SALT LAKE CITY — By the numbers, police escorted 32 people from the Pioneer Park neighborhood to a receiving center near the Salt Lake City Police Department on Monday night, where nearly half went to jail and the rest agreed to enter drug treatment.

Most of the people picked up under Operation Diversion 2, conducted over 10 hours starting Monday night, immediately recognized they were being treated far different from before, said Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder.

Essentially, Winder said, the conversation went something like this:

"The decision is, do you really want to make a change in your life? Are you sick of living under a tarp? Are you sick of prostituting yourself? Are you sick of stealing to survive? Are you sick of alienating yourself from all of your family? And are you willing to begin the very difficult road to recovery?"

Within a matter of hours, people were assessed and transported to drug treatment facilities, which is unprecedented considering that under normal circumstances, these services take months to obtain.

All of this happened in a receiving center in a building near the Salt Lake City Public Safety Building that had a far different atmosphere than a jail booking area many of the people transported from the city's Pioneer Park neighborhood may have previously experienced.

People were offered blankets, food, access to legal counsel and "compassionate care," said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.

The overarching goal is to change people's lives, even if it's just one or two people, Winder said.

"When we started this operation, we thought that the rate of participation at the treatment phase would be as low as 30 percent. We would deem that a success. We believe now … it looks to me like our success is nearing 60 percent (to) 70 percent," he said.

Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski said months of planning went into the operations, which included freeing up jail space, establishing a center where people could be assessed by professionals, obtaining treatment beds and identifying funding.

"We are using resources in a very strategic manner, not looking for easy action but thoughtful and impactful solutions. I am cautiously optimistic we are making a real difference, not only on the streets but in people's lives," she said.

Biskupski shared an email she received from the mother of a young woman who entered drug treatment as a result of the inaugural Operation Diversion.

"She essentially thanked me for saving her daughter's life because she and her husband have not been successful on their own," the mayor said. The young woman's parents are raising her young child, Biskupski said.

"Their daughter is still in treatment and she again is saying, 'Thank you. For the first time, we have real hope,'" she said.

Salt Lake Police Chief Mike Brown said the operations have been strategic, relying on intelligence and thoughtfully conducted to "surgically" pick out those who need help and those who were in the area only to prey on the addictions of others.

"This is not an occupation. This is not a police state. This is truly an operation of compassion," Brown said.

Many previous efforts to clean up the area have been ineffective. Case in point: a woman the police department had been monitoring for about 10 months. Since January, she has been in and out of the emergency room 72 times for mental health and addiction problems, he said.

"That is every 2.8 days she's in the emergency room. That's about $1,500 per visit, and that's probably low. That's $108,000 in emergency room visits. That does not take into account the police time, the sheriff's time, (the district attorney's) time, everybody's time," Brown said.

"We have to help people. I know through the efforts we're doing right now, we're going to change lives. Yes, it may be one or two at a time. But I promise you we're going to save lives. And we're going to save money."

Of the approximately 90 people picked up during the operations last Thursday and Monday, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said 10 to 15 were believed to be predators in Rio Grande District simply to sell drugs to addicts.

While elected officials said they are heartened by the operation's potential to change people's lives and by extension improve the community, they are openly concerned about the ability to sustain treatment costs beyond six months funded by Salt Lake County Behavioral Health's operating reserves.

While state lawmakers approved a Medicaid expansion initiative for people experiencing chronic homelessness and people in and out of the criminal justice system during the last legislative session, the program requires a federal waiver.

The state has applied for the waiver and optimistically hopes to have approval in January, but it could take until summer, said Tim Whalen, Salt Lake County's behavioral health director.

A new president will take office in January, which could complicate matters, too, he said.

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'Operation Diversion': Separating 'wolves' from vulnerable in Rio Grande

In what state, county and city officials are pegging as an "unprecedented operation," police officers invaded Salt Lake City's Rio Grande neighborhood starting at 7 a.m. Thursday.

"I think it's critical we maintain the capacity that we've brought for our treatment providers. We brought along 52 new residential treatment beds. That's a very large increase in being able to provide these services," Whalen said.

It's early, but Operation Diversion is demonstrating "amazing results preliminarily connecting people to treatment," he said.

Multiple treatment and assessment providers are playing a role in the treatment component of the initiative, including Volunteers of America-Utah, First Step House, Odyssey House, Valley Behavioral Health, Project Reality, University Neuropsychiatric Institute, Clinical Consultants and Family Counseling Center, Whalen said.

Christina Zidow, chief operating officer of Odyssey House, said addiction is a disease that can require multiple stays in treatment.

"Our treatment philosophy revolves around engaging people for a significant period of time for a variety of levels of care. All of these individuals are coming to us in residential care, but then we will transition them out to outpatient levels of care through our sober living program," Zidow said.

"So our relationship with them in active treatment may last nine months, might last a year. It might last a year and a half or for two years. Then our engagement with them for after care might last a lifetime."

Upon passage of HB437, the Utah Legislature set aside $30 million to cover the state's portion of the limited Medicaid expansion program. A 30 percent state effort would be matched 70 percent by the federal government.

Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams said there have been conversations with legislative leaders about putting the funding available for the match to work immediately.

Both House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper, and Rep. Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns, who has championed the justice reform initiative, have observed the operations, Gill said.

Hughes said he was proud of the operations and impressed by the amount of preparation and undercover work that went into their successful outcomes.

"There are people that are growing a drug industry among the people there, which actually perpetuates the problems there and makes it more difficult for people to get back on their feet," he said.

While the federal government initially gave legislative leaders positive indications that the state's application for a Medicaid waiver to fund services for chronically homeless people and people in and out the criminal justice system would likely be funded, "we're not hearing those kinds of things now," Hughes said.

So he and other leaders are open to conversations about providing more funding for treatment, he said.

"I think we are willing … to go upstream and work on these issues because I think they are bigger than one city, even Salt Lake County. I think it's a statewide issue," Hughes said.

Just as the county needs funding to maintain treatment objectives, Gill said prosecutors also need funding to implement other justice reform goals. It is highly possible that the people who entered the criminal justice system through recent operations could result in open cases for prosecutors to follow for years, particularly if they enter a treatment program as a condition of plea or probation agreement, he said.

Considering that the Salt Lake County district attorney's and Salt Lake City prosecutor's offices handle 60 percent of the state's felony and misdemeanor prosecutions, the stakes are high.

"If Salt Lake County succeeds, criminal justice reform in the state of Utah succeeds. If Salt Lake County fails, criminal justice reform in the state of Utah fails," Gill said.

Contributing: Pat Reavy

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