the new york daily news: Three strikes but still not out: Inside the Bronx ‘Opioid Court’ where addicts get extra swings at recovery

The man standing in a Bronx courtroom with thick dark hair, more than a few brushes with the law and a drug addiction so bad he was considered a high risk for an overdose had burned through so many chances — second, third and even a fourth.

Just 27 years old, he worried he’d run out of luck and feared his darkening future.

“I’m committing suicide every day,” he told the judge inside the Bronx County Hall of Justice in early October. “Every day I’m playing Russian roulette."

The admission came after Judge George Grasso offered him yet another chance at freedom by staying in a program of recovery rather than a jail cell.

As Bronx Criminal Court’s supervising judge, Grasso handles cases in the borough’s Overdose Avoidance and Recovery (OAR) court — commonly known as “Opioid Court,” though its defendants use a wide variety of illegal drugs.

He’s seen hundreds of men and women struggling with addiction since OAR launched in December 2017 with the ambitious goal of making a dent in the Bronx’s overwhelming drug problem. Its defendants move between the courtroom and a treatment program — starting at arraignment.

With OAR’s second anniversary approaching, only 71 out of several hundred participants “graduated” from the program. The reward: Once they are no longer considered a high risk for overdose, their OAR cases are dismissed and sealed.

Grasso often sees familiar faces appearing multiple times, like the dark-haired man in his courtroom on Oct. 2. Before he offered the man yet another chance to avoid traditional prosecution, he weighed the evidence presented by the Bronx district attorney.

Apart from marijuana use, the man’s toxicology report that week came back clean. He stayed in touch with his public defender. He made his court date. He expressed a real desire to straighten out his life.

Small gains, but in Grasso’s experience, they meant a lot.

“As you remember when you were in front of me last week, I was uncertain whether or not I’d be able to keep your cases," Grasso told the defendant. “I’m really pleased I’m going to be able to do that. ... You stick with us, and this court will stick with you.”

Grasso, a former NYPD first deputy commissioner, earned his law degree from St. John’s University in Queens while still a cop and has served as a judge for the last decade. While he’s willing to dole out second chances — and more — to help his defendants, the odds remain against them.

Nationwide, more than 68,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2018, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 1,444 unintentional drug poisoning deaths in New York City last year.

No borough has been hit as hard as the Bronx, which has the highest rate of overdose deaths of the five boroughs, according to the latest city Health Department numbers.

Last year, 391 Bronx residents died of an accidental overdose — 137 more than in 2015. Factor in people not from the Bronx but who overdosed there in 2018 and the number jumps to 422 — or 168 more deaths than in 2015. Of those 422 fatalities, 290 involved fentanyl, an unregulated synthetic opioid with 50 to 100 times the potency of morphine.

Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark grew up in the borough’s Soundview Houses in the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs and heroin was the preferred poison. And still, the numbers came as a shock.

“I was floored, I had no idea how pervasive it still was,” Clark told the Daily News. “I said, ‘Enough already. We need to do something.’ ”

Clark, Grasso and others in the criminal justice community began to brainstorm ways to steer addicts into treatment, not prison. The Bronx, like most of the other boroughs, already offered some diversion programs for drug users facing criminal charges.

The DA and the judge quickly realized those options failed to acknowledge the challenges attached to addiction. To distinguish the OAR court from the others, they embraced a preplea model in which participants could get help without first entering a guilty plea to their criminal charges. The program was also voluntary, not mandatory. The defendants needed to want in.

Bronx prosecutors instead enjoy wide discretion to work with Grasso on knocking down or dismissing charges if participants complete the program.

“This is different from the way we ordinarily do things," said Clark. “[But] you can no longer say we’re doing it because that’s how we’ve always done it. We just want to save their life, and that’s what we’re telling them.”

OAR currently accepts people charged with seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, petty larceny and second- or third-degree criminal trespass. And while defendants facing a felony charge are prevented from entering the program, those already participating can catch a break if arrested once enrolled.

The young man standing in Grasso’s courtroom this past October faced a new felony charge on a fresh crime, but his OAR enrollment allowed the DA to reduce the count to a misdemeanor. The lesser charges allowed the 27-year-old defendant, whose identity is being withheld because he remains in the program, to continue with counseling and medical treatment.

Avery McNeil, the alternatives to incarceration specialist at the Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit legal organization, praised OAR for setting up a pathway that allows people to get addiction treatment without first copping to a crime that could stay on their permanent record regardless of their recovery.

“That’s really important for our clients who are facing employment, immigration and housing consequences ... who cannot take upfront pleas,” she said, noting defendants can face deportation and lose their jobs or homes if they plead to charges in exchange for treatment.

McNeil would also like to expand OAR to accept defendants facing felony charges: “We want more of our clients to benefit from this program.”

Clark, Grasso and McNeil discussed expanding the OAR model with others in the criminal justice community at the New York Opioid Court Citywide Conference last month. Manhattan and Staten Island have already adopted variations of the program, and talks of an OAR court in Queens are underway. Brooklyn has an alternatives to incarceration court, but it’s not the same as OAR.

The goals of each program, regardless of any differences, remain common across the city.

“You’re not going to be successful all the time, you might not even be successful most of the time, but you’ll be successful some of the time,” Grasso told The News. "When we have given you a foundation to break free of these opioids and this fentanyl, and we have dramatically reduced the possibility that you’re going to become another overdose and death statistic ... that’s success.”

Written by Chelsia Rose Marcius, The New York Daily News

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-opioid-court-bronx-drug-overdose-20191104-ep2qoipgwbaole6ojhg2vfcoxq-story.html