Someone experiencing addiction is not something you should call 911 about. This is part of a HuffPost series looking at alternatives to policing. You can read the other pieces here[1].
Someone is doing drugs outside in my neighborhood. Should I call 911?
The U.S. has long taken a punitive approach to substance addiction, rather than focusing on harm reduction and public health. Because of this, more than 450,000 people, including juveniles, are currently incarcerated for drug offenses, according to a 2020 Prison Policy report.
Those people are disproportionately Black, Latino and Indigenous people ― groups that already face higher rates of poverty and health problems, two factors that contribute to substance misuse. Criminalizing drug use has not cured the country of its addictions; in fact, people recently released from jails and prisons are the most likely population to overdose.
“We know that when people get arrested, that doesn’t mean that they get help,” said Daniel Raymond, deputy director of planning and policy at the Harm Reduction Coalition.
Plus, calling the police on a person using drugs can be dangerous. Police have long used drugs to justify violent killings of Black people[2] ― Breonna Taylor[3] was killed in Louisville, Kentucky, when police entered her home under a no-knock warrant for a drug bust; law enforcement departments also justified the killings of Terence Crutcher[4] in Oklahoma and Laquan McDonald[5] in Chicago by saying that both men had PCP in their systems at the time of their deaths. The police officer who killed Philando Castile[6] in front of his girlfriend and their child in Saint Paul, Minnesota, reportedly did so after smelling marijuana[7].
So what should I do instead