Back in June 2015, Gloucester, Massachusetts, police chief Leonard Campanello announced that his officers would no longer arrest drug users who approached them seeking help.
Photo by nathanmac87/Flickr.
Instead, the department announced they would refer the drug users to treatment, and front the cost.
Gloucester has been struggling to combat a big heroin problem.
Photo by richiec/Flickr.
Between January and March 2015, the community experiencedfour overdose deaths — more than in all of 2014.
"It's a provocative idea to put out there," Chief Campanello told Upworthy, "But we knew we had to do something different."
Needless to say, there were many questions about whether Campanello's experiment would actually work.
How much money would it cost? Would it actually reduce the number of overdose deaths? Would drug users actually trust the police, knowing that admitting to possession could technically get them arrested at any time?
[For more of this story, by Eric March, go to http://www.upworthy.com/a-town...-heres-how-its-going]
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