The Roanoke Rapids Police is currently exploring implementing the HOPE Initiative, a program which focuses on recovery from drug addiction rather than arrest.
“We’re in the planning stages,” Chief Chuck Hasty said following a community forum last week. “The costs are what we’re researching and getting community partners onboard.”
The Nashville Police Department is using the program, Chief Thomas Bashore told the audience at Kirkwood Adams, opening it February 9 and getting its first participant eight days later. “I spent seven and a half hours with the first guy at the hospital,” he said. “It took a year to get to 100 people.”
On the day of the forum two entered.
The program reached the 200th person on August 19.
The participation breakdown includes 129 men and 71 women, Bashore said. There are 173 people who came to the police department for opioid addiction and 27 for other addictions such as cocaine and alcohol.
In launching the program Bashore formed numerous partnerships including the Nash County Sheriff’s Office, the district attorney’s office and department of social services as well as corrections, the faith-based community, Coastal Plain Hospital along with others.
The program is not funded by local tax dollars, the chief said, instead it has been done through grants, donations and fundraising. “We spent $16,787 in the first year.”
Since beginning the program 117 people have entered a detox program; 94 are on intensive outpatient treatment and 99 are on short and long term residential placement.
For Bashore, the HOPE Initiative has the potential to reduce needle sticks, reduce incarceration, reduce property and build partnerships. “This is not an individual disease,” he said. “It affects a large number of people.”
A letter sent to Bashore by a family of someone who used the program speaks to its initial success. “The HOPE Initiative was aptly name,” part of the letter says. “You have given us hope for healing and a wonderful future for Matthew.”