
"We are not going to arrest our way out of this problem," Gannon said.