Dave Suckling and His Work
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. Today, we’re actually hanging out in the cruiser with Dave Suckling out in New Hampshire. Dave, how’s it going? Welcome to the show today.
Hey mate, good to see you. Everything’s great, busy, but good. Pleased to be doing this with you and absolutely humbled to be asked actually. Love it. Well, we, we’ve gotten to work with you. know Zion was out there with y’all working, uh, doing some student presentations and training. And then I was out there as well. And I, dude, I love hanging out with you, but for people who are new to hearing that sweet, sweet voice, I, I catch a twinge of an accent, man. Where are you from?
So I’m from New Zealand, I’ll give you a quick story. I was born and raised in New Zealand and when I was in university I started snowboarding a lot and it started taking me around the world and I ended up in New Hampshire and I met a young lady there and we’ve been married for 24 years, 22 years. Yeah. Yep.
I love it. I love it. And you, you’re doing some incredible work too. So can you give us an overview of kind of what you do for like professional life right now? And then, ⁓ if you want to throw in some personal stuff too, that’s totally fine. And then I want to dive into your expertise, man, cause we got a lot to learn from you, but just kind of give us the overview of what life is like today.
So life today, I’m a chief of police in a small town in New Hampshire. At the height of the opioid epidemic, New Hampshire was ranked second for deaths per 100,000. But statistics don’t tell the story. Being in somebody’s house when someone’s passed away or someone’s struggling with addiction, that’s the story. It’s not per 100,000. It’s not this many. It’s the personal been in the house dealing with people that are struggling and realizing that we can do more as law enforcement really is kind of where we’re at.
Yeah. And you’ve done some pretty incredible work out there and have been a part of this team. It was amazing to see just the community come together to support each other, but you were able to reduce overdose deaths quite a bit. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Understanding the Opioid Epidemic and Personal Motivation
Yeah, is it okay if I tell you my why before we get into that? Because I think that people need to understand what drives people in different areas and different expertise before we talk about what we’ve done. Because I think that’s a really important point of why we as law enforcement are doing something that’s a little bit different. So is it okay if I go into the why for a little bit? That sounds perfect, let’s do it.
So, quite a few years ago, about six years ago, I attended an overdose death and it was a Monday morning and it changed everything I did about the drug work that we were doing back then. You know, suddenly it became very personal to me that we as law enforcement had a larger role to play, not only in arresting people and charging them criminally, but we were at the cold face of where this opioid epidemic was and we were dealing with it like literally daily several times a day we were we were dealing with with us and and I realized that we were never going to rest our way out of that we all knew that but we were in a unique position to offer help and compassion when others may not have and that we may have been the first the first group of people that were able to talk to someone going through SUD that was unique.
So as part of this investigation that we were doing, we were making arrests several times a week. Now remember, we’re a two-man department. So we were arresting a lot of people that were involved in this investigation for this overdose death. And it wasn’t different people. It was the same people over and over again. And I got sick of it. And I decided that we needed to get these people off the hamster wheel. But first of all, to do that, I’ll just back up a little bit. We decided that dying was too final. That when someone dies, we lose the ability to help them, to really help them and their family. And it was just such a loss in the community when we lose someone that we needed to stop that. So through the police department, we started this Narcan program. And I didn’t even really mean to make it as big as it became and is. But we’ve given out thousands of doses of Narcan throughout our community, like on traffic stops, like in the town hall, we have these overdose response kit people can pick up. And we made the community the first recovery friendly community in New Hampshire. that was part of it, was just stopping people dying.
And we haven’t had a documented overdose in six years in the town of Alexandria, which is really, really, really wild considering what other communities around us are going through. Yeah, that’s incredible. And you’re right that we have to stop the deaths in order to make a change and start moving from there. And it seems like your community was really supportive. mean, you said you have thousands of doses of Narcans all around the city. Was it a challenge getting people to buy into this idea at first? Or how did that come about to get so much support?
