Following hard drugs’ recriminalization on September 1, Tillamook County officials are working to stand up a deflection program for those caught in possession of hard drugs going forward.
While the program itself will be the purview of healthcare and mental health providers, both Tillamook County Sheriff Josh Brown and District Attorney Aubrey Olson will have to sign off on the program. Brown’s deputies will also be in charge of determining whether individuals should be referred to the program or face charges, with Olson and her staff in charge of prosecuting those charged.
House Bill 4002 was passed by the Oregon legislature this spring and recriminalized the possession of hard drugs in the state after Measure 110 decriminalized it in 2020. The bill gave counties the opportunity and funding to set up drug deflection programs that would prioritize treatment over prosecution while also creating a new class of drug enforcement misdemeanors.
Tillamook County is working to establish its deflection program, with the Local Public Safety Coordinating Committee leading the development. Once the program is set up, those found in possession of drugs will be referred without being arrested or charged based on law enforcement officers’ judgement.
Brown said that his deputies would have the option to refer those in possession of hard drugs to the program, but they would also have the option of taking them to jail or issuing a citation.
Making that determination will be left to individual deputies’ judgment and Brown said that his staff will be well-informed of the program’s specifics and use that knowledge and their training and experience to decide how to proceed in each situation. “We trust them to do their job, we train them to do their job, they have ethical guidelines that put them in this position where making a decision like that is going to be second nature to them,” Brown said.
Brown clarified that a referral to the program would deflect a person away from the criminal justice system but that if they failed to begin or complete the program, charges could still be brought later.
While Brown said that he agreed with Measure 110’s aim of addressing substance use disorders outside of the criminal justice system, he believed the lack of accountability it created had rendered law enforcement toothless. Consequently, Brown said that for the deflection program to receive his approval, it would need to require ongoing accountability through completion of the program.
“I want a program that has accountability so that those that do get entered into it have the greatest opportunity to be successful at kicking their addiction,” Brown said. “That’s the whole point of this so if we’re not working towards that there’s no point.”
Tillamook County District Attorney Aubrey Olson will also be asked to sign off on the program, but her office will have no direct involvement once it launches, since participants will be deflected away from prosecution.
Nonetheless, Olson’s office will once again have a role to play for individuals who law enforcement officers determine are not good candidates for deflection. House Bill 4002 instituted several penalties for drug possession, with the most basic being a new unclassified misdemeanor specifically geared at drug enforcement.
Olson said that people charged with this misdemeanor will be eligible for a diversion program, similar to the deflection program but with more stringent conditions, akin to those for probation, attached. The diversion program will offer treatment to participants, and they will face up to 180 days in jail and 18 months’ probation should they fail to complete it, though Olson noted that in her experience, judges give participants considerable leeway if they experience setbacks or relapses in similar programs.
“The court system today is designed to give people as many chances as reasonably possible,” Olson said.
So far, Olson said that she hasn’t seen any drug enforcement misdemeanor cases come across her desk and that she expects many of the cases that she sees involving those charges will also involve other, more serious alleged crimes.
Initially, Olson said that she was doubtful that her office would be able to prosecute misdemeanor possession charges because of severe limitations staff time and the ongoing public defender shortage in the state. She said that she was wary of taking on too many drug possession cases and ending up in a situation where a more serious crime could not be prosecuted because of a lack of attorneys available to represent the state and defendant.
But after more consideration, Olson said that she plans to prosecute whatever cases are referred to her and reevaluate if there is a deluge of drug possession charges.
Much like Brown, Olson said that she felt Measure 110 had compromised her ability to address issues related to drug usage in the county. In her office’s case, the absence of charges to bring against those in possession prevented attorneys from working with defendants to investigate and prosecute those higher up the supply chain. “I felt like measure 110 took the table legs out from under law enforcement,” Olson said.
With penalties back on the table, Olson said that she hopes to be able to go after the sources of drugs entering the community to turn the tide on what she feels has been a rising tide of assaults and violent crimes since Measure 110 passed.
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