The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-09
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (20,975 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Community and Public Safety Committee met on Tuesday, September 9, 2025, for a two-hour session devoted to drugs and addiction, including the scope of substance use disorder and the impact of open-air drug markets on neighborhoods. Roll call and a statement of conduct opened the meeting. Presentations covered regional behavioral health data and Medicaid population statistics; personal recovery experiences and residential treatment outcomes; and testimony from downtown and Central Eastside business owners describing crime, drug activity, and safety concerns near their businesses. A panel from the Police Bureau discussed bike patrol deployment, interdiction and investigative units, overdose-death trends, and firearms seizures, though some figures on staffing, dosages, and overdose numbers were stated inconsistently. Representatives from Portland Fire & Rescue's CHAT program and Portland Street Response described overdose response, aftercare, and a medication-assisted treatment pilot. A county judge discussed treatment courts and challenges with misdemeanor drug prosecutions. Multnomah County Health Department staff described the deflection center's referral, screening, and care-plan process, sobering services, and quarterly data reporting. A treatment provider offered closing remarks on treatment availability and recovery outcomes. Council members asked questions throughout on deflection effectiveness, data tracking, staffing, and enforcement strategy; no vote outcomes were reported, and any votes that may have occurred are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting was adjourned, with the next meeting scheduled for September 23.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 All right, let's do it.
1 Good afternoon. I call the meeting of the community and public safety committee to order. It is Tuesday, September 9th at 2:30 p.m. Keelan. Could you please call the roll? Wait a minute. Can you please call the roll or. Yeah.
2 Good afternoon. Morillo. Zimmerman.
3 Here.
4 Smith.
5 Here.
6 Here, here.
7 Christopher, can you please read the statement of conduct?
8 Welcome to the meeting of the community and public safety committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance in the committee agenda at. Agenda slash community and public safety committee. Or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over, the chair preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent, and virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
9 Thank you christopher. Today we're going to spend the full two hours talking about drugs and addiction. We're going to talk about the scope of the addiction problem and the related problem of open air drug markets, which are blighted neighborhoods. Although our speakers will address these issues in detail, I'll start by noting that in the past few years, drug overdose deaths have exceeded homicides and traffic deaths, and I believe, exceeded both combined in Portland, according to the fire bureau, they responded to over 5000 overdose calls in 2023 and over 4000 in 2024. When I went on a tour of the central eastside industrial district recently, business owners talked about the impact on that neighborhood of drug selling and drug use, especially the open air drug market associated with the people's depot bottle drop location. When my office reached out to the city's neighborhood associations, they identified more than 20 specific locations that residents identify as open air drug markets or hubs for drug dealing, most of which they felt had not been addressed in any meaningful manner by the city. We're also going to ask some questions about what city bureaus are doing about addiction, and what things they're doing seem most cost effective, and what things we might have questions about. One question I have is our police bureau, like most police bureaus, pursues mid and high level drug dealers and seizes drugs in order to interrupt the drug supply. I wonder how effective that is. I mean, we're not breaking up the the central American cartels. We all saw in the wire that one drug dealer is replaced by another. Are we simply trying to drain the pacific with a teaspoon? And that does not mean that I don't think that high level drug dealers are bad people. I think they are. My own brother died of an overdose of oxycontin, and richard sackler, the head of purdue pharma, aggressively marketed oxycontin, even knowing that people were dying. I think he not only deserves in prison, I think he deserves to die. And that's why I would not question one thing the police do, which is investigate drug dealers to hold them responsible for overdose deaths. I'm not sure that the policy outcomes of that are significant, but the vengeance factor needs to be respected. However, pursuing drug dealers just because they're drug dealers, hoping that will reduce the supply. I'm want to hear the police bureau explain why that they think that makes a difference. Next question is should what are we doing now? And should we be doing even more to break up those open air drug markets, because those have an impact on community livability? And I think I'm curious as to whether the police would agree that simply having a presence at those markets eliminates the activity at at least gives those neighborhoods a break. How much of that do we do now, and how much could we do? Then there's the third question of does forcing people into treatment via law enforcement really work? And we're going to have judge greenlick to talk about treatment courts in general, even if forced treatment does sometimes work, if there's not enough treatment for people who actually want it, would it be more efficient to give up on forcing people into treatment via law enforcement? Until we have enough treatment for people who actively want it? And then another question is, even if we believe in the abstract, that using law enforcement to get people into treatment makes sense, does it make sense for the Portland police bureau to be taking people to the county deflection center, specifically the county deflection center, which is set up in the aftermath of recriminalizing drugs as a place where the police take people who they pick up for drug use rather than taking them to jail. And the county takes them through an intake process, which they'll describe. And then they refer them to treatment. But and they track whether in 30 days the people access show up at one treatment providers door, but that is treated as success. And there's not further tracking, as I understand it, of what happens after that, as opposed to in Washington county, where what they create a success is somebody engaging in treatment for six months. So a question I have for the county and for the police bureau is should we be engaging with the county, with taking people the deflection center until they have more robust data on outcomes? So those are some of the big questions that I want to be sure that are discussed. Some speakers will speak to all of them. Some will speak to just some we have representatives from. And we have representatives from central city concern, the police bureau, the chat team, Portland street response, Multnomah county for a health city team, and some folks here talking about the impact of open air drug markets on their on their neighborhoods. We're going to have three different panels and then a wrap up speaker. And in order to we've bitten off a lot. So let's see if we can chew it. We're going to have three panels after each one. I want to take 10 or 15 minutes for discussion and questions, and then move on so we can get to everybody. So with that our first panel is on services and impacts, including andy mendenhall, lance orton of city team and amber jobe and and hazel valdez. So could the four of you please come on up. We're starting with andy. Thank you.
10 Okay. Councilor Novick, members of council and all of the distinguished guests in the room. For the record, my name is doctor andy mendenhall, and I'm honored to serve as the president and ceo of central city concern. I've been at pcc for about eight years. I'm a resident. I've been a Portland resident since 1991, locally trained family medicine and addiction medicine physician. And I really appreciate the opportunity today to speak to you all and set the stage regarding behavioral health and substance use disorders within our regional medicaid population. And I'll do my best to be concise and focused within the time allotment that I was given. So if you see me looking at my phone, my apologies. That's that's my my timekeeper here. Before we move into the first slide, could somebody cue the first slide for me? I'd be grateful. I sent out my presentation earlier today. So while that's being tracked down, I. What I would say is I know fundamentally that everyone in this room cares about public safety, public health, the wellness of individuals and our community. And one of the most important public safety questions that I know, that has been bringing a lot of consternation, concern and, quite frankly, moral injury to service providers and taxpayers alike is is the question of how we are or not meeting the needs of individuals in this community who've lost the ability to care for themselves. And so having a clear understanding that's grounded in population health data is, is really my goal. And I want to call out that at present. I'm just going to dive into the content here. I'm sorry that the deck isn't up for presentation. That's fine. By the way, we have we have some core foundational truths in in the homeless services space. I think many folks know who we are at central city concern. I don't want to take up time characterizing that. But on this next slide here, you'll see that we don't have enough and we haven't had enough behavioral health services. And to just characterize that a little further, we know, thanks to the policy consulting group and some review by community partners, sponsored by our colleagues at health share of Oregon, that we in this region are short about 40 to 50 acute psychiatric hospital beds, 150 to 200 secure residential treatment facility beds for step down and that regionally, we need at least 1000 substance use disorder outpatient treatment slots, meaning places for people to go to get treatment. And we need at least an additional 500 transitional recovery housing beds. And that's a place, very efficient place for people to get off the streets, get into housing, plus outpatient treatment. And we're likely to hear a little bit more about that. This has been a core to what central city concern has done for many, many years. And quite frankly, transitional recovery. Housing capacity within the region is also at risk, related to a lot of the funding pressures that we're experiencing regionally. I want to highlight the value of outpatient treatment over residential treatment, but I also want to state that for a large population of folks with severe, pervasive mental illness, that's oftentimes exacerbated or made worse by stimulant use, that many times folks do need a stay in residential treatment to get healthier. We're behind in all forms of affordable housing development, and at present, there's a deficiency of short term rental vouchers that are needed to help people get out of shelter and get into a housing spot. Our shelter space needs are improving thanks to the mayor's plan, which we support, and we also recognize the financial pressures that that a more robust strategy towards shelter have created for the broader regional continuum. I also know, as a leader of a large organization, that service coordination teams have to continue to work really, really hard to make connections due to the scarcity of these services and at times, the historical lack of alignment. It's getting better. But the lack of alignment between housing resources and behavioral health resources. If we could move to the next slide, I'm just going to briefly state, you know, these are some of the core questions in a resource constrained system. And I'll just highlight the one that's in bold. I think as we're thinking about community and public safety and in particular engagement of our law enforcement partners, key word partners in that space, how do we improve or facilitate individual engagement in change? And by individual I mean the person that needs a recovery journey, the person, the many hundreds of people that work for us at central city concern, who said that they needed an outside intervention in order to save their life from a substance use disorder. For the sake of time, I'm going to move through the rest of the slide. But again, calling out the importance of strategic cross-agency collaboration because we are in a time and we'll continue to be in a time of constricted funding, limited resources. And so it's even more important for us to maximize the impact of our existing resources, understand what we're defining as results. Councilor as you noted, the variances within our region in terms of what success looks like, creating better alignment around that, and then quickly measuring and making changes if we're not achieving those outcomes as needed. So it's my pleasure in the in the remainder of my time here to present work that really represents a multi-year effort that has been led by our partners of health share of Oregon or regional kceo, supported by each of the member organizations, care Oregon and the providence center for outcomes research and education. And at my behest, I'm really grateful they listened. Back in 2022, I asked if we could move to the next slide. I asked, and let's move on to the next slide. Pardon me. Who knows how big the populations of people with really high acuity behavioral health conditions are? How big are those populations? Nobody had meaningfully asked that question and looked at it from the perspective of the medicaid claims system. And the conditions are opioid use disorder. Think fentanyl stimulant use disorder, think methamphetamine psychosis, which can be organic schizophrenia. It can also be substance related. And also we wanted to understand the trends and the patterns regarding overdose, which we know are historically underreported within the medicaid system because many overdoses just go reversed out in the field, and there's no medical claim associated with that. I'm really grateful for healthshare oregon's leadership in the space to characterize how big these patient populations are, and we know that they're highly accurate, because many individuals with these conditions spend a lot of time in the emergency room and also a lot of time in the hospital. So as we move to the next slide, it's a little bit of a fancy slide here. But what we learned was that these groups were not insignificant. The total cohort over the last several years has remained relatively stable, meaning the total group, the average number of people who were adult medicaid members covered by the health share cbo has ranged between 26,000 and 28,000. And you can see the overlaps. Some folks have one diagnosis. Some folks have two of the three diagnoses. Some folks have three of the three diagnoses. What I'll say is that the number of these folks we looked all the way back into the pandemic, the number of folks didn't grow that much, depending on the condition between 1 and 4% depending on the group. But what did happen was the visibility of those conditions in our city changed. Access to treatment changed, incentives to access treatment, changed access to housing and engagement and success changed. The drugs themselves changed. And in 2024, this is important. Take home. 8% of the adult medicaid population was represented within these three diagnostic categories, and they were driving 24% of the total cost of care for healthshare adult medicaid members, and they occupied 40% of the hospital bed days within the region's hospitals for physical health diagnoses. And what I would say, tragically, is that we all were paying and continue to pay to treat the complications of untreated behavioral health conditions. As we move to the next slide. Again, I want to commend regional leadership at the county level, as well as healthshare continuing. And and this slide is basically looking at the same cohort, but this is the same cohort that's cross walked formerly into the homeless system. And the time window is a little bit broader. So what we see here is a rough number of about 10,000 individuals. And you'll see that there's even greater overlap among the circles. This is a group of folks that that have even higher acuity. And this is a group of folks that was formerly able to be found in 1 or 1 of the region's homelessness management information system data sets. So there were about 30,000 people during the sampling period that were affirmatively matched to being a medicaid member and being in the homelessness management data set, and roughly 30% are roughly 10,000 of those individuals were identified in this high acuity behavioral health cohort. And it's important to note that there was a lot of overlap. 