Innovative Approaches to Reducing Overdose Deaths
Well, really good question, but our community’s small, so 1600 people. So when someone dies, it’s really affecting a lot more people than just the family that are directly, you know, these people went to school, they were in clubs, whatever, together. So it was a huge, it’s a huge deal when somebody dies from that in our community. So it was a hard, yeah, like we were really pushing to do it and people were like,
And back then, six years ago, people thought of recovery as different. Like we were okaying drugs, but we didn’t know what we were doing. And now there’s terms for it, like harm reduction and all sorts of stuff that we were doing. We had no idea what we were doing. We just trying to stop people dying. And it was really that simple. And now, you know, it’s prevention and harm reduction and all these terms that people are throwing out. But we didn’t know really what we were doing. We just, I personally just didn’t want to deal with another case like that ever in my
Yeah, understood. Was there a part, like if someone else was trying to do this in their community, do you think that being in law enforcement, did it have an advantage or a disadvantage or like, was there a partner that was really helpful to make this thing really go?
Building Community Support and Resources
So yeah, so as we were arresting these people time and time again, we realized that not only were we sort of like dealing with them with the Narcan, but we had no resources. And yet I knew that there was resources around us. Like, I think there’s quite a lot of resources, not only in the state, but in this country. But it’s a weird bridge from law enforcement to getting someone in recovery. So we decided and I met somebody who was really influential with me like, yeah, we can come to the police department and help you out. Why wouldn’t we? And I was like, holy moly, we can do this. And I ended up talking to this recovery agency in the southern part of the state.
And I actually stopped the guy there, ran it on a traffic stop, and we got talking. And it ended up being a couple of hours conversation on the side of the road with my lights going, and his kids were bored, and we were fascinated. And I ended up going to this recovery group, and I sat around with this group of people that were going through recovery and I really wanted to understand a little bit more because I don’t have a degree in this at all. It was just like what can we learn on the street? How can we make this better? And I sat there with 12 guys and I’ve got to tell you I was nervous as heck to do this and we sat with these 12 guys and I asked them three questions. What does law enforcement do right? What do we do wrong? And what can we do better? And I realized then that we could make a huge difference if A, we learnt the language we could destigmatize our community, not only the community that I live in, but the community of law enforcement that I work in, and that we showed a little bit of compassion. Like these guys, when I spoke to them, they were like, the first time I really cared was when somebody treated me as a human.
And I didn’t really understand what he meant at the time, but now I understand more than ever what he meant. And it was like, treating people someone as a human but not leading their disorder be them, you know, that it was part of what they were going through. It wasn’t them wholly as a person. I just pulled over so you know, so I’m not just driving down the interstate steering in the camera. But that didn’t define them as a human, you know. What defined them as a human was that they were a brother, an uncle, an aunt, whatever. And as soon as I clicked into that, life became really easy for us. And I was able to partner with people and organizations that were getting people straight from our booking room, which is still unusual, straight into recovery same day.
Wow. See, that’s amazing. And I’m imagining anybody who’s listening to this that, our listeners are in prevention and recovery, and this is such a great position for law enforcement and police departments to ask those questions that you did. Hey, what are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? And you mentioned, I actually, love to dive into these three things that you did mention. You said language, destigmatize and then treat them as humans. Were there certain pieces of language that you’re like, well, instead of this, say this, were there certain ones you can share with us?
The Importance of Language in Recovery
Yeah, absolutely. And we may go into this later, but we teach this at the police academy. Every new recruit in New Hampshire gets a lesson from me on destigmatizing language like a recovery friendly language. And an example would be, it’s not a dirty urinalysis. It’s a positive test, not a dirty one. We don’t use the word junkies. We use suffering from substance use disorder or things like that. You know, and I’m probably speaking to the choir with your audience that understands this already. But as law enforcement, that was a real big shift for us, you know, well, for when I say us, our department, because we still, we still have a fighting with us a little bit with other law enforcement agencies.
Yeah. Well, and that makes sense. Language is so important because what we say sometimes is not what someone hears. So if we’re used to saying this word junkie or something like that, or even a dirty urine sample, it’s like, well, that’s what I’ve been taught it is. But there is a different way to say it that as you put so well before and make someone feel more human or it could destigmatize. So I love those examples.
