EVERETT — John Taylor got arrested for trespassing recently.
“I was underneath a bridge practicing my guitar,” Taylor said. The bridge was posted “no trespassing,” and that earned him a potential $1,000 fine and up to 90 days in jail.
Taylor has been homeless on and off for about 20 years. He estimated he’s spent a total of about 15 years in one jail or another for any number of crimes, so getting arrested again was not a big surprise.
What came next was different. The arresting officer referred him to the city’s new work crew program.
The bargain is simple on its face: report to the crew for two days, pick up garbage along Broadway and the ticket and accompanying court date go away.
Fail to show up, or not finish the second day, and you go to court. Back into the criminal justice system.
“It’s a good idea for people thinking about the future and to see where you’re at,” Taylor said Wednesday, on his first day of work crew. “This has been good. It gets people a chance to say, ‘Hey, if I don’t straighten out, it’s going to be worse than it is.’ ”
“I’m tired of going to jail,” he added.
Taylor has had a rough life. He looks older than his 50 years, a product of living on the streets and a 30-year drug habit he said he finally kicked about eight years ago.
He also doesn’t have any higher education or work skills. What he does have is ADHD, which, when not being treated with medication, can make him so unruly that one former landlord accused him of being on meth and kicked him out.
He talks a mile a minute and has trouble focusing on a single topic for an extended length of time.
He knows he needs help, and he said he’s grateful for the opportunity the work crew is providing him.
“I had a fear the next time I’d go to jail I’ll die in there,” Taylor said.
The city’s program is not just about the manual labor, but what happens while the work is under way.
Jack Jessup retired after 27 years with the Everett Police Department to take the job as work crew supervisor for Friendship Diversion Services.
“I was told about this program and they told me I would be a perfect fit because I was already doing this sort of thing as a police officer,” Jessup said.
“This sort of thing” isn’t garbage detail. It’s outreach to the city’s large population of street people with the intention of getting them the help they need, whether it’s addiction treatment, mental health counseling or just stable housing.
The police department created its new Community Outreach and Enforcement Team with the intent of getting people off the street in ways that don’t include jail time. It’s all part of Everett’s Safe Streets Plan, which is the city’s implementation of Streets Initiative Task Force recommendations.
Candidates for the work crew can only have been arrested for nonviolent misdemeanors.
The program was launched April 11. During the first month of operations, police officers have referred about 25 arrestees, Jessup said.
Of those 25, only about 12 showed up, and three of those 12 couldn’t complete the second day of work crew, Jessup said.
“I’ve had people come in for one day, and they’re so dope-sick they can’t do the second day,” Jessup said.
If Taylor and one other person in the program complete their obligations, then nine people will have completed the program and gotten their charges dropped.
That 36 percent success rate is pretty good for this kind of a program, city prosecutor Hil Kaman said.
“You’re starting with a population that struggles with drug addiction, mental health, homelessness, not the kind of stabilizing factors that allow people to show up at certain times on certain days,” Kaman said. “This population in particular has not been successful in other diversion programs.”
The goal of the work crew program is threefold, Kaman said. First of all, it is good for the participant, because they get their ticket dismissed and an appointment for necessary services. The city also benefits because work crews are more cost-effective than prosecution. Lastly, the community benefits because some garbage gets picked up.
Picking up garbage in and of itself doesn’t really reduce the likelihood of relapsing into criminal behavior, Kaman said.
Instead, the real benefit comes with directing the participant into social services, and helping them get into a position where they are better able to feel responsibility toward the community, follow rules, take care of where they live and plan for the future.
“That’s where the hope is that the recidivism reduction would come from, using these soft skills as a stepping stone to making changes in their lives,” Kaman said.
When Jessup gets candidates for the work crew, they’re told to show up at the Everett Gospel Mission at 8:45 a.m. on the first day. Keeping that appointment is the first test.
The participants are issued a uniform, garbage bags and gloves. For three hours in the morning they pick up trash along Broadway. Then it’s time to break for lunch at Jessup’s office near Xfinity Arena.
During lunch, Jessup talks with the candidates, perhaps gives them literature or shows a motivational video, and sets up appointments for whatever social services they need next.
Then it’s back for the afternoon shift: three more hours of garbage detail.
On day two, they do it all over again.
How the participants fare varies. Some do fine, others struggle, either because they’re suffering from withdrawal or simply because they haven’t worked for years.
“They do a couple hours and it’s hard on them because they haven’t worked for so long,” Jessup said.
“I had one guy last week; he did two days, but he was hurting on heroin,” he said.
Jessup also set up an appointment with a treatment program for that person. So far everyone who has made it through the two days told Jessup they were willing to take that next step.
Not every person picked up off the street is a good candidate. The city has other programs targeting other populations, such as the Mental Health Alternatives Program in Everett Municipal Court or the CHART program, which targets those people who use up a disproportionate amount of police, emergency and jail resources.
“One of the things we learned from the Streets Initiative that is we need a spectrum of diversions,” Kaman said.
The work crew program targets a different population. They’re not as bad off as those in the CHART program, but they’re not stable enough to succeed in diversion programs that rely on the participant having a mailing address and the ability to schedule appointments weeks in advance.
“The only way it works with this population is doing it very immediately upon contact,” Kaman said.
Taylor, who’s been sleeping in a doorway lately (“I’ve got permission,” he said), is one of those people. A police officer drove by Wednesday morning to make sure he was awake and would keep his appointment with Jessup.
“They’re caring cops,” he said.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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