70% of those individuals had 2 or 3 of these diagnoses. So as we're thinking about the continuance of this conversation today, I know again, everyone in the room here is interested in helping improve community safety. And it's important for us to ask what has to be aligned and how can we better steward these resources. Because when we move to the next slide, I'm just going to reemphasize here, looking at 23 and 2024 data in blue, what we see are. Folks at baseline at the very top, the all adult cohort. And the rate of folks going into the hospital for medical diagnoses. And you'll see, with increasing levels of acuity related to the same population that's been studied, you'll see an increasing frequency of going to the hospital. These are rates of hospitalization or rather rates of hospital utilization. And you'll see a very, very important upward curve in blue. And when you do a housing insecurity overlay, it almost doubles the utilization of the hospital. So again this becomes a stewardship issue. This relates to that prior statement I made of paying to treat the complications of untreated behavioral health conditions. And as we move to the last slide, councilor Novick asked me to reflect on what I believe the role of law enforcement in our region's challenges are recognizing that it behooves us to ensure that we have a more robust behavioral health and housing system and within limited resources. How do we better partner to steward those resources? Again, with respect to law enforcement, I've always believed that law enforcement and public safety partners are truly that they are partners in our broader continuum. A great example of that is central city concerns housing rapid response program, where we operate close to 65 units in partnership with the Portland police bureau and the behavioral health unit as of today. As of today, a total of 85% of those units are filled, and this is a rapid rehousing, meaning an immediate rehousing program right off the street for individuals with frequent law enforcement engagement. And it's about a 30 to 60 day stabilization housing program. I will say that it's tough to engage this group of folks, and with a really dedicated team, we're seeing program stabilization and completion rates of about 30 to 35%. That performance has been weighed upon by the nature and the change of the drugs of abuse. And to, to a degree, the nature of the tone which these community pardon me, the tone of these programs and located in the downtown area, what do I mean by that, really? You know, access to access to drugs right on the street. When I think about how community policing supports public safety, what I like to think about is what I've heard members of pb reflect on thoughtfully and with a lot of concern for the individuals and for our community, which are related to how do we create pathways for response? What are our behavioral health response pathways versus our enforcement pathways? Both are important. And and I'll leave us with the question to dive in further. How do we create spaces for. And this is a trigger word for some, but I'm going to use it with intention meaningful accountability, individual accountability for service engagement. Thinking about deflection versus diversion, and really thinking about how do we maximize what I refer to as the efficacy to drive clinical and human and community outcomes through the existing service pathways? That brings up all kinds of interesting and important questions related to drug courts. Stop court good evidence based practices, and all the while, you will always hear me. Continue to be an advocate to grow the affordable housing continuum and to invest, especially at this time, very deeply in the acute psychiatric treatment continuum to create a pressure relief valve for many housing providers that are charged with providing housing to individuals who actually need a stabilizing course of acute psychiatric treatment to begin their recovery journey. With that, I will conclude my time, and I think I mostly stayed within my time limit. Thank you again for the opportunity to kick off the panel here today. Councilor.
11 Thank you, doctor mendenhall. Mr. Wharton, you're up.
12 All right. Thank you, counselor novak and members of the council for inviting me here today. My name is lance orton. I serve as the executive director of city team Portland. I also serve as the vice president of the central eastside together board, which is the enhanced service district for the central eastside, where city team is currently located and has been since 1998. City teams a community based recovery program and emergency shelter for men. We have a women and kids transitional housing program in north Portland, but today I'm here really to to speak to my own experience in the recovery continuum as a former addict or as a current addict. And let me preface this, that following doctor mendenhall is always a challenge because he is extremely well spoken, and my testimony is going to be a lot less clinical and a lot more raw. From the experience of a heroin addict on the streets of Portland just seven years ago. So let me start by saying a little background on my story. I have six minutes, right? Councilor is that correct? I better follow doctor mendenhall's suit here and start a timer. 2018 October 1st I was living in the back of my jeep right here in Portland in a walmart parking lot. I was addicted to heroin. My intention was to self sober detox myself in the back of my jeep. In that jeep I had my birth certificate, my social security card, everything that I needed to start over, which I had done many, many times before in my life and I just needed to get off the heroin first. After five days of white knuckling detox in the back of my jeep, it was the worst experience of my life. I, for the first time in my life, was suicidal, and on day five I realized I just needed one more fix. Got on my phone, which at that point was disconnected. So I was poaching wi-fi from the walmart that I was parked in that parking lot and convinced a drug dealer friend of mine to bring me out some dope. And so instead of that person reaching me with my next fix, my car was then stolen and I found myself unsheltered for the first time in a strange city that I had moved here homeless and addicted, and that triggered a bit of panic. And as I imagine it would for anyone. And the next thing I know, I woke up in a hospital at sunnyside kaiser, in which the nurses treated me for malnutrition, and after about four days of really milking the hospital system because I was terrified to get discharged, they finally caught on to the fact that I probably didn't want to leave, and a social worker came in and said, you're homeless, aren't you? And I said, yes. She gave me a voucher to the city team men's emergency shelter. I still have that voucher framed in my office today. It saved my life, I think. And from there I went through their recovery program, really got involved in the streets of Portland. What does it look like? Where are the drugs coming from? We were right before the fentanyl thing happened. So I acknowledge, first of all, that fentanyl was not a big part of the scene when I was an active user. But I think the opioid addict mind is very similar, regardless of maybe the more potency of fentanyl. And so I know that when I was trying to get myself sober, the harder it was for me to get drugs, the longer it prolonged my addiction. I think I said that right. And and I and I have to say that and although my own access to treatment and its city team is not really clinical treatment, it's a recovery based, community based recovery program in which addicts and alcoholics come together and recover in community. But I, I, I have to say that using law enforcement to reduce the supply of drugs on our street, in my opinion, is absolutely imperative because it it's like it would be like trying to save a sinking boat by bailing out the water and not plugging the hole to me. And I think that that's just kind of and I know that's oversimplifying the situation, but as an addict, I can tell you that giving me autonomy at that point in my journey, even when I really wanted recovery, was not what I needed. What I really, really needed was somebody to tell me how to recover for a year. It was really a full year that it took of someone telling me what I needed to do. I also think that after now being the executive director of city team, the very program that saved my life, I've seen thousands of other men and women come through our program and recover. And what's really interesting about city team right now is 75% of the 50 beds that we have are court mandated individuals from other counties outside of Multnomah. Multnomah county does not mandate to city team, but virtually every other county in Oregon does. And of those 75% that are court mandated, we have an extremely high success rate of long term sobriety. And what I mean by success rate is, is that after three years, about 73% of our graduates are still sober today, still employed and still housed. After one year, it goes up to about 86% are still sober and thriving with a living wage job here in Portland. And if you ask any single one of them, every single one of them will tell you that getting arrested, going to jail, and getting mandated to treatment was the best thing that ever happened to him. Now again, I realize that everybody's journey is different and unique, and it may not work for everyone, but I am a firm believer that mandating treatment for individuals, giving them a nudge into that recovery journey, is a very effective way of getting people through treatment and sober and off of the path that they're on. So I don't know if that was what you were looking for, but I am a really firm believer in that. We have to disrupt the drug supply to the best of our ability, because to use the example councilor Novick that you and I, when we had the conversation that the study that you read that overdoses go up when we interrupt the supply of drugs because the tolerance of the addicts on the street goes down. And then inevitably, when another shipment of drugs hits our streets, the overdoses go up. That may be true, but I really think that that's a terrible way to look at how we should deploy resources, because that might be true. But that doesn't mean that as an addict myself, it the the easier the access to drugs, the harder I mean, the harder the journey to sobriety is going to be. So with that, I have a few minutes left.
13 Actually, we're I'm sorry with we were really in a tight timeline. That was. And so we're going to have some questions afterwards. But I want to get this panel done in the next 20 minutes. So I want to ask amber and hazel if they can talk. And that's amber jobe who the owner of skeleton key auditorium, which is a downtown business, and then hazel valdez, who's a Portland literary arts in the central east side. And I apologize for just asking you to take just a couple of minutes. Describe your experience. But go ahead.
14 My name is amber jobe. As you mentioned, I run the skeleton key auditorium. I'm one of the owners. We moved our business into downtown at the end of 2022. And in that time that we have been there, and the main goal was to also be a part of the revitalization of the city, because my business was in southeast Portland prior to that. But in our tenure in downtown, we have experienced crime like high end theft, vandalism and broken windows, blood on our windows, blood on our doors. We were the epicenter of the open air fentanyl market for over six months, in which time I thought for sure I was going to fail. We don't have the fentanyl market in front of us anymore. It has moved, but it is relatively close as of late. We can see a lot of the problems were emanating from the city library, and I wrote a letter to one of the to jessica vega peterson, at that point concerned about the safety, because what we were seeing on a daily basis and still are seeing is people in active psychosis wandering right by. Just two days ago, while I was at work, I had to bang on the windows to stop a drug deal from happening in front of my guests and customers. We had to station a person at the front door at all times to just make sure that we are not engaging with people in active psychosis, engaging in theft. And it's exhausting. It is definitely making the experience of running and operating a business in downtown very challenging. You know, we have seen a death at the library within a block away. We have seen a stabbing at the library within a block away. There was a murder last year from an individual that was dealing drugs in the apartment complex across the street. We want to see more publicly funded security measures because right now we see police presence when violence is already occurred. We've been utilizing privatized security. Thankfully, our landlords were able to offer us private security for the building, and we utilize the downtown Portland clean and safe system for smaller transgressions. But what we don't see is community engagement from our law enforcement. Meaning maybe like walking the beat, talking to the businesses, engaging with community members to activate trust, to activate this sense of security and safety. The library, for example, could use maybe a sworn officer that is just there to like, make sure people don't stab each other. It it's it's hard and it's rough for us because we want the city to succeed and we don't know the solutions. But what we do know is that we don't feel safe. We depend on tourism, which is up, but it's embarrassing to have to spend all of our time and energy trying to prevent crime in their face, instead of making sure their experience is absolutely wonderful. And then another challenge for us is getting people that live in Portland to come downtown. So the stigma is that you're going to experience crime when you're in downtown. And it happens. We've watched somebody just break a window and grab a backpack in broad daylight. What I'm trying to say is just that we don't feel safe. And it we've lost businesses. Three businesses on our block have moved out. So how do how do we keep the community engaged with public safety? Like we just need more of that.
