Delaware can learn from fishing village fighting heroin

GLOUCESTER, Mass. - This is the place both lovers and families go – lobster boats bob in the harbor and beachgoers spread towels on idyllic summer days.

But heroin has its grip on Gloucester.

Nearly every person in the fishing community of 29,000 on Boston's North Shore has been touched by the opiate pandemic sweeping America. Families shoot up together, crews working boats in the Atlantic are hooked, and city leaders are desperate to help families they've known for generations.

“[Heroin is] so readily available, and people nowadays are growing up into it. So how are we supposed to say no?” asks Nick Frontiero as he loads lobster pots from the Marilyn Louise fishing boat onto the weathered dock, his hands calloused and his Boston accent thick. “When you grow up in a family who’s doing it, I mean, half of my friends’ mothers are doing it with them. They were doing it with their mothers and fathers. The government is missing that whole part of it. It’s been going on for 30, 40 years.”

Gloucester is famous for its tragic tale, "The Perfect Storm," in which a long-line swordfish boat went down in violent seas. The Crow's Nest, a dive bar overlooking a major street that cuts through the town featured in the movie, displays pictures of Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney posing with locals during film production.

Frontiero has spent much of his life on fishing boats – long, cold days in the spray, exhilaration from pulling in a big catch, followed by a monster paycheck. And heroin.

The 29-year-old is lucky to be alive. He nearly died twice last year from the lethal drug.

Gloucester Police Chief Lenny Campanello sees those who aren't as lucky, found dead along the train tracks and in downtown apartments.

In 2015, four overdose deaths in two months prompted the chief to make a policy change that's been noticed nationwide: Rather than arresting those with an opiate addiction, police provide those who want help guaranteed access to treatment – even if that means booking them a flight to a rehab center in Texas or California when beds are not available locally.

The innovative approach, aimed at welcoming addicts rather than throwing them in jail, has helped more than 400 people in less than a year while showing a decrease in crime and overdose deaths.

“We decided to accept the proven idea that addiction is a disease,” Campanello said, recalling the ripples his department made when he announced the Angel program on May 4, 2015. That day, the department's website saw more than 2.5 million visitors online.

“The little city of Gloucester struck a nerve that resonated across the country,” he said.

The program is funded with seized drug money and costs the department an average of $55 per person to transport and place them in treatment. Treatment is paid through the individuals' insurance and through donations that come in from around the country.

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STORY: As Delaware heroin deaths continue, more treatment options sought

The News Journal traveled to Gloucester to see how the small police department of 60 officers works around the clock to ensure that every person with an opiate addiction gets the help they request. On Friday, New Castle County, the state Department of Health and Social Services and the Attorney General's Office announced a pilot program that takes a nod from Gloucester, although it allocates no new beds or funding for treatment.

Kids like Frontiero follow their fathers and grandfathers into the Atlantic for fishing careers, some while battling heroin addiction. Over the years the industry has died, leaving a struggling local economy dependent on public service jobs.

Captain Andy Bartlett and his lobster boat are still trying to make a living off of fishing. What once used to be a plentiful sea has diminished into over-fished and over-regulated waters.

Bartlett knows how far-reaching the effects of heroin can be. Many crews employ men addicted to drugs, including heroin, he said.

“It’s an industry where the crew can make a good amount of money in a short amount of time," he said. “They can get the money and get the quick fix.”

Fishing attracts a wide array of workers, Bartlett said, noting that there is no drug testing and only minimal education required. With commercial fishing considered one of the most deadly jobs in the world, ranked second by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2015, Bartlett said it’s especially important that captains hire capable men who can stand up to the rigors on a trawler, a long-liner or a lobster boat.

“You want someone behind you that you can trust,” he said, noting that hiring in Gloucester can be challenging.

Frontiero, a member of Bartlett’s crew, has track marks up the inside of his forearms. But he’s quick to cover them up, the shame of addiction still with him despite months of being clean. He said he's never talked publicly about his spiral into addiction before. And as he described refusing an offer to captain a long-line swordfish boat because he was too deep into dope, the pain was clear in his eyes, easy to hear in his voice.

“I could have been a captain by now,” Frontiero said quietly. “I didn’t even care. I was so screwed up.”

Gloucester's police chief has heard Frontiero’s story hundreds of times. People fighting addiction cycle in and out of his department after being arrested for petty thefts, burglaries, drug sales and other crimes. Most do time in a local prison, where they endure a painful withdrawal from drugs. But they're soon back on the streets, unable to cope with the same craving that landed them behind bars.

Campanello’s officers daily find people overdosed on heroin, as do officers all over America. According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the death rate for opioid-involved drug overdoses nationwide has more than tripled since 2000, reaching 48,000 in 2014.

Battling the crime attendant to heroin is one thing, the chief said. But when 10 people died in his little town in one year, the chief knew it was time for a change.

Unlike the old model of arresting every person committing a drug crime, Campanello’s officers now welcome those with addiction. They offer them a place to rest and call a local volunteer, appropriately dubbed an Angel, who will work the phone to get the person requesting help into treatment. Angels spend hours scouring treatment centers for beds. If nothing turns up locally or regionally, they widen the search nationally.

STORY: As Delaware heroin deaths continue, more treatment options sought

George Hackford, an Angel volunteer, has assisted more than 32 people. The British man from Canterbury, England, moved to Gloucester about two years ago for its beauty and charm, but when he learned how addiction was ravaging its residents, he wanted to become part of the solution.

With a little bit of pushing and dozens of phone calls to treatment providers, Hackford volunteers as a liaison between police and rehabilitation.

"People who start to become clean see there's health, wealth and happiness out there," he said. "It's very, very rewarding. We do place all of them, and you're seeing success straightaway."