And I, dude, I don’t even, I don’t think people know this. I’ve heard being in prevention for years. I’ve heard small things like, don’t say, don’t call someone alcoholic. They’re struggling with a substance use disorder. Like they’re a person who’s struggling with this. so like put their humanity first. And so those examples are, are perfect for me. So yeah, feel free to share anything that you’re like, they might know it, but Hey, they might not, too. Are there any other pieces of language that you think are good? There’s tons, I can’t think of any offhand. I should have bought a pad with me, but I teach at the academy with an M.Ladac.
So, you know, I’m teaching the why we should do it. It feels good. It makes law enforcement more legitimate. This is a yin to our yang as well, if you understand what I mean by that. I mean, I’m still making arrests and I’m still doing drug cases. There’s no ifs and buts about that. But by the time I get to arrest somebody. And I can tell them at the booking room, hey, if you do this or even you talk about this and suddenly you’re in front of a judge at the day of reckoning or whatever that may look like, you know, that you entered into treatment on the day that I arrested you and suddenly you’re six months sober, what a difference that makes for you. You know, and I can’t promise anything. I can’t say this is going to be placed on file, but I know through doing this for several years now that it’s really well considered, you know, that we put people into programs. But that took a whole nother level of how do we physically do this? You know, like how do we get someone into program from a booking room? ow, that’s cool. I can imagine that. But it feels good, man, I tell you.
Peer Recovery Response Team: A New Approach
It feels good to put someone in a program from a booking room. Like, it is really emotional for me that somebody will listen to us and trust us enough to say, and just surrender completely to this process that we have going on. But it’s out in the community now. A lot of people know what we’re doing. And at time of, we say, judicial interest, that people will ask us, hey, I’ve heard about you, I’ve heard about what you do, can I get into that? And I’m like, yeah. And we realized at the time that we couldn’t do it all ourselves, we’re only a two-man agency, that we needed outside people to come and help us. So what we developed with some federal funding was this peer recovery response team. And we have these people that we can call. Like when you arrest somebody, It’s not necessarily a good encounter, Like, hey, sorry, Jake, you’re under arrest, you’re coming with me. I’m pretty much, you know, I’m taking away your freedoms and people aren’t happy about it. So we, it’s really hard to move into that place where we can talk to somebody about the next step, especially if the arrest hasn’t gone well, like quite often it doesn’t. So I can sit with someone in the booking room and say, hey, listen, this is what I’m gonna try and do.
But it was really important for me to get somebody else into that conversation then and there that’s been through it. So like I was saying, we have these peer recovery response team workers that I can call and I’ll literally leave a phone by them and they will start off the conversation with like, ah, so you met Chief Suckling today, huh? And they may not say anything. Well, this person will be, and this is true, Chief Suckling used to chase me around for 10 years and I’ll tell you right now, he cares about you.
And that sentence alone can change a whole conversation. He cares about you because he cared about me. And this is where I’m at today because he cared enough about me to make a difference and show that he cared. And I’ve had several full circle moments like that recently that I’ve told you about offline that make this work really legitimate for us and such a good feeling like, like we can do this. I mean, the feeling of getting someone sober and into recovery and then seeing them a year later when they when you don’t even recognize them is better than any felony conviction I’ve ever had, man, I’ll tell you that for sure.
Amen, dude, that’s incredible. That’s incredible. What is the.. You said peer, peer recovery response team. How did you put together that group? How, like, yeah, what’s, what does it take to have something like that? Well, it was federally funded. I didn’t put it together initially, but I sort of helped develop it and really use it over the last few years. So it’s somebody that has gone through the process, has usually come out the other side doing well. In New Hampshire, they have a certified recovery support worker certification. Somebody that’s got that and has remained good for a couple of years. And we just literally call them in and they can get Medicaid going if the person’s eligible. We can get them, so we even have a sober taxi cab driver that will come and get them from the police department if we can’t do the transport for some reason. Respite Housing, if we can’t get them into a facility straight away. So they can go into Respite Housing for an evening that’s paid for by the opioid abatement grant, which is pretty sick actually. They go to the place, they’ll be looked after and checked in on and then the next day we usually get them into recovery within 24 hours ish so that we’re not sending them home. So that when they make their decision that we’re ready and we bring recovery to wherever they’re at, not where we’re at, which is huge.