15 Thank you amber. Thank you hazel.
16 Thank you. Councilors. My name is hazel valdez and I'm the managing director of literary arts, a nonprofit organization that moved to the central eastside in December of last year. And we're also members of cic. The reality is that open air drug markets are persistent, invisible problem for the central eastside, and they're severely undermining livability. The consequences for business businesses, employees and visitors are serious for us and still ongoing. We often see pedestrians forced into the street to avoid active drug use and dealing. And while employees are assaulted by individuals who are in crisis, property vandalized or damaged as a result of unchecked drug activity, encampments forming around drug sites, eliminating safe and reliable parking, and creating daily safety concerns for employees, our customers and our vendors. As I understand, the law requires officers to directly witness drugs or in exchange, and without consistent patrols, the odds of being at the right place at the right time are extremely low. Even though we have. I've placed numerous reports into various areas encampment narcotics directly to PPB. Having the officers arrive while it's happening is not occurring. That said, when officers are present and able to engage, especially with bike officers, the the difference is immediate and noticeable. Encampments are dispersed before they grow, dealers are detained and the overall environment improves significantly. The results aren't permanent, but they do have a positive impact. The last point I want to emphasize is that several businesses around our area have witnessed teenagers pulling up to these encampments to purchase drugs. This has been aptly reported. Additionally, some of the locations, like those specifically between grand avenue and mlk, between morrison and stark, are alarming. Excuse me? Alarmingly close to half a dozen businesses that serve youth, including literary arts. The lack of priority prioritizes prioritization of these areas, sends a dangerous message, and we'd really like Portland to consider why we are tolerating this behavior. Lastly, I'd like to thank the Portland police bureau, specifically, folks from the central precinct. Lieutenant engstrom, officer moore, officer mora, and officer peterson who have taken the time to come to our location and actually witness and or help us disrupt drug activity.
17 Thank you so much. Colleagues. I think we've got maybe 12 or so minutes for questions and discussion. Have any any questions you want to ask? No. Okay. I have a couple of questions. One, doctor mendenhall and mr. Wharton, I want to ask both of you, assuming for the moment that my description of the county deflection system is correct and the county will be up here later, that people go through an intake process, they're referred to a treatment provider, and then they have to show up at for one interaction with a treatment provider. And that is effectively considered success. Does that sound to you sufficient, or do you think that in order to be putting our faith in the system, they should be requiring some more ongoing monitoring and collecting statistics on it?
18 I'll be the bad guy first on this one. I was involved with the deflection center discussion before it opened up, because city teams right down the block, and as a esd board member, it was part of our purview to take a look at livability issues around, you know, potentially around that center, which have not been an issue, which is great. But I will say it again, and I said it then I just don't think our county deflection center has enough teeth to be effective. We work with Clackamas and Washington county deflection, and we have multiple referrals coming in from individuals that have been deflected from those counties, and they send their staff to follow them through the recovery journey. They do check ins with individuals throughout the program. They are even present at the graduation when they have a client sent to our program. And I think that that's a really successful model model for deflection. But if we're not mandating treatment, just leaving it up to the addict to say, here's your referral when you're ready, recovery is there for you. As an addict, I do not believe that that works well.
19 To be fair, they are supposed to require to show up for one meeting.
20 Let's look at the numbers though of how many actually do and what complete. And then the definition of completion is if that's the definition of success at the cost of $3.8 million a year, I just don't see that being an effective way of using our resources.
21 Doctor mendenhall.
22 I don't think you're being the bad guy at all. I think it's a really important question. Councilor we would love to see more engagement. I'm looking forward to learning more about the data regarding the deflection center. Central city concern was was honored to support part of the discovery in advance. And and I think ultimately at the end of the day, if if a conclusion is that deflection isn't having the outcomes that are needed, I'm really I'm really interested in saying, how do we create a pathway that is more meaningful for those individuals? What level of accountability do we create for a next step? What type of additional resourcing is required to and and or support for those individuals is required to create a better outcome for the community?
23 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman.
24 Thanks, chair. I just want to get into a few pieces here. Lance, thanks for coming. With respect to city team, you said that other counties in the metro area will refer people to city team. Can you be specific about what they're being referred for? Like is it a mandatory treatment? Is it enrollment in the program? And then best guess, hopefully not politically correct. And just telling us, why does Multnomah county not refer to city team.
25 So they're being court mandated to complete a residential treatment program. And we are a faith based program. So that that brings up some questions is how can they do that? And from my understanding, the judges in those counties, they present options, faith based being one of them, and then other options that are not faith based. So as long as the individual has a choice of their choice of which one to go to, and then they're court mandated to complete the program. And so that, I hope, answers your first question. The second question, I have met with da vasquez about this when he took over, and he was pretty surprised to hear that the at Multnomah county is not mandating to us. I know that they primarily when they do mandate. I'm I'm glad to see that judge greenlick is here because he's been on my list of individuals to reach out about this. But I understand that voa is the primary partner with Multnomah county and that they receive some funding for that. And so when I sat down with da vasquez, I told him that we're more than willing to take individual. We would prefer to take individuals from Multnomah county, because I'm very aware that essentially we are importing people from around the state to Multnomah county when we don't need to be importing anyone. So I hope that answers your question.
26 That's very helpful. Thank you for that, andy. My next question is to you. You you mentioned that the word accountability is triggering. And I got to be honest, I'm both kind of off just hearing that, because I'm not sure that anybody who thinks that that word is triggering has the intestinal fortitude to deal with these difficult issues, but I guess I'm trying to understand. I get a sense, and I've known you now for a while. I get a sense of of a need for people who are willing to kind of wipe the table with kind of the, the old model that doesn't want to get right to the heart of the program. And I guess what I'm wondering, andy, is, do you get a sense that we are in a time now post the measure won ten reform where we are getting better at this conversation or are we still stuck in the accountability is a triggering word.
27 Mud councilor. Thank you for the question. I think from a law enforcement and public safety perspective, it's time for accountability. It's time for folks to whether it's mandated treatment or whether it's a choice to go to treatment or go to jail or prison, it's time for more of that. It's also time to ensure that a choice to more robustly resource those pathways to recovery, those pathways to treatment, don't create additional pressure or competition for individuals who are self seeking treatment services. And so I think we have to be very thoughtful about what that augmentation looks like. I also think we have to be thoughtful about when we step in, truly, to meet the needs of individuals who've lost the ability to care for themselves, whether those are individuals that are deep in an active substance use disorder, and truly for physical reasons, psychological reasons, psychiatric reasons are unable to make decisions in their own best interest. They literally are at the verge of losing capacity or and or if we're talking about individuals who truly do not have capacity due to psychosis or due to substance induced psychosis, we have to hold those populations. I think, with the deepest empathy and concern, but also create the structure, right. Which is another way, I think, of of viewing how we approach accountability. There is a social contract between that individual and the services and supports to help create a better outcome than our community has been experiencing.
28 Thanks, annie. Last question. Just on that note, given the changes that came in the last legislative session with respect to commitments, civil commitments, and you're mentioning people who are unable to make decisions for themselves, do you think it has gone far enough, or was it just one of many steps we will take over the coming years in Oregon to change how we approach that, that inability to make safe decisions for yourself?
29 Councilor it was unequivocally the first right step. What we now need is informed by the public health data that I that I was privileged to share earlier. We need to ensure that we have the means of producing those outcomes. And at this point in time, regionally, we still need more acute psychiatric hospital beds. The ones that are being utilized need a decompression point on the back end to ensure people are discharging to housing, plus supportive services to ensure that we're able to create better flow and help people at different phases of their recovery journey. As a housing provider, it's critically important that we take folks who have had that first stabilization step on an inpatient basis, and it's critical for us to do that in a very timely way, recognizing it's going to take a couple of years for the broader solutions for the Oregon state hospital, the broader solutions for the region secure residential treatment and residential treatment facilities to come online.
30 Councilor Smith.
31 Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chair. I'm trying to get some information about the deflection center, and I want to know who is the best person to ask about it.
32 We've got the county folks coming up later today actually.
33 Ask the county folks about it. But thank you all for your presentation. It's important. It's a lot of information. It is stressful work that you all do, and it is very stressful for folks who are who are experiencing. Issues with mental health and with drug addiction. So I appreciate the work that you do. Keep that up.
34 Thank you. Councilor.
35 Councilor councilor Kanal.
36 Thank you, chair, and thank you for your leadership in making today's session happen. I think one of the pieces of feedback I often get is, you know, we talk about drugs and mental health in the context of another issue fairly frequently, but not necessarily as its own topic. And so I'm grateful that we got the chance to do that here at the forefront, thanks to the business owners for being here, amber and hazel, I think I was recently meeting with our colleague, councilor Koyama Lane at literary arts a couple weeks ago, and I haven't yet visited skeleton key, but I did do a walking tour of the area a couple last week with a community member, and we walked right by on back on the way towards the park blocks. And so I've also heard about the impact on business owners across the city, including st. Johns cully in my district. And thanks for the experiences. I really like the conversation here about accountability, and I want to talk about that a little bit. From a contractor perspective, one of our biggest city contracts is one that you mentioned in passing, which is downtown, clean and safe. And I just wanted to give you an opportunity to to speak more on that. What is the role that you see, that particular situation or that that contractor playing and that and your experience working with them?
