Lynn Police do their best to keep people out of jail

LYNN – They are at the police station and talk to suspects and suspects’ families about past, often illegal behavior. But their job is to keep people out of jail.”The response from family members when you call is great; they always say, ?you’re at the police department?'” jail diversion coordinator Roberto “Tito” Rodriguez said. “We’re in the helping profession.”Rodriguez, Erin Huckabee and Jennifer Waczkowski are the Lynn Police Department’s Mental Health Unit, a case worker and clinicians, respectively, working through Eliot Community Health Services to help the department identify and support individuals who come in contact with police and who may need mental-health or substance-abuse services.The positions – full-time for Rodriguez and Huckabee and part-time for Waczkowski – are paid for by two-year grants from the Department of Mental Health and the Massachusetts attorney general’s office. Waczkowski began in April 2014, helping the police department as it applied for the grant. Rodriguez and Huckabee began last September.Essentially, the trio try to provide police “clients” with an alternative to jail – either currently or in the future.”The person may not be doing something that is arrestable in that instant, but it might be in five weeks,” Waczkowski said. “We want to intervene prior to that, before it becomes an arrestable offense.”The team said this can take several forms.Sometimes, it meets with people who have prompted a disturbance call, and whom police suspect might have mental-health issues. Simply a call to a doctor or a relative can help straighten out a medication issue or ensure a person is receiving the correct treatment. Other times, the unit responds to a holding area when a suspect makes suicidal statements.Other times, a relatively minor offense – drinking in public, trespassing, etc. – can lead to an acknowledgement that a larger addiction issue is at play. Or such an event might lead to contact with another individual at the scene who could benefit from social services.”It opens up lines of communication that weren’t there,” Waczkowski said.Most frequently, however, the team follows up on heroin overdoses.The clinicians speak with overdose victims and their friends and family members to be sure that all are aware of services offered to help with the disease of addiction. Team members said they frequently refer such clients to treatment programs, training for nasal Narcan to reverse a heroin overdose, and support groups for users and families of users of heroin.Often, that referral is just a first step.”Heroin is a problem, but there are so many ?ah, buts. “Yeah, I’d stop using, ah, but I need a job; ah, but I need this,'” explained Rodriguez. “You can help if you can lessen all the ?ah, buts.'””Success” varies for the group. Rodriguez said success ranges from getting an addict to consider treatment to getting an addict clean. Sometimes simply not hearing from a person for a period of time is a good success, Waczkowski noted.But of 209 referrals made to the team, Rodriguez, Waczkowski and Huckabee have made contact with 107 (sometimes phone numbers are wrong, phone calls are not returned, or phone numbers are for burner phones, Chief Kevin Coppinger said in an earlier interview), of which 47 have enrolled in service(s) offered. The national rate for such referrals is 10 percent; the rate for the Lynn unit is approximately 28 percent.Coppinger touted the program as helping the crime rate decrease by five percent in 2014. He also said the program frees up officers from many non-emergency calls, enabling officers to focus on street patrols and being more visible in the community.Not that officers aren’t involved with the unit. Officers will slide referrals under the unit’s office door; Huckabee, Rodriguez and Waczkowski all have gone on ride-alongs with officers, and there are often informal chats in the hallways where officers can check in to follow up with a referral they made.”We get to be embedded in