That’s good. That’s so good. You’ve, you’ve been invited to share this, like share what’s happened in Alexandria and with the programs that you’ve helped, you know, bring about and, you’re a great leader because I see, I see you giving away credit and all these things. And it’s been fun even to just hear about what’s happened and how, like you said, arresting someone is not a great feeling, but you’re able to really get them the help they need and deserve and make them feel human in the process. When you get asked to speak on this, what’s a couple of places that you’ve spoke and then what are you asked to share about now that you’ve experienced this? What kind of things are you helping people with?
Sharing Success Stories and Community Impact
I was out in Minnesota in the start of February and I was out there for a few days with a federal grantee. I talk at this annual conference every year about it and about the work that we do and how to destigmatize and use law enforcement to assist with recovery efforts to get people through the front door. And I had lunch and I sitting down with a bunch of guys from the police department in a sheriff’s office and it was super casual. We’re just sitting there eating some buffet salad. know, everyone trying not to be fat for a minute. And it was really cool. It was just an honest conversation about, I’m telling you guys right now, if you guys do this, this will be the best thing you ever do in law enforcement. And I’m sitting there with two workers from a recovery agency and they’re like, we’re ready to go guys. Just bring us people.
And I’ve heard that it’s changed dramatically. And this is just over a couple of days. I did a community event. I spoke to local law enforcement. And it was cool. Just putting these resources together was pretty wild. And everyone’s talking about police legitimacy around the country. And this is legitimate. This is us helping people to protect and serve. This is it.
Yeah. Well, to go from having these overdose deaths and dealing with this issue on a big level to having zero overdose deaths in your city, it speaks for itself and your stories. So I want to encourage anybody who’s listening to this, share this episode with someone in law enforcement. Number one. But number two, Dave, I want to ask you this. If someone is in a coalition or they’re invested in the schools and they want prevention or sorry, they want this, what you’re doing, right? And they want to get the police force bought into this idea. What would you recommend they do? Or is there a place that they can go to like show them that this is possible? How would you recommend they start?
Engaging Law Enforcement in Recovery Efforts
So I work with a lot of prevention people that are like, how do we tap into law enforcement? And I’m coming out with some talking points and probably a presentation on using law enforcement to destigmatize communities. Because people do look at us, you know? And some people hate us, some people love us. But people do listen to law enforcement. A lot of community leaders think that law enforcement carries a heavy weight.
I get a lot of chats from people in the prevention sector that are like, do we talk to the local law enforcement? You’ve got to make it easier for law enforcement. We don’t need extra work. So that’s how we need to sell it to other police officers. It’s like, if I deal with somebody once and I make it really legitimate and I do the full circle, I won’t be dealing with them 10 times afterwards. And we’re getting some statistics back that show people that enter into recovery with some kind of law enforcement involvement, 75 % likely to stay in recovery, which is huge. We also need to change law enforcement views and what our wins look like. For me, and I’ll give you a story about this, you’ll like this Jake. I this guy that worked for me. He was half on the fence about this recovery stuff, as he would say.
And one day we arrested this guy and John goes, how about it? You want to go to recovery? wasn’t, John really wasn’t selling it, but he like offered it and this guy’s like, yeah, whatever. So John took him down. made the arrangements, took him for an hour’s drive, dropped him off. And while he was gone, I get the call, hey, he checked out pretty quick. I’m like, okay. We planted the seed. I know we planted the seed. John comes back and I said, hey, John, you guy, he left already. And John was pretty upset. He’s like, why do I waste my time? This is ridiculous. I’m like, that’s not your win at all, John. Your win was that he went there with you and surrendered himself to recovery once. Our win is that he did that. And you should be really proud of what you just did and how you talked to him and that he even talked to you about recovery. John goes, and I said to John, you wait. Give it a week or two. Sure enough, the next week he called back and said,
I wasn’t ready. I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I didn’t have anything with me. Will you take me again?” And John jumps up swears at me and goes, why do you know this? And I said, because we planted the seed. And I know that when he was ready, we were the people that he was going to come and talk to because we’re the ones he knows. And John took him down and he’s been a meaningful recovery ever since.