37 Well, downtown Portland clean and safe has been amazing. We have had experiences with people maybe sleeping within close proximity to the business, maybe overdosing, and we are able to ask them if they need help and then they respond, no. And we're able to call clean and safe because they are, you know, blocking a window or a doorway. And they do respond. There might be a group of individuals who are actively smoking substances. And, you know, we we call clean and safe to maybe come by and see what if they can shoo them away. You know, we use clean and safe as a business, and we're so grateful for it because we think of, oh my gosh, what if we didn't have clean and safe because, you know, it, it's been incredibly hard to operate with incidents happening on a daily basis, interactions daily basis and clean and safe is just kind of like that last straw resort that we use for crimes that aren't violent, you know? So like if if a person is, you know, acting erratic and on our property, we call clean and safe, if a person, somebody defecates in front of our front door, clean and safe is integral, you know, it's and that's happened multiple times. You know, we are exhausted. And so we need to focus on our business. And clean and safe is usually there to help us with the things that we we just can't deal with at at that moment. They're they're a wonderful resource, honestly. So kudos to clean and safe. They're great.
38 Thanks. I have one time. Sorry. Go for it. No I'm just saying that okay.
39 So I'll just quickly, if you can speak doctor mendenhall to something you just mentioned in response to councilor Zimmermann's question about the flow through and relieving the pressure on the back end, can you speak more to what the pressure is looking like on the back end of the acute psychiatric need?
40 Absolutely. Councilor. So we need to ensure that folks that are leaving our regional psychiatric inpatient continuum have a place to go. And and at the end of the day, I'm really excited about the work that our partners at healthshare have spun up with our regional and county partners at each county, across sectional or across sector case conferencing team. These teams have been meeting. They are making an impact. They're making a difference. And what their real purpose is, is to coordinate a housing resource with a behavioral health resource. And oftentimes that's interagency and cross-functional. Again, cross-sector, cross-sector coordination. We're seeing a lot of hope with respect to those efforts. And know that both funding of those efforts, but more importantly, support through additional vouchers for housing and short term housing placement or rent. Rent placement is going to be one part of the strategy of decompressing the acuity that we're experiencing as housing providers. When we have folks that need to go to the hospital but can't get there, can't go there, need to be held or civilly committed in a meaningful way and admitted. But because the house is really full, we need to ensure that folks are flowing through in a more meaningful way to ensure that there's as much front door capacity as we can relieve by getting folks securely housed and connected to services to take advantage of the stabilizing impact of that psychiatric hospitalization.
41 Thank you very much. We're now going to have folks from our public safety service area come up. But yeah, that really appreciate this. And I was hoping at the end we could maybe call people back up, but I think we probably won't. So thank you.
42 Thank you councilor.
43 So I think we've got from commander brian hughes and lieutenant robert quick from pbb and maybe chief day as well, and also cory wilson and michelle lavina with chat and stephanie howard representing tsr in this next panel. For all of you at once. So let's start with start with the pbb folks.
44 Afternoon council. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you, councilor Novick for creating this opportunity. I echo councilor Connell's comments about, you know, being able to see the sort of the distinction of this particular impact. And so I'm here to, you know, support, appreciate the work of commander hughes and lieutenant quick to have a brief presentation, go over a couple of things, and then we're available for questions. Ryan.
45 Yes. Good afternoon. Chair Novick, chair canal and members of the committee. My name is brian hughes, and I'm the commander of central precinct at the Portland police bureau. Before I begin, based on what I just heard, I want to thank our community based organization partners, doctor mendenhall and lance orton, for their work. Downtown would not look like it does today without their leadership. And I have both of them on speed dial. I also want to reflect on some comments I heard from amber and hazel regarding what you experience every day in your neighborhoods. That is a clear reminder to me that we have not one, that our work is not done and that it will continue. And I took notes while you were speaking, and I pledged to be there for you and to ensure that we continue to improve. If I have a slide deck prepared that councilor Should have. Been here. Okay. We're up. Today I'll be sharing the work of our patrol officers are doing at the street level to address drugs and disorder in Portland. For us, this isn't just about drug possession. It's about the impact drugs have on retail theft, assaults, gun violence, and the overall livability of our neighborhoods. Patrol is often the first point of contact, whether with people openly using in public or with street level dealers. That's where enforcement and deflection intersect. Next slide please. For today's discussion, I want to center on three things. First, the resources we devote to drug enforcement, specifically at the street level where drugs, retail theft and livability concerns intersect. Second, the question of is it working? How enforcement and deflection together are changing what downtown Portland looks and feels like. And finally, what's ahead are our focus areas for 2025, including reducing drug use, disrupting dealer networks and sustaining deflection opportunities. Those three areas will guide the rest of my remarks. Next slide please. At the street level, our resources are deliberately assigned to address the most visible and disruptive problems. We've increased our bike teams downtown. You can see on the slide there from 4 to 10 today. And they have become our most effective resources, their slower movement and ability to navigate alleys, transit platforms and crowded sidewalks allow them to directly observe hand-to-hand drug transactions and quickly follow retail theft suspects. In an urban environment, they are highly visible, which reassures the community but also agile enough to intervene in ways the patrol car cannot. Neighbor. I'm sorry. Alongside the bike team, we deploy neighborhood response officers. All three precincts have neighborhood response teams and patrol units into high complaint areas, where open drug use and dealing are most visible. These resources are prioritized to respond to what residents and business owners tell us are their top livability concerns, and I hear about it daily. Our approach is surgical. We know we can't spread thin across the city, so we put resources where they make the most impact. The goal is simply not arrest numbers, but to disrupt the dealers and driving disorder while still connecting users to deflection and services. Next slide please. One of the areas I'm most familiar with and I'm going to speak on next is central precinct. And the work we've done and why it looks the way it does today in early 2024, drug markets in the central city were highly visible and fueled by street level dealers. Our missions were designed to disrupt that activity. By focusing on dealers, we reduced the immediate availability of drugs in public spaces and create an environment where people struggling with addiction have a better chance to pursue sobriety. The balance of our work shows this shift. Enforcement actions against dealers now sit alongside deflection opportunities for users. Roughly a 5050 split as of the beginning of summer. This mirrors what we hear from residents and businesses. Address the dealers to improve livability while still giving users an off ramp for services. In may of 2025, one of these missions led to 130 130 referrals, 134 referrals into deflection in a single month. That's the highest we've recorded so far. That demonstrates demonstrated that enforcement against dealers, paired with pathways for users can immediately change the environment. Today, downtown is showing progress. Fewer visible markets, more people entering services, and a safer, healthier setting for recovery. With the note that we still have some work to do. Next slide please. That just shows a little bit of the work that we had done over the last year and highlights that not only is is there a drug addiction issue, but the dealers often come down with guns and large quantities of drugs. We don't see that as much these days. Next slide. Now into the is it working aspect. This year, cinco de mayo drew 43,000 visitors. The rose festival next slide over 1.2 million. Next slide please. The national educators association conference 7000 people. Next slide. And finally, the post malone jelly roll concert. That's post malone up there. For those of you that didn't know, filled providence park with 34,000 attendees. These attendance numbers are approaching what we saw before the pandemic. That tells us that people are once again confident in coming downtown in large numbers. And there's another important impact the economic benefit. Each of these events translates into hotel stays, restaurant reservations, shopping and tax revenue. The rose festival alone brought tens of millions of dollars into our local economy. The nea convention filled downtown hotels and restaurants for nearly a week. Large concerts drive business into bars, food carts, and rideshare. All of that is possible because of the because the environment feels safe. Our enforcement and deflection work is a major factor in restoring that sense of safety, which directly supports portland's economic recovery. Sorry. Last slide. I'm almost done. Looking ahead, we will continue to reduce visible drug use and livability. Crime. We will we will keep disrupting the dealer networks that prey on vulnerable people. We will expand deflection opportunities for nonviolent users because enforcement without a pathway to treatment doesn't solve the problem. And finally, we're expanding the central precinct model into east and north precincts, with new missions beginning in east Portland in just two weeks. I added that for you, councilor Smith, because I'm sure you would be advocating for district one at this point. I'll hand it over to lieutenant quick, who will walk you through the narcotics and organized crime side of our strategy.
46 You can go on to the next slide, please. So my name is rob quick. I supervise narcotics and organized crime. And I want to address briefly. Thank you, councilor, for the opportunities to talk about this, but just specifically about our staffing numbers that are dedicated. So I have six fte dedicated to interdiction efforts and eight fte dedicated to the investigative piece. To your question about the the tracking of the hours, I mean, it's their full time job is to do this. So for me to kind of differentiate between that just too difficult.
47 I'm sorry.
48 Could you just what's the difference between interdiction and investigation is they are you talking about the investigation people solely addressing the overdose deaths or are they water wider range of investigation.
