A Burlington team will head to overdose victims’ doorsteps. Some addicts raise concerns

One slip in her sobriety was all it took for Samantha Freda to overdose.

"It was a freak thing," she said. The Burlington resident says she was sober last April when she ran into an old acquaintance, used drugs and "overdosed immediately." 

She teared up during a recent interview as she recalled the experience while spending time at Turning Point, a recovery support center  — and while describing the gratitude she felt for the Burlington police officers and EMTs who responded to the scene.

"They treated me like a human," she said. "They treated me like their own child." 

She was so deeply affected, she said, that she emailed police Chief Brandon del Pozo in August to express her gratitude. Despite that, she raises concerns about the effectiveness of Burlington's plan for a safe response team:  a social worker attached to the Burlington Police Department, along with police and fire chiefs, who will visit people in the days after an overdose in hopes of getting them into treatment. 

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The outreach, which began with a four-month pilot Thursday, will be led by Jackie Corbally, the police department's opioid policy coordinator. She'll be joined by Deputy Chief Shawn Burke and Fire Chief Steven Locke, who, like all of Burlington's firefighters, has emergency medical technician training.

After Burlington first responders are called to an overdose, they plan to visit the victim, ideally within 24 hours, to ensure the person is medically stable, provide treatment information, and explain Corbally's role and how she can support someone seeking help.

Vulnerable moment

Freda said that visit might have felt intimidating, especially in the immediate aftermath of her overdose, when she felt at her most vulnerable.

"I felt death hanging over me for days," she said. The naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medication commonly known as Narcan, left her feeling sick for a week. 

Freda said the officers who responded to her last spring made her feel safe, even though she hasn't always had good experiences with police officers. She pleaded guilty to a federal count of drug distribution in 2013, a charge that court papers noted was driven by her addiction.

Steven Sawyer, who said he is now stable on methadone after more than two decades of addiction, said he shared Freda's concerns.

"It's great they want to do everything in their power," he said. "I don't believe this will succeed."

Addicts, he said, stay away from police. 

Freda and Sawyer agreed that available treatment resources are well-known by addicts, and people know where to go when they're ready to get help. 

But for the safe response team, it's not just about sharing information, del Pozo said. It's about reaching people at the right time.

"In the time period after an overdose, which for some people is a reckoning, we want to give them a little nudge," he said.

Saving one life

Burke said the four-month pilot will show how effective the safe response team is. If they connect with few people, it might tell them they should bring in other community partners. 

"No one else is doing anything right now," he said. 

Patients who are treated in the Emergency Department of the University of Vermont Medical Center get a naloxone rescue kit, a referral to the Howard Center's Safe Recovery, and are advised to follow up with their primary care doctor, said Daniel Wolfson, an ER doctor.

Other organizations are looking at ways to reach overdose patients. Gary De Carolis, the executive director of the Turning Point Center, said the organization recently won grant funding to station peer mentors in the emergency room. Like most of the staff of the center, which provides a safe, supportive place for people in recovery to go, the peer workers will be recovering addicts themselves.

Del Pozo stressed that the same laws that protect people from arrest if they call police for an overdose will apply to follow-up visits. The point, he said, is not to catch people with bags of heroin but to offer treatment. 

Corbally said it's critical that emergency medical personnel and police go out on the responses — in part for safety reasons, but also to "send the message that we're in this together," she said. 

Other municipalities across the country have been experimenting with similar models, Corbally said, adding that they work best when law enforcement is included. And, she said, the pilot costs the city no additional money.

"If we can save one person from taking their final breath, I'll deem this a success," she said. Other cities in Chittenden County have expressed interest, she added.

Corbally does worry about the capacity of the treatment system. She said it "won't feel okay" if they find someone wanting help and are unable to get them into a treatment program. 

The waiting list for treatment in Chittenden County has grown again since last fall, Corbally said, when state and city officials and social service providers took "a moment of celebration" that the list had reached zero.

Burke said the team is expecting to respond to about two to seven overdoses per month. 

That number, del Pozo said, is the least reliable way of judging the rate of overdoses in the city, because many people who overdose rely on naloxone and don't call the police.

He said police believe the overdose fatality rate in 2017 will be up from 2016 when the state releases numbers. The state has tallied 106 deaths from accidental drug overdoses in 2016 — the highest number in recent years and almost as many as the number of overdose deaths in 2014 and 2015 combined. 

Trust required

Sawyer was one of the people who survived an overdose without the help of 911.

He relapsed after a shoulder surgery, he said, when a doctor gave him opiate painkillers despite his addiction because the pain would be immense. Shortly after, his grandmother, who raised him, died. He got three bags of heroin from a friend and ignored warnings about their potency. 

He overdosed in his bathroom, he said. He woke up to his girlfriend, who did not know he was using again, hitting him in the face. He struggles with the experience and the guilt he feels, he said. 

Sawyer said he would not have welcomed an officer showing up in his home, though he appreciates that the department is trying to help addicts. Like Freda, he has a criminal record and has negative associations with law enforcement. 

Police need to focus on building trust in the community, he said. Officers have a job to do, he said, but could show compassion rather than anger — even while actively arresting someone.

"The frustration they feel," he said about police, "we feel that 100 times worse." 

Del Pozo said his department is working to build trust in the community, pointing to post-arrest work officers do to help addicts get treatment, along with policing initiatives such as foot patrols and open data. But, he added, it takes time.

"I wish I had a pill as powerful as an opioid to build trust," he said. "It's going to take a thousand transactions to show we're interested in keeping people alive." 

Contact Jess Aloe at 802-660-1874 or jaloe@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @jess_aloe.