The New Haven Police Department launched a new program earlier this month to protect drug users leaving incarceration. This program includes the introduction of harm reduction kits for people leaving jail after drug arrests.
Needles are included in the harm reduction kits. Clean, unused needles reduce the risk of harm to users. Courtesy: Garrett Amill
The kits will contain clean needles, pipes, water and information on drug treatment centers. Police say the harm reduction kits allow people who use illegal drugs to use them in a safer manner. The hope with the introduction of these kits is to reduce the risk of injury or death.
Robert Lawlor, a former police officer now working with the Federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program (HIDTA), helped with the development of the program in New Haven.
“In a lot of these cases, they don’t have the equipment they need to use safely,”Lawlor said. “In a lot of these cases, they’ll use dirty needles, dirty water…stuff that’s unsafe and unsanitary, and leads to a whole host of health problems and dangers, not only for them, but for the community at large.”
The idea for the kits came from harm reduction expert Mark Jenkins in Hartford. He approached New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes with the idea. According to Lawlor, Reyes and the officers in the detention facility liked it.
“He was very, very supportive of the idea,” Lawlor said. “They understood there was a need for it.”
According to the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, New Haven saw 39 accidental deaths in 2018 where opiates were to blame. The introduction of harm reduction kits is one attempt to reduce that number going forward.
Jenkins, along with the Yale Clinical and Community Research’s syringe service program and the police department helped decide what to put in the harm reduction kits.
The New Haven Police Department began piloting the unique program in February.
“We don’t believe it’s done anywhere else in the country,” Lawlor said. “We weren’t really looking to start a new craze, we just recognized a gap in services.”