49 Correct. I'll I'll get to it in my slide deck. So basically the entire mission of my unit is to stop overdose deaths, or at least to interdict and and reduce those. However, we're approaching it from two different prongs. So the interdiction piece is the stop trying to stop the flow, identify drug traffickers and try to stop, as the analogy earlier was used to put that plug in the bottom of the boat, whereas the the investigative side is the response to overdose deaths and things like that. Next slide please. Oh yes. So hit is my interdiction team. So their focus is to follow investigative leads and identify the suppliers of drugs they use investigative leads to to identify drug trafficking organizations. And their goal is to make those high level arrests of those suppliers and also to conduct seizures to prevent the release of those dangerous drugs into our community. Excuse me, in terms of the trends, just for for your your guys's awareness, fentanyl remains our overwhelming problem. But what we are seeing is a change from the pills, little blue m-30 pills that people associated with. It's more powder fentanyl now, and that creates some problems by itself. Here. We're also seeing an increase in seizures of methamphetamines and cocaine. I was at a recent dea meeting where the thing that's unique about our drug quantity in the northwest is that the methamphetamine percentage of purity is 97%, and that's much higher of a purity level than than anywhere else in all the regions the dea was talking about. We're also seeing, like I said, the cocaine. But the problem we're running into that because we're seeing a lot of the powdered fentanyl. Well, it's a white powder just like cocaine is. And so we have instances where people think they're using cocaine and it's fentanyl and they and they die because they're fentanyl. We also are seeing situations where what we kind of call polydrug, where you're seeing contamination in the cocaine or and we're not sure if it's because there's quality control issues, for lack of a better term, or if it's just that there's actually a, a intentional desire to put fentanyl into the cocaine. But we're we experience a lot of that now. Next slide please. Now going to the investigative side. That's my my narcotics unit. And they respond to overdose deaths. So vast majority of our calls come from patrol where they go to the scene of somebody who's died and they call my team and they we come out, they use investigative leads, and it's kind of a parallel track to the seizure. Lead is where they're they're following the same thing, trying to work up the chain and say, okay, where did this substance come from that caused this death? We typically try to make those, again, high level arrests of the suppliers. We're focusing on the suppliers. But the the big challenge with that is that we have families. And so not only do we have just the straight find the drugs, but now we're also dealing with families who are grieving from the loss of a loved one. And so they become very sensitive investigations. Currently of my team, we have more than 40 active death investigations going on. And there are complex investigation. There's generally connections between other deaths. We see connections between suppliers, connections between locations where they where they have gotten drugs. But the investigations are typically, like any major felony investigation, a very long, thorough process because we have to ensure those investigations are accurate when we're taking action on somebody who provided drugs that killed somebody, we need to make sure that we're right. And so the sad thing about that is that when you look at our timelines, it's not unusual for our timelines to be one two years. I have a case that's seven years and it's still not fully done. Probably a really poignant example is that we have a state case of a death of an 18 month old. The investigation wasn't complete for two years, so that investigation took longer than that child was alive. But there again, it's just the nature of the our portion, the investigative portion. And then we also run through the adjudication piece. So it's, you know, there are processes, but it they take a long time. I have a darknet case from 2018 that's still open. So next slide please. And I kind of touched on it with, you know like the 18 month old that died. I mean, there's significant community impacts. I mean people are dying. Fentanyl, like I said before, is the overwhelming source of our drug fatalities. In fact, we just had a recent case where we seized 25 pounds of fentanyl. And the u.s. Attorney's press release that he released was that just two milligrams of fentanyl can be potentially a fatal dose. This particular seizure removed approximately 5.5 million potential deadly doses of fentanyl from circulation, protecting the communities in and around Portland. We also see a significant nexus between drugs and guns when we when we make drug arrests with the suppliers, invariably there are guns there. And that's also kind of morphs right into our successes. A recent example of a mission. We did a coordinated mission in February. We seized 25 illegal firearms. Last year, we seized over 87 illegally possessed firearms. And year to date this year, we've seized over 50 illegally possessed firearms. To to kind of provide perspective, I used the us attorney's example of of the 5.5 million. It's too hard to track. It all has to do with purity. So when we talk about what we have done looking at my fentanyl seizures for my team, we have interrupted 650,000 dosage units of fentanyl from hitting the streets. Now, are they are they all people all going to die from those? We don't know? Maybe. Maybe not, probably not. But that's just gives you an idea of what the interdiction efforts do. I mean, people are still dying, but the good news is that our overdose deaths are down 28% year to date. We hit a high over 300in 2023. This year, we're down to 149 year to date. And those are just the ones that are reported to the police. Obviously, public health has has their own metrics, but what we see from public health is that their trends typically mirror ours. And when doctor mendenhall was talking, he he kind of opened the the conversation. This is this is a big problem. My team is not going to solve this problem. The bike squad's not going to solve this problem. Deflection is not necessarily going to solve this problem. It's a team effort. And so when you ask the question are we making a difference. Absolutely. But it's it's a team effort. I mean we are a piece of the solution. And that's that's what I have open for questions. Councilors.
50 Thank you I mean I do and we've got other panels to get to from chat and psr, but I am maybe I mean lance orton, you know, sort of spoke up for you and said we need to keep on doing the interdiction, but do we have any evidence that municipalities where they do more interdiction and seize more drugs have less, have fewer overdoses than cities where they don't? Because just my impression over the last 50 years is that trying to stop the overall flow of drugs doesn't seem to have been very successful. And I'm just wondering, I mean, like to to your point about how many doses you've vetted. I mean, pam bondi said a couple of months ago that the president had saved 240 million lives through the amount of drugs have been injected by dea, etc. Well, that's kind of ridiculous. That assumes that every dose would have been used, would have killed somebody. But I mean, do we have any way to quantify what we think the impact? I mean, to me, the impact of putting people on the street and stopping open air drug markets, that seems to be sort of obvious. You know, the cop showed up here and the people aren't. The people stopped dealing. But how do you quantify the impact of drug interdiction?
51 Well, my answer to the question would be, I mean, to quantify that is is nearly impossible. And and I think it's disingenuous for me to sit here and say, yeah, I stopped 650,000 people from dying. I, I fully agree with that. However, I would argue that that stopping one life is beneficial or it's two. And so to to quantify that, I don't know that I can quantify that, but I think what we do does have a make a difference in people dying. I mean, we're seeing the reduction in deaths. And and granted, that's to also due to some of the partnerships that we that we have. But frankly, I mean, people are dying. I mean, my family, I both have had two people in my family who've had addiction problems. So I understand and, you know, fortunately, neither one of my other, my dad or my my brother died. But I get it. It's a tough struggle for the families. And if if it means that one person survived and I think we're doing a good job.
52 Councilor Kanal.
53 I love getting to do this. I really love seeing the giant pictures of all the the, the drugs and the guns that get seized. Personally, I am very happy to get to be on on the opposite side of of councilor Novick on this one. In a rare situation here, but and I appreciate seeing it specifically around dawson park. You had the that a few months back and that was, I think, one of the successes that I think deserves a lot of commendation there. I wanted to ask because of how long, and I imagine this has an impact on wellness through overtime, as well as just the aggregate amount of hours, how long an investigation takes, and then going through the adjudication process. Eight people does not sound like a lot for that work. With the length of an investigation that's happening. And so I wanted to ask two related questions. One is do you what is your clearance rate look like on on investigating the supplier after a fatal overdose. And two, how did the six and eight number come about, both in terms of the balance between those two numbers? I'm not suggesting you stop doing the interdiction side of it. Please don't don't take it that way. But but also in terms of and that's maybe more on the chief de side. Why the aggregate number is 14 there of the larger pool of of sworn officers.
54 In terms of the clearance rate, we I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. I wasn't prepared for that. I would have to look at it. But I know that recently my sergeant who's in charge of the narcotics unit, is going back through all of our cases and basically making a list to ensure that, okay, what cases have we have has anything slipped through the cracks? We have a long running list. That's where that number of 40 cases came from. Those were cases that we we still have leads that we can follow. But I couldn't tell you the exact clearance rate. And and like I said there again with the delayed convictions, prosecution, all that, it's like it would be hard. I mean, we could probably get that, but I don't have that in front of me. Sure.
55 I'd like to speak to staffing for a minute, and I do think it's a red letter day that you're supporting the in contrast to councilor Novick comment. So I appreciate the highlight of that. But it was last spring when I recognized that I didn't feel like we had a very robust system to address this issue. And I'm talking about from the street level all the way through the investigative level. We had a small central central bike squad. I think it was maybe four at the time. We had two detectives and a couple of folks assigned to the to the narcotics interdiction piece, and it was my decision to up that across the across the board with a model that would address, you know, the street as well as the high level drug dealing, because, you know, the stuff that's coming on the street is coming from somewhere and it's coming from, you know, the people that are bringing in the pounds and pounds of stuff and then really in good faith, couldn't look at, you know, these families that are losing loved ones and say, hey, we're not investigating. And we've had some successes in 2020 for Multnomah county. It was in 24, issued a criminal negligent homicide case for somebody who had sold drugs to somebody who died. That was a first for us. A lot of those go federally, so we appreciate the support from macbda. Looking at other prosecution options. So it was you know, it was, again, a movement of resources, intentionality and focus to bolster the team. So, you know, lieutenant quick has the resources that I gave him. That's how the numbers wound up at six and eight. And it really was just us having a conversation with them and saying, hey, you're doing this with two investigators. What could you do with 4 or 5 investigators? It's but I think we need to have a whole system wide approach at it. And, you know, recognizing the street level outreach combined with deflection and all the things that that brian emphasized with our partnerships all the way to, you know, as high up the chain as we can go, plus emphasis on the death investigations.
56 Thanks. And I guess this opens a question because you mentioned the people who are bringing it in. Are you? I mean, I know that you collaborate with federal agencies in the in the atf kind of conversations. Are you getting the support that you expect out of that relationship? How can you speak to that just a little bit more? Anything that we haven't really talked through in depth?
57 Yeah. And as we've been really clear about, you know, we have several task force different programs that work with our federal partners. And, you know, we continue to maintain those relationships. And, you know, obviously, we're, you know, a long ways from the border. And so when it comes to, you know, cartels and that type of work, we're not going to see, you know, the extent of, of activity they may be seeing in arizona or in southern california. But we do have cases that sometimes wind up down there. We have cases that start in Oregon, and the only way that we can make those cases work is by working through federal partners. So yes, I feel confident that, you know, the relationships we have specific to this type of work, you know, continue to be supported and, you know, valued and appreciated.
58 Thanks.
59 Counselor Smith, but I need to ask. We're sort of running out of time. Can councilor Smith councilor Kanal would you be able to stay an extra ten minutes this afternoon, or did you get everybody. Yes. Great. Thank you. Just so go ahead. Go ahead now.
60 Thank you. Thank you all. And thank you for giving the presentation in the last slide, your presentation, you mentioned the nexus between drug crimes and guns. Could you expand on that a bit more? I guess I'm trying to figure out. Is there a direct correlation between the amount of illegal drugs being sold in the number of gun crimes committed?
61 I.
62 I couldn't think of a way to say, you know, x number of drugs equals x number of guns. But what we what we do say is that they're criminals and that people want to rip them off. There's no honor among thieves, as they say. And so it is very common that we see that they have guns that they use to protect their interests. Sometimes a lot. I mean, as that last slide showed, that was that was a particular case where we seized all those guns. So yes, there is a nexus there. And you can talk to the patrol officer who goes to a call who doesn't do any specialized drug things, but he goes to the scene where there's some drugs involved. It's very common that there are guns present as well.
63 And last question, I know we have a short amount of time, but is your sense and your experience is the domestic meth dealers, are they switching from meth to fentanyl?
64 I don't know.
65 Which one is more of a problem on the city streets.
66 Well, I'd say fentanyl has to be the biggest problem. I mean, people, that's what's causing the bulk of our overdose deaths.
67 Okay. And just in terms of the drug trafficking, where is the fentanyl coming from? Is that from china? Mexico? Where is that coming from?
68 Generally south of the border, we typically see our pipeline coming if it's by land coming up through california.
69 Coming up through california, I will I have a couple other questions, but I'll talk to you offline on it. Thank you so much for your presentation. Appreciate it.
70 Before I let you go, chief, I just wanted to ask you, what's your what are your thoughts about it? Again, I feel bad beating up on the county for an hour and a half where they get to speak. But are you concerned about the fact that the county tracks people to see if they show up at a provider's door in the next 30 days, and there's not really tracking after that? Would you like to see a more robust system of collecting data on outcomes beyond that first visit?
71 Yeah, I think it's already been touched upon. And when we first started the deflection conversation, I was a proponent for the lowest, what I would consider be the lowest level accountability available. Basically, you know, the model that we have adopted the last year, I was very supportive of, I wanted to really give a chance to see what level of participation people would take voluntarily. And, you know, given the efforts and I think there have been really strong, robust efforts by everyone. I'm curious now to see what new iteration, what that would look like. I do believe that, and we've talked about this term accountability. And I do believe that we are in need of some better guardrails and some better guidance to hopefully achieve, you know, some stronger outcomes.