John gets a phone call every couple of times a year on major holidays to thank him for giving him his life back. And I get lots of those letters and phone calls and stuff all the time from people thanking us to get those letters, to get their families back. So it’s that feeling and that it’s really legitimate and that it’s just good work, man. It’s fun. Dang, I’ve got chills. I’m so glad you shared that story.
But that’s what I mean about changing what our wins look like, right? Because every time I’ve been in court and I’ve got a conviction, especially a big one on a big case, I don’t feel great, man. I feel sick. I feel sick that I’ve had to do this, that it’s come to this, that somebody’s probably suffered, or that it just hasn’t been good. But man, when I get a feeling that somebody’s come out of recovery, been in there for 30, 60, 90 days, and they give me a letter or just a hug. That’s pretty damn cool, man. That’s pretty motivating for me.
Yeah, that’s incredible, Dave. Dude, can’t say it enough. Thank you for serving the way that you do, man. You are protecting people and you’re caring for them and you’re making a change that’s, I mean, you already know this, but it’s having a ripple effect. Like people are coming to you to ask, how can I do this in my community? And that’s a sign that you’re doing stuff right. And being a part, a small part of it over the last two trips has been incredible to see. And so I can’t wait to follow you in your journey. If people want to get a hold of you or learn more about this, or maybe have you come train their officers, how can they get a hold of you?
Future Directions and Community Involvement
You’ve got my email address. You’re welcome to put it out as on part of this on the screen or whatever. don’t know how you do that. I’m not that tech involved, but I, I this a lot. people tell me that it’s really motivating and I’m more than happy to, to come and teach, give people phone calls, whatever it takes to get people to stop dying from stupid opioids and stupid drugs. I’ll do it. I just want to share one thing with you. So when we,
When we made the town, this just happened recently, when we made the town a recovery-friendly community, I suggested that every company car has an overdose response kit in it. There’s mine with an arms reach. This has Narcan, some xylazine test strips, and these are all given to us. These come at no cost to us. So we put them in the company vehicles like the snowplows and the highway trucks. All of them have them in there.
The old road manager, road agent, he came to me a few weeks ago and said, hey Dave, what do we do with our Narcan that’s out of date? I’m like, how do you know? He goes, I check it all every week to make sure we’re good. I’ve got it in my calendar when it expires. So I gave him another case of it and I said, just play around with the old stuff, we can’t use it. But here I am looking at this guy that literally asked me this question. So are we saying drugs are okay in our community? I’m like,
No, we’re saying recovery is awesome. Drugs will still be not good. And he’s coming to me asking me for updated Narcan. It’s pretty cool. Pretty cool moment for us, man. Yeah, that’s a great perspective. I resonate with that so much. Yeah, we’re not saying that that they’re good at any, in any means. We’re saying that recovery is great. Yeah, that’s awesome. I’d like to see the day where we don’t have a recovery, you know, or that it’s tiny.
But until then, let’s just keep charging. mean, we’re not going to do, there’s no one response that’s going to cure this country and help people. There’s none. It’s partnerships like you and me that probably five years ago would never have talked, right? But here you are, you come to the high school to talk to our kids. I’m not going to miss that. I’m not going to miss a chance to be involved with that at that level where we can be seen to be doing prevention. Heck no, I’m not missing that for all the tea in China. We’re going to be there every single time.
Jake White | Vive18 (25:51)Well said. Prevention is better together. It has to be. Dave, stay on it once I sign off. But I just want to say for everybody who is listening to this, once again, if you got something out of this, share it with somebody, especially if know someone in law enforcement, this episode is going to be so awesome for them. If you do want to reach out to Dave, I will put his email address in the show notes. It’s desuckling@alexandrianh.gov. to chat with him about what he’s doing. He’s so generous with his time and expertise. And for all of you doing this work on the ground, just like Dave, thank you, thank you, thank you. And we will see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.
