By Meg Hamilton
Brad Kelly has a question: Does an arrest need to happen?
Kelly, a criminal justice specialist at the Wisconsin Department of Justice, is building the framework for a new model of policing, predicated on the idea that communities can identify and deflect at-risk populations to treatment and recovery services before an arrest ever happens.
Kelly’s vision of deflection as being proactive, community-based and connecting individuals to systems of care at the earliest point possible is the foundation of the Wisconsin Deflection Initiative (WDI). [1] Kelly launched WDI in 2022, and 19 Wisconsin police agencies are now active members. The number will not stay at 19 for long. Deflection is a new concept to many; Kelly wrote a working definition before hitting the road in his state, weaving police departments from Menomonie to Door County together in common data collection, best practices and partnership models.
The vulnerable populations WDI seeks to better serve will be familiar to any community in America: individuals in crisis, people living with noncrisis mental health challenges and substance use disorders, especially involving opioids. Homelessness is a related coriding concern. While individual communities must self-identify their own vulnerable populations, Kelly has particular interest in focusing deflection efforts on veterans and immigrants next. [2]
The mighty Ohio Deflection Association (ODA) inspired Kelly’s efforts in Wisconsin. Ohio’s vast formal network of deflection began in Colerain Township in 2014. [3] The Ohio Deflection Association cast a wide net in its formative stages to create a whole-community response to the opioid epidemic. Deflection efforts succeed or fail at the level of community buy-in and multidisciplinary cohesion. In Wisconsin, Kelly also cast a wide net. The WDI brings together coordinated response specialists embedded with police, treatment providers, city administrators, EMS/fire, peer specialists and researchers, working alongside police.
There are dozens of individual leaders and teams lifting up the work of deflection in Wisconsin. Three remarkable people, hailing from three disciplines and brought together under WDI, represent some of the change underway in the Badger State.
The trailblazer
Paul Winterscheidt’s rise to leadership is a recognizable one in policing. The chief in Superior, he rose through the ranks by excelling as a field training officer, evidence technician, specialty team member (domestic abuse response), SWAT team member and sniper lead, and narcotics investigator. But Winterscheidt’s journey to and within policing has been anything but ordinary. [4]
Winterscheidt never set foot in a formal classroom until undertaking EMT-Basic. He speaks warmly of his self-described hippie parents, who never sent Paul to public school. Winterscheidt had no GPA and no ACT score to offer. “Everybody has a different path,” he said, “and that path builds who we are.”
Winterscheidt’s professional career began at Gold Cross Ambulance, a major Wisconsin EMS provider, before he transitioned to policing at the University of Wisconsin–Superior and then the Superior Police. His winding journey included the McNair Scholars Program, where he studied alongside the local leader of Black Lives Matter. During protests related to the 2015 in-custody death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Winterscheidt was able to collaborate with local BLM leaders to create space for protests without interrupting city services.
Winterscheidt’s time in narcotics enforcement left an indelible mark on him. He recounts two individuals he worked with, both of whom were living with substance use. The first was a local man who approached Winterscheidt wanting to work as a confidential informant. The man did not want money, however. The 19-year-old pleaded with Winterscheidt to help get him into treatment or onto suboxone. Winterscheidt vividly recalls how many times the young man reached out to him and the dearth of options to offer him. Within days, the teen committed two armed robberies and ultimately served prison time.
The second person Winterscheidt recalls is a woman who had a significant trauma history and whose life ended by overdose. Winterscheidt says he wonders to this day if earlier intervention, by deflection, could have changed her trajectory.
Winterscheidt was working under his predecessor, Chief Nick Alexander, when Alexander pitched an idea for a new diversion program. When Winterscheidt found out the program would include options to refer individuals to treatment, he thought of the 19-year-old who’d pleaded for help years earlier. “Whatever part you have for me, I’ll take it,” he said.
Winterscheidt has been instrumental in Superior’s efforts to build deflection pathways. Superior’s program launched in 2018, with officer-led diversion through Officer (now Sergeant) Bradley Jago and a self-referral pathway. In 2021 Superior police added a first-of-its-kind civilian coordinated response specialist, Jen Stank. And in 2023 Winterscheidt ushered in a $246,000 grant to grow Superior’s deflection team to include a certified peer specialist. Remarkably, the growth continues. Superior Police obtained approval for a second coordinated response specialist to work alongside Jen Stank. Megan Jones joined the Superior team last month, as the program’s second full-time Coordinated Response Specialist.
Winterscheidt’s next mission is expanding deflection to veterans. He sent two officers to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania for formal training. The two Superior officers are veterans themselves and trained in crisis response. “If it involves a veteran, they’ll respond,” Winterscheidt said. He speaks with quiet resolve about the stepping stones to successful collaborations: fumbling forward, showing grace, building trust through open communication, building buy-in and assessing results. “Our role is community wellness,” he added. The ability to deflect community members away from criminal justice involvement and toward positive outcomes is community wellness in action.
The messenger of hope
In Wisconsin’s capital city of Madison, certified peer specialist Lana Hamilton’s deflection team hosted Winterscheidt’s deflection team in 2023. The two are united in their work, and like Winterscheidt, Hamilton brings her personal and professional selves into the high-impact work she undertakes.
Hamilton is part of the Madison Pathways to Recovery deflection team, going out in the field alongside police to follow up with individuals who have suffered an overdose or experienced a precipitating event with law enforcement. [5] A precipitating event can be any police contact involving substance use. Hamilton is a certified peer specialist with Safe Communities of Madison and Dane County and brings lived experience to her work. She characterizes herself as a person in long-term recovery, a daughter, a sister, a mother and a grandmother. [6]
A diminutive, bespectacled 60-something, Hamilton is uniquely able to challenge police stereotypes of what addiction looks like. She implores officers to not write people off as junkies or hopeless. Hamilton was revived with naloxone by police four times during her years of active use, and she speaks passionately about the value her life has and how she now helps others. Hamilton is a trained doula and works specifically with women who are living with substance use and often have shattering backgrounds of trauma.