72 Thank you.
73 And that that was that was.
74 With chat and stephanie howard with psr.
75 Chair Novick chair canal council members, thank you for having us. My name is corey wilson. I'm the deputy chief of the Portland fires community health section, otherwise known as chat. I have with me nurse program manager michelle lavinia. And today we're going to give a very brief overview of chats, overdose response and our mou program. Next slide please. Quick overview of chat's operation chat falls underneath Portland fire's emergency operations division and chats made up of two houses. We have the response side and also the aftercare side. On the chat response side. Chat is available four days a week, Monday through Thursday, made up of four response units that are strategically placed around the city. Two of those are staffed with emt basics and to respond to low acuity medical calls. And two of those are what we term our overdose response teams. They are staffed with an emt and a paramedic, and those are placed down in our course station, one down on the waterfront and also east side of Portland. The the aftercare side of the house is available six days a week, made up of three aftercare teams and also supported by an overdose support team. Each side of the house is also supported by a supervisor and a nurse. Next slide. So just been intentional on being innovative not only with the way that we're funded, but also with the way that we care for those in the community. The medication for opioid use disorder program, or mood is one of those innovations. This program was in partnership with Multnomah county, Oregon poison control, central city concern, care Oregon, and most recently health share of Oregon. It involves a chat overdose response team responding to a911 call for reported overdose at the time that the overdose response team arrives. If narcan has not already been given by by standard, they will provide narcan if it's needed, and then they will offer a buprenorphine or bupe for short, after the patient has given their consent for the medication to treat opioid use disorder, it works by preventing withdrawal symptoms and reducing the cravings, thus lowering the risk of opioid use. Chat then arranges transportation for the patient at the client at that point to an outpatient clinic, and chat will accompany that client to the clinic. The responder will then refer that client to our aftercare team to follow up within 24 hours. Next slide please. When our mood program was in pilot phase, we enrolled 36 people into that program. And on the slide here you can see some of the outcomes of that. And I'll just highlight a few of them. 56% of those, 56% were connected to same day medical provider appointments, 68% provided warm handoff to a mood clinic. Now warm handoff to a mood clinic means that a chat team called for a taxi for the client at the 911 incident location. To take that client to the clinic, the chat team would follow the taxi and help the clients get checked into the clinic, and if requested by the client, they'd remain with them through the during the appointment to answer any questions that the provider may have and during and or after the appointment. Chat would then help arrange for shelter beds if needed. 44% of those people were connected to shelter, and when chat facilitates a shelter bed, this entails calling for the taxi to transport the patient from the clinic to the shelter, and chat would follow the taxi to ensure the clients checked in. This also allows the chat team to know where to follow up with at the next day, and familiarize the shelter staff that chat would be working with that person. Of those chat aftercare team provided over 730 hours of aftercare engagement for just those 36 people. Aftercare team followed up with all mood clients within 24 hours as or as needed. Our teams reconnected with clients to keep them engaged in treatment and provide a pathway to recovery. This included ensuring that they had shelter, food, medication and support, and attending doctor appointments. The average length of time mood clients were enrolled with chat aftercare was 80 days, and there were some cases where the clients disengaged with chat. After the chat, responders provided comfort medications to them. Next slide please. And finally, and I think chair Novick, you referred to this slide. But you can see this is a represents going back to fiscal year 2324. The overdose incidents responded by Portland fire and rescue not chat. What's not represented in that chart would be this is the calls that came in as an overdose. It doesn't reflect the calls that Portland fire and rescue arrived on, and they came in as another call and turned out to be an overdose. And it doesn't it doesn't factor in the calls that came in as an overdose. And the crews arrived and they found something different. So this is just calls that came in as a as an overdose call.
76 Thank you.
77 With that we'll take any questions or pass it along.
78 Stephanie michelle I just wanted to add one one note. And it is in reference to doctor mendenhall's fancy slide as he as he mentioned it when Oregon did a deep dive into our follow up aftercare team data, they found that while 76% of the chat follow up team patient population belong to, they were healthshare members. Also, 43% had spmi and which is severe and primary mental illness and 33% had substance use disorder.
79 Thank you. Stephanie, I just wanted you to there's talk now of having psr take people to deflection as well as police. And you're involved in that. I just wanted you to just give us a quick update on what the status of those discussions are.
80 Yeah. My pleasure. Stephanie howard, director of community safety for the record. So we are at psr, we are working on a couple of different pilots right now. We or I guess it's not a pilot. Earlier this summer, Portland street response began partnering with the deflection center to open up folks, take transport folks for sobering services at the deflection center. And we're working through some of the knits on that and perfecting that system. That's a new a new service opportunity. We are right now in the process of developing a six month pilot whereby Portland street response and some other first responders will be able to shuttle people to the deflection center for less for other than sobering services. And so, again, we're working on the training piece for that right now with the deflection team, and will be collecting data for that six month period. And I think we're aiming to begin that next month.
81 Thank you. Counselor Smith, do you have.
82 A question?
83 Yes I do. I want to go back to the previous slide. And you said something about after the 80 days chat does not have any interaction with with with the clients that you come in contact with after they've overdosed was.
84 So when we we enroll people into our program and work with them as needed, and we support them through their pathway to recovery. So the 80 days is an average of the total number of days.
85 And so what happens? Do you track them after the 80 days?
86 We do a 30, 60 and 90 day check in with with folks to find out where they are in their recovery.
87 Okay. And so what chat does you're the you're you're the intermediary between finding a place for them to go to recovery and or give them shelter if they don't have it is is that.
88 We help facilitate those things to to ensure that they can find recovery if they're ready for it.
89 Okay, okay. That's what I wanted to to kind of be clear on. Thank you so much for the for the presentation, I appreciate it.
90 Thank you all very much. Really appreciate it. And now. The the plan was to have a third panel, drug courts and deflection, with judge michael greenlick, anthony jordan and nathalie amar with Multnomah county health department. And then have discussion after that and then ask devarshi bajpai for a health to come up to give some sort of closing comments. I'd actually like to to make sure we hear from all of you. I'd like to ask all three of you up, and then we'll ask questions. After all, three of you have gone. Actually, all four, I bet. Sorry. Take away. Take it away.
91 All right, I will. Thank you. So, folks, I'm judge michael greenlick. I'm the chief criminal judge down at the Multnomah county courthouse. And I've come to talk to you a little bit about our treatment courts and a little bit about how we've tried to deal with minor level misdemeanor offenses, the type that are going to into deflection in the past, we have a treatment court is basically a specialized probation supervision court that instead of just having a probation officer supervise people, it's supervised by by the court. So the judge is heavily involved. You have a whole team of people, including the defense attorney, the prosecutor, the probation department. There's usually a liaison from treatment. We usually have mentors involved in the team. There's a coordinator. It's a team approach. And the participants in the program have to come back to court repeatedly, have to interact with all of these folks. And eventually the idea is to help people get stabilized, get into the services that are needed, get into recovery, get jobs, get housing. Just to a complete about face from where their lives were before they entered. In Multnomah county, we have four excellent treatment courts. I've been trying to get away from acronyms, but I see they're on the on the slideshow there, and we have court, which is a dui intensive supervision program. These are dui cases for repeat offenders. Excuse me, repeat dui offenders, folks that would likely go to prison for felony dui or have cases associated with dui that would likely send them to prison. We have a mental health court which deals with people with behavioral health problems. They usually have to have a major mental illness diagnosis. We have our court program, which is success through accountability and restitution, accountability, restitution and treatment, which deals with mostly repeat property offenders, but also people that have presumptive prison sentences. That means if they went to trial and were convicted of these offenses, then the presumed sentence would be prison. And then we have step court, which actually deals with several of our measure 11 offenders, folks, for which there are mandatory prison sentences. So the commonality among all these programs is that that. Somehow lost the screen there. I must have leaned on it. The commonality amongst all these programs is that there's a significant. Potential prison sentence. If folks are not cooperative. And that provides, you know, a pretty big stick, and folks become highly motivated because of because of that possibility. I ran one of these treatment courts program for a couple of years. You'll see on the slide, you know, the sort of numbers of people that are participating in many counties around the state, folks, most of these participants, if these people were prosecuted for their criminal records and their crimes, would have gone to prison. And so we have a lot of people participating. Our first treatment court began over 30 years ago. We had the second treatment court in the entire country in the early 1990s was established, and there are now thousands around the country, and we think we do a really good job with it, despite the fact that we're always sort of fighting for resources. On the next slide, you'll see our graduation rates. You know, at first glance, those don't look super high. Somebody must be controlling this over there. Thank you. At first glance, the the graduation rates on the next slide don't look super high, but these are folks that actually graduate from the programs. They don't.