The program costs about $55 per person from the time an addict walks in the front door until they’re dropped off at a treatment facility, Campanello said, and that money comes from cash seized during drug busts. It costs taxpayers about $220 per suspect arrested, including arraignment and court proceedings.

“It costs us a quarter of the cost to treat someone rather than incarcerate someone,” said Campanello, who grows frustrated talking about a system he believes must change nationwide. “Trying to arrest our way out of this is a complete failure.”

Across the country, police departments are admitting defeat in the war on drugs and turning to new, innovative programs. More than 100 police departments have implemented Gloucester’s plan and are showing success. New Castle County’s announcement makes it the first department in Delaware to try a different approach.

Last year, county police arrested 505 people for heroin-related crimes. Another 148 overdosed on the drug, according to county data. The most dramatic increase in heroin use in the past year was among people ages 18 to 25, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though all age groups are showing increases.

STORY: Scare tactics do little to deter drug use 

Despite advances in treatment nationally, Delaware is slow to change – as was Gloucester. Many of Gloucester's achievements are a result of forward-thinking leadership and the support of the state, which deemed heroin a public health crisis in 2014 when many other states were only first recognizing the problem.

On March 16, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed legislation that he called the first of his kind. The multi-pronged law calls for the ability to partially fill opiate prescriptions, mandatory substance misuse screenings in schools, better access to insurers and treatment-seeking websites and protection for those administering naloxone, the overdose antidote.

"Today's bill passage is a signal to you that the Commonwealth is listening, and we will keep fighting for all of you," Baker said.

Heroin: Delaware's deadly crisis

That's the only option that community leaders have, said Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken. The Sicilian woman who talks with her hands knows firsthand that mental health and addiction go together. Day after day, people file into her historic office to chronicle their latest bout with the drug killing Gloucester’s residents. Many tell her about their inability to get help at a treatment facility.

Though Gloucester doesn’t have one, Massachusetts is home to many treatment facilities thanks to the governor’s pledge to tackle addiction and mental health. In Delaware, only two companies offer inpatient treatment within the state, though the number of residential treatment beds increased from 78 to 95 this year, with plans for more.

“Something happened that caused [people] in their life to start self-medicating,” Gloucester’s mayor said.

Her frustrations continue for the opiates now ubiquitous in her town. She and the police chief are certain that the drugs that fuel this epidemic come partly from doctors and big pharmaceutical companies. Some doctors are too lazy to treat health problems so they prescribe drugs to numb pain, which enriches the drug companies, Theken said.

“They’ve caused a Holocaust, and they’re doing nothing about it” Campanello added.

To make matters worse, treatment centers are then hard to find and hard to access. Unlike cancer and heart disease, in which physicians pour resources and energy to support patients, those suffering from addiction are cast aside, the mayor and police chief say. They are the people Campanello sees selling their prescription drugs by the train tracks – ultimately the same people he finds crying at the police station, pleading for help.

“We treat people as 'less than' with this disease,” he said. “I am scared for my own children, as everyone else should be for theirs.”

On a cold, windy night in March, Frontiero sat near the memorial that commemorates his father’s death on a long-line swordfish boat in 2001, the spinning beam of the lighthouse turning against the night sky a mile out to sea.

It had been 13 months since Frontiero started using methadone, a medication designed to stave off withdrawal symptoms without producing the same high as heroin and other painkillers. For only six of those months, Frontiero has been drug-free. Getting clean, he said, hasn’t been easy.

“I was a mess. I had too much money. I didn’t even care,” Frontiero said. “Life didn’t matter for me. But I’m doing much better now. These guys are sober [that] I work with, and they want me to be sober.”

Frontiero didn’t use the Angel Program to fight his addiction in Gloucester. The treatment-based approach didn’t exist when he bottomed out, and the Police Department was not very helpful to addicts at the time. But offering assistance to those suffering from addiction could make a difference.

“It’s the way we’re perceived,” Frontiero said. “You’re a junkie. People don’t realize – there’s doctors, lawyers that do this stuff. … People need to be helped.”

Campanello vividly remembers the first person they helped in the Angel program. He was from California and traveled to Gloucester hoping and praying he wouldn’t be turned away. Within hours of arriving, he was back on a plane to California – this time, with a treatment bed waiting for him.

The chief, who has since gained national fame for his alternative policy, is certain the program works. The fear that heroin addicts would flock to Gloucester and create a crime wave has not materialized, Campanello said. But they are coming in need of help, and helping people is why he got into policing, the chief said.

“For the price of a plane ticket to California, we took a life and turned it away from crime,” he said. Campanello keeps in touch with that first recipient and is satisfied that nearly a year later the first person who asked for help in Gloucester is doing well.

But Campanello is focused on helping those who hail from this fishing village. The innovative new approach will help some, not all.

Frontiero’s own luck is not lost on him. For years, he wanted to honor his father’s name by continuing the family's fishing legacy and providing for his mom and siblings after his dad died at sea.

Yet the trade that will connect him most to his father has been the one that dragged him into its own depths of heroin and addiction.

Emblazoned in bronze letters on Gloucester Fisherman's Memorial are these words: “They that go down to the sea in ships.”

As much as Frontiero wants to get back to the passion that connected him to his father, he’s frightened that the sea may take him to places it pulled him to before.

“I don’t know if I trust myself right now to go back offshore. I just want to take it day by day and live my life,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “I mean, I lost a lot of good friends this past year. It hasn’t been a good year at all.”

He paused and shook his head, turning to stare back at the ocean's endless horizon.

“But I’m doing better now,” he said. “I’m doing good.”

Contact Brittany Horn at (302) 324-2771 or bhorn@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @brittanyhorn.