As a peer specialist, Hamilton describes herself as a messenger of hope. She recounts the story of a woman she met on the other side of the glass at a local jail. The woman had become pregnant after being assaulted and decided to have the baby and place the infant for adoption. Hamilton stayed in touch with the woman for years and movingly describes her current job and life. She refers to her as a beautiful person and successful businesswoman.
Hamilton too is inspired by the Ohio Deflection Association; she attended the 2023 Quick Response Team and Deflection Summit in Cincinnati, hosted by the ODA. Hamilton’s voice trembles with emotion as she recounts Ohio’s mobile crisis vans and outreach to provide basic needs. In Madison, Hamilton’s role as an emissary of hope puts her on the front lines of the opioid crisis daily. “I see you,” she often tells outreach visit recipients. It is that ability to see others who have lost hope, and to carry hope for them, that makes Hamilton and the peers she works among the brightest lights in the Wisconsin network.
The academic partner
The idea of deflection is one thing; the implementation is quite another. Community members and the rank and file of any police organization inevitably pose the question, “How do we know it works?” Recidivism rates and long-term outcomes are sought to weigh the old way of doing things against the deflection model. Evaluation researcher Janae Goodrich holds the keys to that kingdom.
Goodrich is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Population Health Institute, and her extensive body of work includes the areas of drug treatment courts, mental health treatment courts, diversion programs and substance use treatment and prevention. [7] She is currently working on 11 projects, including qualitative and quantitative analysis of the Addiction Resource Team (ART), the Madison-based deflection team on which Hamilton serves. Goodrich’s deep dive into Madison deflection had a memorable start: She attended the 2020 Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program (COAP) National Forum with two other planning team members. By the time Goodrich arrived home to Madison, COVID-19 lockdowns were beginning.
Goodrich is the principal investigator to Pathways to Recovery Madison and Dane County and has served in that role since the project’s inception in 2020. As an academic partner who works with numerous police agencies, she has a keen view of what challenges exist. Goodrich says police are eager to get out and start doing the work; her role is to support and document the effectiveness of the partner relationships contained within a successful deflection program. Sustainability is key. [8]
Goodrich and her research evaluation partner, Erin Taber, collected and analyzed data from Madison’s Addiction Resource Team and have presented that information to the partner agencies monthly as well as in six-month and annual process reviews. The process reviews provided an opportunity for partners in the Pathways grant to see the demographics of who was being referred to the Addiction Resource Team compared to the demographics of Madison. Goodrich’s data analysis also provided proxies for successful outcomes; one was if an individual was not identified as having a subsequent overdose after a visit from ART.
Crucially, Goodrich was able to redefine a “successful” outreach visit. Success could mean the team located the intended visit recipient. A visit could also be successful if the team spoke with collateral contacts and provided meaningful support or referral to resources. If the team went to visit a person who survived an overdose and that person was not home but a family member was and wanted naloxone and resources, that visit was deemed successful. Goodrich also tracked what categories of resource referrals were given, from housing help to SUD treatment to employment assistance.
Evidence-based policing requires a body of work, ideally not collected by or analyzed by the practitioners doing the work. Goodrich lends not only her expertise and professional passion but also credibility and accountability to the Pathways deflection team.
Conclusion
Police leaders, certified peer specialists and academic partners are essential to the growing network of deflection in Wisconsin. So too are local treatment centers, addiction medicine practitioners, civic leaders, faith-based organizations and EMS/fire. In Milwaukee, the city’s fire department holds a COSSUP (Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant and Substance Use Program) grant that links overdose survivors with recovery resources and treatment options. [9] Milwaukee Fire Department’s dedicated teams are coined MORI, or Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative. MORI hosted Madison’s deflection team in 2023 to discuss harm reduction, data collection and the best use of peer specialists (who are embedded in both teams) to reach the most people. Wisconsin’s constellation of hope is growing, shepherded by Kelly and held aloft by remarkable people like Winterscheidt, Hamilton and Goodrich.
References
1. Wisconsin Deflection Initiative. Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.
2. Brad Kelly. Personal interview. April 5, 2024.
3. ODA: History. Ohio Deflection Association.
4. Paul Winterscheidt. Personal interview. April 19, 2024.
5. Goodrich J, Taber E. Pathways to Recovery Madison and Dane County: Preliminary Evaluation Report. University of Wisconsin Public Health Institute. April 2022.
6. Lana Hamilton. Personal interview. May 2, 2024.
7. Goodrich J. Evaluation researcher. Population Health Institute.
8. Janae Goodrich. Personal interview. May 3, 2024.
9. Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative Project. Bureau of Justice. December 2021.
About the author
Meg Hamilton is a night shift patrol sergeant for the University of Wisconsin–Madison Police Department (UWPD). Prior to that, she worked for the Madison Police Department for 16 years. She was a founding supervisor of the Madison-based Pathways to Recovery deflection team and has been recognized locally and nationally for her innovative work. In 2023 Hamilton delivered a national webinar in the Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative (PAARI) Spotlight Series as supervisor to a featured model site of deflection. She was also the keynote speaker in London, England for the 2023 New Blue fellowship, discussing how to be a catalyst for change within policing organizations. Meg lost her only sister to substance use on July 9, 2021. Out of that loss, she seeks to put resource connection and deflection at the forefront of the work she touches.