More than 50% of Philly residents have family or friends struggling with substance abuse. One in three know someone who died from overdose.
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The Police Diversion Program team poses for photo outside a Delaware State Police office. (Cris Barrish/WHYY)
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The two babies were hungry. The youngest, just a few months old, lay in a soiled diaper. Their teenage mother slumped on a couch.
That’s the scene that greeted a state trooper who responded to a 911 call from the manager of a motel north of Wilmington. The beleaguered young mother and her children were being evicted. They had no transportation, no money and nowhere to go.
The trooper realized he wasn’t equipped to help the family, so he summoned Tiffany Johnson, a Delaware social worker, and Chelsea Derryberry, a peer recovery specialist. The duo raced to the motel from their office at Delaware State Police Troop 1.
“It was just a bad situation,” Johnson recalled. “She was in distress. She had nothing. She had strollers, she had suitcases. She had limited formula. She had her two babies and this was a very young girl. And what are the cops gonna do, to be honest?”
No crime had been committed, so the trooper left matters to Johnson and Derryberry, who sprung into action. They cradled and comforted the boy and girl, changed their diapers and fed them apple sauce from their emergency food stash.
They began a delicate dialogue with the mother, who they quickly realized had mental health issues that prevented her from finding shelter and caring for her babies — the girl about 4 months old, the boy no older than 2 years old.
“I embraced her children and I talked to her as a human being, like ‘It’s going to be okay,’” Johnson recalled. “We talked and she felt comfortable.”
Johnson and Derryberry reached a private donor who agreed to provide diapers and formula. They used Instagram and then FaceTime to find and reach her friends and loved ones. Finally, they convinced the teenager’s reluctant sister, who has several of her own children, to take them in. They arranged transportation.
Over the next few days, the two women connected the teen mom to a program that provides care and resources for needy mothers, and to a state “bridge” clinic for mental health evaluation and treatment.
“It was a great solution and if she calls back again, we’ll welcome her with open arms and do what we need to do and connect her to services,” Johnson said.
The above scenario that unfolded this winter — mental health professionals working from police headquarters and assisting cops — was unheard of just a few years ago in Delaware.
It’s a blossoming collaboration that illustrates the new face of policing in Delaware and beyond. Prodded in part by nationwide calls to defund the police and reallocate money to community-based programs after George Floyd’s murder by police officers in Minneapolis in 2020, Delaware has joined other states in pairing mental health workers with officers.
Johnson and Derryberry are members of Delaware’s Police Diversion Program, a partnership between state police, the state Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health and the Department of Justice. More alliances with smaller forces downstate, such as Ocean View and Bethany Beach, are in the works.
Joanna Champney, who heads the mental health division, lauded her agency’s union with law enforcement. She said troopers have referred nearly 10,000 people to the clinical teams. About one-third have accepted their assistance, and 2,200 people have agreed to undergo substance abuse or psychiatric treatment.
“There’s clearly a need,’’ Champney said. “People are reaching a desperation point. So it’s clearly struck a nerve and is being really well-utilized. And demand for it is growing.”
Chuck Sawchenko, a retired trooper and former therapist who oversees the diversion program for state police, praised the clinicians and peers who work with the cops.
“They are absolutely phenomenal,” Sawchenko said, pointing out that follow-up contacts several months after the initial outreach often persuade people to get into a treatment program.
“The clinician and peer are experts at establishing a rapport with these individuals that helps them one month, two months, three months later to go to treatment,” Sawchenko said. “So it’s that follow up and people have gone to treatment saying, ‘I didn’t realize somebody cared.’”
In addition to the statewide diversion program, ChristianaCare, the state’s dominant health system, has a behavioral health unit that does similar work with several police agencies, including in Wilmington and New Castle County.
In Wilmington, the Partners in Care program launched last year. A ChristianaCare clinician rides with a patrol officer and the pair respond to calls to help people who might need treatment for drug abuse or mental health issues. A case manager works from the city police station and a peer recovery specialist meets with clients.
More than 500 people have already received services from the teams in Wilmington, often after multiple attempts to connect with them, said David Karas, the force’s civilian police spokesman.
“Sometimes it may be five, six or seven times where they’ll actually reach out and offer somebody help,” Karas said.” But sometimes it’s that sixth or seventh or even the eighth time when somebody says, ‘Absolutely, I think I’m ready.’”
WHYY News spent a few hours last week at the state police Penny Hill troop, just north of Wilmington, where Johnson and Derryberry have their office. Joining the conversation was Tom Beardsley, the program’s clinical director.
The trio explained how the program works and cited several examples of their work, but citing privacy concerns and the sensitive nature of their contacts, said they could not let a reporter join them on visits. While state police do not permit photos inside their troops, they gave WHYY News permission to snap a few shots of the nondescript office, where walls are covered with fliers and contact cards for places that offer services for clients.
On the wall, above where Johnson sits, a framed plaque reads: “What is coming is better than what is gone.”
Johnson said that’s the message she and Derryberry emphasize for clients they see in the office or out in the field. They’re called out to help people with problems ranging from abuse of or addiction to heroin, crack cocaine, methamphetamine or alcohol, to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression that has them contemplating suicide. They’ve revived several overdose victims with the medication naloxone.
“Just keep moving forward. Everything in the past is just old,” Johnson said, echoing the motto on her wall.
Beyond the partnership itself, one key unprecedented aspect of the Police Diversion Program is that a licensed clinician — that’s Johnson — and a peer recovery specialist who has struggled with drug and/or mental health issues — that’s Derryberry — have offices in each of the eight state police barracks.