92 I don't understand.
93 They don't reflect the. It doesn't mean the folks that don't graduate necessarily get revoked. Some of the folks are transferred to other programs, but the people that do graduate from all of these programs are stabilized. These graduation ceremonies are kind of amazing because you have families. There's a lot of tears. We have people there and our star court graduations who have started using substances when they were nine years old, have been to prison multiple times, have been using for decades, and they have their lives back. And it's quite an amazing thing to see. There's a lot of partner and community organizations that that partner with us. It is. We have pretty good numbers in terms of recidivism, reduction of recidivism for people that graduate. And we have an example back in July, you can't really see it on the slide, but the we had nine participants graduate in July. They had a combined total of 6286 days of sobriety. They had paid restitution of almost $12,000, and they had avoided presumptive prison sentences totaling 300 over 300 months, which saved the department of correction $1.5 million. There are certain on the next slide, there are certain standards that go into specialty courts. And I mentioned this because there's been some talk. I couldn't we do some sort of specialty court for minor drug offenders, the types of folks that are going to deflection there are there are standard there are specialty court standards and best practices that have been validated through the, you know, hundreds and hundreds of programs. This has been well studied that if you have this sort of combination of using screening tools, you know, identifying people early in the process, having a non-adversarial team approach, providing access to substance use and other rehab services, requiring abstinence eventually to graduate. But people are not. People are not sanctioned for continuing use when they enter the program. It seems odd, but we don't really expect people as a as, you know, sort of a early goal to be able to stop using because you can't stop using before you get the treatment. But they are sanctioned if they don't show up and if they're not honest. So showing up and being honest is really emphasized. There's ongoing judicial interaction. Sometimes they're in court 2 or 3 times a week, especially at first. And, you know, there really is sort of a supportive environment, especially people are showing up and being honest. And so there's a lot that goes into it. We try to bring in cultural competence. We have mentors, there's lots of training. It's it's a big lift. I think one of our prior speakers talked about how the need for having consequences is important to the success of treatment programs, and I think that's really true. We had a in our program, we had regular surveys done at the end when right before people graduated and they were asked, you know, sort of what was the most important thing that happened in this treatment court that that aided you in your success, where you weren't able to get success previously. And the number one answer was when the judge put me in jail for 90 days and made me sit there before there was a bed available for residential treatment. The reason that was true was because people had a chance to get their heads right. And when I say that, I mean not just an attitude adjustment, but actually allow their brains to start recovering so that they could start making rational decisions. And we see this is a really difficult thing for a lot of people to to get to that place. And sometimes we always, almost always start with people out of custody, but they just seem to not be able to engage in the same way. And sometimes they'll just ask us, we just put me in jail because I can't do it from the streets. We had in our last slide there. We've tried many times to deal with with minor drug offenses through some sort of a court program. Matter of fact, the stop court program was on somebody's slide. We don't have that program anymore. But that program started in something like 1992, and that was the one that was the second program in the country treatment court program started by judge carl haas. And that's when possession of controlled substance was a felony in every instance. And so, again, there was something at stake. The program became less and less relevant, less and less successful as the penalties dropped for possession of controlled substance. And I'm not making any statement in favor and against that, but it's just an observation with these types of minor cases. Well, first of all, the the the other types of programs we, we tried besides the treatment court model with stop court is we try to community court model for minor offenders coming to community court. And they were told, okay, if you go and engage in a service, then your case will be dismissed. And if you don't, you'll have to do like 2 or 3 days in jail. And just a high percentage of folks would not appear. There were bench warrants that were being issued and then ended up accepting the 2 or 3 days jail, even though we were trying to help them, you know, connect them to resources. Right from the courtroom. We had a model called treatment first, which basically was these are for drug offenders, which is that if all they had to do was get an evaluation and engage in treatment, we tried to support them in doing that. The case would essentially be dismissed, I think at that point, and if they didn't do that, they had to accept 35 days jail. And you wouldn't believe that the vast, vast majority of people ended up serving 35 days jail. And so we've tried these things before, and it just seems not to work. We're always going to be opening open to trying some other approach in our court system. But we've not had success in the past. Right now, we have significant barriers for minor drug offenses being cited into court and dealing with them in the court system. The number one barrier is people don't come to court, they fail to appear, and they do it over and over and over again. And for every time someone fails to appear in court, a bench warrant is issued. Then you have to go through the cost and the expense of arresting the person. They're usually released soon after being arrested, and then another bench warrant occurs. You know, we have people in the community that have such high acuity that, you know, I say, and I and it's not really a joke. It's sort of accurate. You could lead them to a block away from the courthouse and give them a shove, and they wouldn't make it into the courtroom. It's just a it's just a real problem. And also, we have an engine defense crisis right now. And we don't have lawyers. We just do not have lawyers for the for the minor misdemeanor crimes. We have not appointing lawyers on on shoplifting, trespassing. We just don't have lawyers. We are being overwhelmed already. And you know, with with cases for which there are no lawyers and the misdemeanor drug cases, I mean, we're at sort of hundreds of cases right now in our system, misdemeanors.
94 Thank you.
95 Judge to a thousand. And so it's just a significant barrier. I just wanted to.
96 Thank you judge greenlick. We just we're running out of time. So I just wanted to make sure that we moved on to the county folks. You bet. Welcome.
97 Are you ready for us? We're we're waiting for the slides. Good afternoon. Chair and chair of this. And the counselors. My name is anthony jordan. I'm the interim behavioral health director for the health department with Multnomah county. And I'm joined with natalie, who's going to present with me today. She is the deflection coordinator and the deflection supervisor for services. You know, we've heard a lot today about deflection. And so we are happy to be here even though some things wasn't you know, so good. But we're glad to be here to share what our program is doing and really to sort of listen to sort of what people have for us. Next slide. What are we going to what we're going to present today is really talk about what what is our deflection program. What is the model. And then and then also some emerging trends that we have found. What is the goals of of our deflection program. And then and then we're going to look at some reflections of what those services are. And natalie and I you know like I said we're excited to to to talk about our program. But we want to make something clear like we we are not the policy makers for this this program, what we what we do. We have a leadership team, house bill 4002 leadership team. And natalie, she's going to talk a little bit about what that team is and who it consists of. But what we do is offer expertise and best practices because deflection is not just an organized across the united states. And so what we do is offer best practices about deflections and the different pathways by which we come in. And the leadership team sets the set, the the policies for this particular program. And like I said, natalie will speak more to that. And so now I'll turn it over to natalie.
98 Thank you anthony natalie amar for the record. Next slide please. Okay. So let's begin by talking a little bit about what deflection is and specifically what it is in Multnomah county. We've already heard a lot of reflections about what it is. So I think it will be helpful to just kind of walk through really what we're doing. So first of all, deflection originates in this county with the passage of house bill 4002 in September of last year. That legislation allowed each county in the state to offer deflection, which is a handoff to behavioral health services in lieu of arrest for possession of controlled substances in small amounts. So that said, deflection models and program requirements really do vary across the state. There is no single standard for the state of Oregon in Multnomah county. As anthony mentioned, we have an interagency leadership team consisting of representation from the courts, from Portland police, from Gresham police, from the district attorney, the county chair. We have a a broad group that that sits on at that leadership table, and that's the group that sets that determines who is eligible for deflection, how referrals can be made into the program, and what it means to successfully complete the deflection program. And the model that is currently in use in Multnomah county is an officer intervention model. So let's start with eligibility. An individual can be eligible for deflection in Multnomah county, if they would have been charged by law enforcement for possession of a controlled substance. So it's at the moment of that law enforcement encounter that the deflection becomes possible. The individual has no other crimes or warrants and has not had a failure of deflection in the previous 30 days. So I just want to kind of highlight that, because that is the accountability piece that was built in by the leadership team. So if you have access deflection and you did not complete, which I'll get to in a moment, then that means the next time you're encountered by law enforcement, you do not have the option for deflection. You will be cited for for pcs. If you have completed. What it means is you get to return again if you opt in. So after after you've completed, if you if you are engaged, you are offered to to be brought back to the center. And you can reengage and go through the process again. So that's that balance of the carrot and the stick. So again, as I said, people and also very importantly it is voluntary. Right. So an individual on the street might not decide to opt in. Right. So that is an option. But it's not mandated. People can only be referred, as I said by law enforcement at this time. But I'll talk about some exciting changes that are coming. So that means that for this first year of programing, the only the number of referrals into the program were really determined based on the number of law enforcement encounters and then referrals into the center. So that's a limiting factor there on how many people were able to access the program in year one. The program is based at the coordinated care pathway center in inner southeast Portland, and that's where officers bring individuals. Once they're deflected, there is no capacity limit because deflection is not a residential program. So folks, come in. I'll get through to the process in a moment. But people tend to be in the process for approximately two hours. Next slide okay. So now what happens. What happens when you are deflected. So it's a multi-step process that actually has a number of different requirements before somebody will be considered to have completed. First they come to the center and they're going to engage immediately with a peer. Once the law enforcement handoff happens, then they will receive a medical screening by a nurse on site. After that medical screening, they'll undergo a sud and basic needs and mental health screening that's done by a case manager. Following that and related to it, the case manager or care coordinator because we have staff. So deflection is operated by turck house which is a county contractor. We also have county staff on site that do this work. So that care plan will take into account all of the needs identified through these various screenings. So we've heard a lot about different options, and treatment is certainly one of them. But people might have different needs that are not, for example, residential treatment. Right. Somebody might need withdrawal management or maybe they need some kind of recovery supportive housing. Maybe they're already enrolled in a treatment program. Maybe it's about getting them back to that place. Right. So the so this is not a one size fits all approach. It's really based on the clinical expertise of the people that are doing the work with each individual. And the individuals buy in and desires and needs as they express them. So if somebody once that conversation happens, an individual gets a care plan. So what does that mean? A care plan has a list of referrals. The case manager will if it is possible. Now remember we are open for 24 hours a day, right? So you can imagine, given the limitations of service availability in the community, sometimes it is not possible to get somebody to something right on the spot. But whenever it is possible and the individual is willing to do so, that referral will be made and the person even transported directly to the service. And that does happen. So it's a variety of things that might happen, depending on the individual and the circumstances around their particular deflection. What we are also doing now, and we started this last quarter, is that we allow return visits to see the care coordinator. So a care coordinator will help people navigate through the different service options that they might be interested in. And so we will allow those folks to come back and not just within the 30 day window, but beyond, because they will get on a path, a staff caseload if they so choose. So all of these things are, you know, it's not just one it's not one encounter. It's not one. I went to treatment once. Right. That's not what would count. The person has to access a referral on their care plan within 30 days. In addition to all of the things that I just described, they would then have to access a referral, which means we call and verify that they actually completed what they were supposed to do. So for example, if the recommendation was to go to withdrawal management, did they actually do that? Did they actually get through their withdrawal management stay? We would verify that and then that would count as a completion.
99 I'm sorry, I have to because what I was told by actually you think you were out. But what I my understanding from talking to county folks is that accessing means that you show up somewhere one day, not that you then complete a program after that. So is that wrong? If people nor did they count as completed, people have to do more than show up for one meeting.
100 Yeah. So if you if you. So when we call the provider so each provider that that is referred to will they will speak with the county team. And the county team will make sure by the standards of the provider for the particular service option, whether that has been completed or not. So for some, in some cases, though, and I'm going to I'm going to turn to anthony here as well, because in some cases it's a little bit more complicated than that.
101 It depends on the service. Like when she's talking about detox service, there is a number of days that they would complete to do it. If it was a housing placement, once they got into a housing, it could be one day. So it depends on the service itself. If the service was available, they went to it that day and it was completed. It would be done if it was something like if they had to take an assessment and they did that assessment that day, it would be that one day. And that's what was on that case plan, just to get the assessment, not necessarily get into treatment, because maybe that was something else down the road. So it depends on the what was on the care plan itself.
