How a police chief used compassion to combat his community’s drug problem

The message from the chief lit up Facebook in May 2015. “Any addict who walks into the police station with the remainder of their drug equipment (needles, etc) or drugs and asks for help will NOT be charged,” read the memo, posted to the page of the Gloucester, Massachusetts, police department. “Instead we will walk them through the system toward detox and recovery,” the message continued. “Not in hours or days, but on the spot.” The stunning memo was a last-ditch attempt by Leonard Campanello, Gloucester’s frustrated chief of police, after the town’s fourth fatal opiate overdose in the first few months of 2015 – more than had died by drug overdose the entire previous year. Campanello’s words, written in the straight-talking lingo of a police officer who means business, set off a chain of events even the seasoned chief couldn’t have predicted. Since that 2015 message, more than 450 addicts from across the state have walked through the police station’s doors. Nearly all have been placed into treatment, some multiple times. Rates of crimes typically associated with substance abuse – like shoplifting and breaking and entering – in Gloucester have plummeted by roughly 30 percent. Only one person has overdosed and died in Gloucester.