The two-person teams reach out to people who have been arrested or had encounters with troopers. They offer comfort, an understanding ear and offer to provide counseling and pathways to treatment. They give out overdose antidote Narcan and fentanyl test strips, food and beverage pouches and hygiene packs with bandages for wound care.
Sometimes they meet post-arrest with someone in a holding cell just a few feet from their office.
Other times they take a so-called “warm handoff” from a trooper who believes someone is more in need of substance abuse or mental health treatment — sometimes both — than prosecution.
They visit homeless encampments or intersections where panhandlers have set up shop.
Sometimes a trooper calls them to a scene like the one with the overwhelmed teenage mother.
The overarching mission to steer people into treatment and away from the revolving door of the criminal justice system and possible incarceration for what are often petty crimes — drug possession, public intoxication, loitering, minor thefts and shoplifting — as well as suicidal threats and other erratic but not illegal behavior.
Rather than sending people to court — where they are subject to bail fees or detention if they can’t pay, or fines they can’t pay and probationary terms they can’t comply with — the idea is to persuade them to get the help they need. Sometimes police use the leverage that charges could be dropped or reduced and penalties minimized if people choose the therapeutic road.
Beardsley said that when the program launched in 2021, troopers were somewhat reluctant to refer people they arrested or encountered to clinical folks who didn’t wear a uniform or carry a badge.
“Initially, they weren’t utilizing us and then once they saw that we show results and we assisted them, we were constantly being requested,” he said. “But law enforcement has a specific role, so this probably took some time to get adjusted to, having behavioral health professionals help them.”
Johnson said she’s shown troopers how she can de-escalate potentially volatile situations with her calm demeanor and healing-oriented approach.
Derryberry, a tattooed woman who said she abused drugs for years and has her own mental health struggles, said she can relate to people in peril.
Their complementary skills have impressed the state police brass so much that, in 2023, they won an award for the compassion and expertise they demonstrated while talking a suicidal person off a bridge and into treatment.
“We save lives here,” Derryberry said. “They might want to jump off the bridge today. They’ll say, ‘F— you. I don’t want treatment and I don’t want housing. I want to stay in this tent’ or whatever, and they’re just really suffering.”
“We can come through with that hygiene pack and that food and just for today, they’re okay,” Derryberry said. “And their needs are met. And we come through for them a couple times and build a relationship and build rapport. We build community.”
Derryberry told the story of how she used her unconventional, spur-of-the moment approach with a middle-aged man with alcoholism.
“Both times he was just laying in the grass,” in the suburban Talleyville area, one time off Naamans Road and the other along Concord Pike, she said.
The first time a trooper had already made contact with the man, who refused assistance. But Derryberry, who was doing a ride-along that day with another trooper, took matters into her own hands.
“I just sat, criss cross applesauce right in the grass, gave him a cigarette and he talked about how he had previously had 20 years of sobriety and life showed up and he relapsed,” she recalled.
“He was drinking actively and I said, ‘Do you want to go to treatment right now?’ He said, ‘I’m willing.’ I said, ‘Okay, we’re going to have to pour that alcohol out.’ He poured it out right in the grass. I got him an Uber [to the MeadowWood Behavioral Health Hospital] and he detoxed.”
On the second occasion, Derryberry was on the road last summer with the same trooper when they saw the man again.
“We pulled up in a marked patrol vehicle and he started running away on me,” she said. “So I got out and ran. It was hot. I was sweating. And I was just like, ‘Hey, hey,’ and he was like, ‘Oh yeah, I know you.’”
“We met with him and he said, ‘I’m not ready to go today, but can you come back tomorrow?’ So me and Tiffany responded. We met with him. Unfortunately, at the time he was having some chest pain.”
They called an ambulance that took him to Wilmington Hospital’s emergency room.
“And he called me,” Derryberry recalled, “and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to get into Meadowood.’”
Members of Beardley’s team know they won’t reach everyone, certainly not on the first contact and maybe never.
“There’s situations where we’re like, ‘Oh my god, We couldn’t help,’” Derryberry said. “We did everything we could and they’re still out there and you pass them coming down Philly Pike or something.”
Sometimes people they assist relapse or get arrested again. But Derryberry takes solace in the success stories they have contributed to, tragedies they have helped avert, even if they might be short-lived.
“We’ll work with the person. We’ll get them where they need to be,” she said. “And like Tiffany said, we’re kind of early intervention. We refer them to treatment and services. And once they get to where they need to be and they’re connected, our job is kind of done.”
Another intangible benefit, Johnson said, is that people might see police in a different light.
“A good 50–60% will say to me, ‘The police have this program? You’re with the police? Oh that’s good to know. That is so nice that you’re following up with me,’” Johnson said. “It changes the public’s perception of the police and their role because so many people are just like, ‘I didn’t even know they had that. You’re following up with me?’ And it makes them feel special. So I think that’s huge. That speaks volumes.”
Sawchenko, the former trooper, said the person in crisis often responds better to a civilian in plain clothes than a uniformed officer.
“One time they were called out to an overdose and this guy had repeatedly overdosed and he was obstinate about not going to the hospital and didn’t want treatment,” he said. “So they called out the clinician. It was nighttime, and she came right to the house. And basically, according to the trooper, did a phenomenal job and talked him right into going to treatment that very night. That’s exactly what we want to do.”
Sawchenko said he hears one common refrain after a clinician showed up at the scene, called on the phone or knocked on their door: how gratified people are that someone cared more for their well-being than about locking them up.
“That is key to getting that connection made that a police officer cannot do,” he said. “That’s rare for a police officer to make that connection with somebody. And it’s not their job, quite frankly.”
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