102 Right.
103 Okay.
104 Shall I proceed? I'm going to go on and I'll just say that the and stephanie howard alluded to this. She mentioned this just a moment ago. But we're also the leadership team has asked us to launch a pilot to begin accepting referrals from Portland street response. So that is underway. In addition, we are and so that would be a first responder pathway into deflection. So different pathway. In addition to that we are going to expand into an active outreach pathway, which is another of the deflection pathways that's available. And that will be done in partnership with formerly mha which is now the peer company. And this will this also is something that we've been piloting with fourth dimension recovery out in Gresham as well. So next slide please. So just to get to get into what we're seeing so far, here's just a brief snapshot of the data. And I know we're running out of time. So I'll speak quickly. And I'll just refer everybody to the deflection website. We do have all of the reports that are available. So if you want more in-depth information about our data, you can find it there. We've published three quarterly reports to date. They're all available on the website. The most recent covers the period of four 1 to 630 2025. The goal of quarterly reporting in year one is not so much to look at outcomes, but to understand the needs of, as doctor mendenhall referred to earlier, a complex population to establish our baselines. So we just passed the one year mark and we don't we won't have completion data for the one year mark until October because of the the timelines of deflection. But here's some key metrics and observation to date. So most people are houseless. And overwhelmingly people report using fentanyl or methamphetamine or I believe last quarter it was 70% of people reported using a combination of different substances. So this is speaking again to the complexity, the total number of referrals to date that we've had, all from law enforcement is 460, 486. Of those, 311 received the care plan, which means they went through all of those steps at the center that I described earlier. And I just want to reference something that commander hughes talked about earlier through the efforts of PPB and through the partnership with PPB, the referrals have been increasing. So we saw our highest referral numbers in quarter three, which included the month that commander hughes referred to. But beyond that, which, you know, was a result of some targeted missions, I believe the numbers stayed consistently higher than they had been in the prior year after that. And that's continuing to be the trend that we're observing. So once we see those referrals come in, that will, over time, also impact the rates of completion that we will see in the future. So I'm going to and then I'll just say that another exciting development. Well actually excuse me. Let me let me backtrack a second for my notes. 87 people access services within the 30 day period. And most of those people were in quarter three. So again, we started only in September. So this is a really young program. But as we're ramping up, we are seeing those increases. 19 individuals, 19 of those accessed sobering services, which just came online at the center at the end of April. And so that's a really new and exciting development. Sobering is available 24 hours a day. So whereas before sobering, there was nothing that we could offer people directly at the time of deflection if they were deflected after business hours, if you will. Now we have that. So again, we're we're starting to see that kind of take root. And on that I'm going to pass back to anthony to see some more.
105 Do you do we have time. Just how much time do we have.
106 Probably about two minutes.
107 I'll say two okay. So I'm going to be really brief a sobering services. We have 13 sobering station and sober and services is a stabilization service that we that do monitoring services for people who are acutely intoxicated. They come into the sovereign to sober services, to get stabilized, monitored for medical emergencies and acute intoxication. And then what happens is, is that we we like traditional sober, they don't offer medication. We took on for some of the lessons learned from the the other service stations that central city concern. We provide what they would call comfort medication. And it's really stabilization medication to retain people and not to sort of have some of the crisis. And I just want to sort of I want to this is my last point. I can do it in one minute. You know, there's been a lot of critique about one thing about the success rate of the 86 people. And, you know, as a person who's been doing this work for a long time and as a person who has lived experience and and I've worked in drug court, the criminal justice system, you know, I know it's really easy for us to focus on the 72% of the people who didn't succeed. I think we take that serious ourselves. We want to improve better outcomes. And I think andy said it best. And a lot of the speakers said that we all are here to do this, but I really want to focus on the 28%, which it contributes to. 28% of the people who went through the program. Those individuals got a case plan with something that was going to help them better their lives. And like like andy has said, these people come with very complex things. And they decided to do one thing to improve their life. And I don't know if people understand this population, but they did it on their own within 30 days, and they could have made a decision not to do anything. And I think if we're going to focus on the 72%, we should honor those 28% that did something to improve their lives. So I just I just want to put that as, as a statement that that we don't lose focus of those individuals and focus on all the things that didn't happen. So I want to finish with that. And we really we really appreciate you allowing us to come down and talk about the program. Thank you.
108 Thank you very much, mr. Bajpai. I just ask you to come in and like freewheel, you know, any reaction to anything you've heard in the last two hours? I want to hear commissioners.
109 My name is devarshi bajpai. I'm the ceo of prohealth, substance use treatment provider in southeast Portland and district one councilor Smith's district. We provide withdrawal management, residential treatment, outpatient services and medication assisted treatment for people dealing with substance use disorders. We have been operating in the Portland area for a little over 50 years. We used to be known as depaul treatment center, and we changed our name a couple of years ago. My own history and working in this field goes back 30 years. Like anthony mentioned and lance mentioned earlier, I'm a person in long term recovery for 32 years of recovery. So I'm going to one of the things I want to points I want to make out of this is that there is hope that a lot of the people that are going to be that are speaking up here, a lot of people that we interact with every single day are people that have have been in that place where judge greenlick was referred to the person that's a block away from the court and can't make it to the court. Many of us have been in that place and we've we've made it out of that. So I want to point out that there's hope. I've also worked at the Oregon criminal justice commission, Multnomah county. I've been in anthony seat before, and at my last job was at the Oregon department of corrections as a behavioral health director. When I was at the Oregon criminal justice commission, I was on governor kulongoski's methamphetamine task force. It was between 2003 and 2005. The work that we did there was a cooperation between law enforcement, between the pharmacy thing that I'll get back to in a second, and treatment and prevention services. And we did make an impact on methamphetamine use in Oregon. We made pseudoephedrine a schedule to put it behind the counter, and pretty much eliminated domestic methamphetamine production in the state of Oregon. At the same time, methamphetamine purity and potency went down on the street for a good 5 or 6 years and had a great effect. But the fact that we're still sitting here today means that we didn't address the root problem that we were dealing with back then, and we're continuing to deal with now. And I'll come back to what that what I think that root problem is. I also want to address something about the. So during the pandemic, when measure 110 was in effect and drugs were drug possession was decriminalized for a health, had a line out our door for people that wanted to get services. We had people that were showing up every single day that we had to turn away because we didn't have enough beds. So people do show up to treatment without legal mandates to show up there. When I was working the Oregon department of corrections, we started offering treatment services in there. You can't imagine a more coercive environment than Oregon department of corrections. And yet we made treatment voluntary, and we had more demand than we could possibly respond to. People do want to get treatment services. A lot of the people that we're talking about deflecting today have tried to seek treatment services before. They've been in that line of for health or detox, trying to get into withdrawal management services. They've been on waitlists for residential treatment services and they haven't been able to get in. And often they've given up hope. And that's why when we go and find them in a deflection program, so does mandated treatment work. I mean, let me clarify something. Nobody has ever showed up at our at our facility and their life is going great. And that, you know, they just felt like going to treatment that day. Everybody that shows up has dealt with a lot of terrible things that have happened to them, and by the time they get there, they're desperate. Often. Sometimes it takes a legal nudge to make that person desperate. But it is not mandatory necessarily. If we didn't have enough treatment services available to people that were showing up for treatment during the pandemic when drugs were decriminalized, I'm not sure why. We think that once we start mandating people to treatment, that there's suddenly going to be more resources for people. The legislature and the governor have done a great job and investing in treatment services. Treatment services are starting to come online now. It takes time to get those up and running. There's workforce issues that we're all dealing with. And so the the impact is slow. But one of the things that that was mentioned earlier was that overdoses are down. We see that fewer people are dying on the streets as a result of fentanyl. We see fewer people having to respond to non-fatal overdoses. Also. That's a that's an impact of the work that we've all done together, including law enforcement, which has the the purity potency of fentanyl on the street has gone down. The work that the city has done in terms of expanding shelter beds, the work that treatment providers have done to increase access to medication assisted treatment and withdrawal management services, all those things have been effective. They just we need we need a lot more. So the the root problem, I think that we continue to address in the state of Oregon that has not fully been addressed even yet, is the lack of availability of treatment. We know from national statistics that Oregon has low treatment availability, and that until we address that, we're going to keep dealing with these problems, we're going to keep dealing with these drug, these waves of drug epidemics until we deal with that problem. So I'll wrap, but I do I want to wrap up again with the idea of hope. I see those folks that are coming in every single day that are desperate when they're coming in, that people are dealing with mental illness, psychosis, homelessness. They've been homeless for months, years at a time. Sometimes I often see those people the light turn on for those people and they get into recovery. So there is hope in the work that we're doing. Work that we're doing does make a difference. It feels like it doesn't sometimes, but it does. You know, we're saving many lives as a result of the work that all of us are doing together. So thank you.
110 Thank you.
111 Councilor Smith.
112 No.
113 One question I have for you, mr. Bajpai, is. What do you think about this question I sort of asked about should to the extent the police are focusing resources on drugs, should they be focusing on breaking up the open air drug markets, which are probably low level dealers, or trying to particularly given what you talked to about your experience with methamphetamine task force, trying to interrupt the overall supply by arresting people, drug dealers at a high level.
114 Councilor Novick I think we know that supply reduction is an important thing that we need to focus on. We you know, there's a reason that we don't hold alcoholics anonymous meetings in bars. We need an environment for people in the community to get sober and get into recovery. And so when drugs are available and really prolific, it's it's hard to get into recovery. I think when we look at where the police should be focusing, I mean, this is just my personal opinion and not reflective of any necessarily any research. But I think that focusing police resources on breaking up open air drug markets to reduce public drug use, I think is a totally valuable thing that we need to do. I think interdiction is is important, but if we have to choose between the two, I would choose focusing on street level dealing and use.
115 Natalie or anthony again, on the question of what people have to do within 30 days. I think you said it's more than they just show up at a provider's door. They have to do something that that provider considers the first step. But is it? But is it true that it's just sort of that what you monitor is what happens in the first 30 days. So if they take a step on day 29, you don't necessarily know if they took the second step on day 37.
116 You want to take possession.
117 No, you're correct about that. And I wanted to speak to this because I think we sort of talked about this. Your concern is our concern. And I think the scope, the scope of what this program was designed for was not that sort of that, that sort of continuum. This was really designed for the front door. One of the things that we have applied for, we have, you know, since in a year we have really, you know, tried to get funding from the local government, the state government, also the federal government to do exactly what you what you are talking about because you are making a point that it is incomplete. It's an incomplete process for us because one thing and you know, you can speak to this, the word success that we are using is not a word that we would use in a clinical world. It's not that we don't. We don't use that word for someone completing one thing because like like when those plans are developed, there's three other things in order for that person to be really to treat them holistic, you would have to address those three other things. And what we like to do is to follow them and to sort of continue to follow them and make sure those other three things are addressed. We are still we are applying in our cjc grant to sort of get some additional resources to do exactly what people are asking us to do. And our leadership team has talked about this as well. So we we are trying to get to what you what you are asking us about. But as of now, our program was not designed to sort of follow them, however, and I know she was we we have did a a work around where we have some care coordinators within our Multnomah county that when people if they opt into sort of care coordination with Multnomah county, we're keeping in our electronic records those those second and third steps that they are doing. But that is not that's really outside of the collection. But we do have some data on some of those individuals that that kept going and stayed engaged with. Our care coordinator at Multnomah county.
118 Thank you.
119 Councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Zimmerman, I saw your hand was up. Going once, going twice. Councilor Zimmerman. Well, thanks, everybody for being here. Thanks, keelan and christopher and colleagues for staying a little late. Really appreciate this and plan to follow up with pretty much everybody here for further conversations. Thank you.
120 Thank you, thank you.
121 And now the today's meeting of the community and public safety committee is adjourned. Our next meeting is on the 23rd.