FILE - The building that will house a Multnomah County deflection center in a June 27, 2024, file photo in Portland, Ore. The county has delayed opening the center until at least October.
Anna Lueck / OPB
Multnomah County officials announced Monday that they will temporarily halt the opening of a deflection center, where police could have taken people arrested for drug possession to access treatment, instead of going to jail.
Starting Sept. 1, Oregon law changes and drug possession will once more become a misdemeanor crime after state lawmakers rolled back Ballot Measure 110’s decriminalization rules this year.
The facility, which the county now says will open in mid- to late October, was intended to offer a path toward treating substance use disorders as primarily a health care issue, rather than sending people into the criminal justice system.
“It was always a very aggressive timeline to reach,” Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said at a press conference Monday. “Our health department has been raising the issue that this is going to be tough, that there are so many different components. And so, just listening to them, and responding, and looking last week at the actual critical path of what it would take to open, it was a pretty apparent decision.”
Until a deflection center opens, the county plans to use mobile outreach to offer treatment options. The county health department will “deploy behavioral health providers and professional peer specialists to respond to law enforcement in the field. They will conduct referrals, arrange and connect the eligible person to services,” per the release.
Pederson said at the press conference that the Baltimore nonprofit Tuerk House, which the county has picked to run the deflection center, will provide staff to do this outreach as well until the facility is up and running.
Just three weeks ago, Multnomah County leaders held a press conference expressing confidence in their approach toward deflection.
“We must offer people suffering from addiction alternatives to incarceration or we will be right back where we started,” Vega Pederson said at the July 31 press conference. “When the drug possession laws change on Sept. 1, it is so important for us to be ready.”
Across the state, counties are setting up deflection programs that function as partnerships between behavioral health providers and police. Lawmakers have said they intend the programs to be tools to get people into treatment, even as new criminal penalties go into effect. Each participating county is designing its own program, funded through a $20 million state grant.
The plan in Multnomah County was an ambitious one for the short timeline and the complexities of setting up new ways of working between law enforcement and treatment providers in the state’s largest county.
The county aimed to open up the facility, dubbed the “Coordinated Care Pathway Center,” in Southeast Portland’s Buckman neighborhood by Sept. 1.
In a draft plan released last week, county officials said the facility would provide law enforcement a place to drop off people who are eligible to participate in deflection. In Multnomah County, only people possessing a small amount of drugs would be eligible for deflection, including those on probation or parole. To enter the program, a person cannot have committed other crimes in the previous 30 days, or have failed a previous deflection attempt in that window.
According to the plan, the center would have an iterative approach. In the first phase, the county planned to have a certified peer “welcome and receive clients brought to the center by law enforcement from the moment they arrive,” and be a “safe place for assessments, screening and connection to treatment and recovery services,” the draft states.
The center wouldn’t be open 24 hours, at first, and would not have sobering beds available until the second phase rolled out in 2025. A county official also told OPB that people using drugs may not be able to go to the facility if they have urgent medical or behavioral health needs.
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The draft plan also raised concerns about hiring enough staff to open next month.
“While Tuerk House is making progress hiring and training enough nurses to safely operate the center, more time is needed to recruit, onboard, and ensure compliance with licensing and credentialing requirements,” the county’s release said Monday.
Once hired, those staff will need training and time inside the facility to develop processes, something they can’t currently do until the building construction finishes.
“The earliest the center’s certificate of occupancy will be granted is Aug. 28, 2024,” the press release said. “As soon as the certificate is granted, Tuerk House will enter the facility and begin training and operational processes, including safety and security protocols.”
They will also need to develop protocols for law enforcement to refer people to the center, and establish secure systems for data collection, the document said.
In the announcement delaying the center’s opening, county officials said the additional time will also provide more opportunities for community engagement around the facility.
“The deflection center is still the plan,” Pederson said. “The deflection center is still going to be something that’ll be a resource in our community for law enforcement to take people, we’ve just moved the timeline.”
The Board of County Commissioners plans to discuss the plan and finalize details Tuesday, according to the release.