An education in local response

Sgt. Ian Huri stood hunched beneath a State Route 203 bridge just south of Monroe, interacting with a man in his late 20s who was living there illegally inside a tent on Friday morning.

The Snohomish County Sheriff’s deputy advised that he was trespassing on Department of Transportation property. Huri, who heads the agency’s Office of Neighborhoods Homeless and Direct Outreach division, was more interested in gauging if the man would be open to starting treatment for his addiction.

It had been a decade since the homeless man first tried drugs. He’d had had his wisdom teeth removed at 17, and the dentist prescribed him two types of pain medication. His dependence on opioids grew from that moment on.

Huri had asked the man to explain his situation for U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, who was watching from a few feet away, on a rough dirt path that led to the small encampment. A handful of people were there when Huri, his team of deputies, embedded social worker Elisa Delgado, who works part-time for the sheriff’s office and Monroe Police, and the congresswoman arrived.

On the ride there, Huri and DelBene discussed the agency’s approach to addressing addiction and side effects of the epidemic, such as homelessness, which was the purpose of the congresswoman’s visit. The U.S. Department of Justice in September awarded $24 million in federal grants to localized diversion programs, which are in place to keep people out of jail, instead connecting them with services to lessen the likelihood that they reoffend. 

The allocation was set aside as part of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2016. CARA included an amendment DelBene pushed for, the funds of which would scale-up “a successful Washington state model to help individuals suffering from substance abuse,” according to her office.

The site had been empty of squatters and fewer damaged items strewn around when Monroe Police Sgt. Ryan Irving led a group of volunteers there during the annual Point In Time count at the end of January.

At the start of Friday’s tour, Huri debriefed DelBene and the two accompanying deputies on the safety protocol they would need to follow when heading out to the camps.

Everyone wore a protective vest. If it came to it, the group would have to be prepared to make a quick retreat back to the cars.

The first of the two sites they visited was where Silver Lake-based international nonprofit RiverJunky had organized a clean up last summer. The dozens of volunteers who turned out to Rotary Park along the Lowell Snohomish River Road in Everett picked up 13,000 pounds of garbage in a few hours last summer. It took about two hours to accomplish what was taking the sheriff’s office months, Huri said at the time.

The second site was less than a mile from where 26,000 pounds of debris was pulled out by RiverJunky volunteers a year ago. Potentially dozens of homeless people had been living on a strip of land, previously owned by Dale Reiner, now by the PCC Farmland Trust.

Neighboring property owner Paula Peak contacted state and county agencies after what she said was years of disruptive behavior from the encampment. Needles and garbage would be washed into the Snohomish River that ran parallel to the land.

Huri said homeless individuals volunteered at both of the big cleanups. RiverJunky worked to connect them with services, and sent them off with food and necessities.

DelBene asked how many sites exist around the Monroe area similar to the second one they visited. Huri said there are about eight main encampments in the immediate area. There are more farther out, but they rarely receive complaints because they’re more remote, he said.

Huri went over the different tools he and his fellow deputies use to build trust with their clients, which starts with treating them as people, not criminals. When being transported in a patrol car, they are given the option of sitting up front. The vehicles used for trips to and from services have been remodeled.

DelBene said she sees communities taking a social approach to addressing issues that negatively affect the areas. They are trying to build relationships to reduce the impacts, which Huri said are anything from environmental to mental health.

Huri said he and his deputies know the likelihood their clients will relapse at some point, and planning for that is just part of the process. It’s better they know services are available to them when they have fallen back two steps, instead of 20.