From Deseret News archives:
S.L. hopes to cut woes of chronic alcoholics
Coombs is homeless and commonly found drifting somewhere between The Gateway and Sugar House. And most of the time, he is intoxicated.
Records show Coombs has been arrested and taken to the Salt Lake County Jail hundreds of times for public intoxication. Between 2002 and 2006, officers were called out to deal with Coombs more than 1,000 times. More than 600 of those calls led to him being arrested.
It isn't uncommon for Coombs to be arrested on consecutive days for public intoxication. He has even been arrested and sent to jail twice in the same day.
During a recent stretch between Feb. 27 and March 9, Coombs was arrested for public intoxication seven times. His most recent arrest was Thursday by Salt Lake City police.
Coombs is one of between two to three dozen people who represent a problem for Salt Lake law enforcers. Although their numbers may be small and most of their crimes petty, those two to three dozen people eat up a high percentage of the city's public service resources and are costing taxpayers more than $1 million a year, authorities say.
Salt Lake City leaders, led by City Prosecutor Sim Gill, Police Chief Chris Burbank, housing officials and Mayor Rocky Anderson, have been formulating a plan on how to deal with the city's chronic alcoholics — a plan designed to benefit the addicts and the community.
The city has already found success with its drug courts, mental health court and is expecting similar results with the new Sunrise Metro apartment complex aimed at getting the chronically homeless off the streets.
Additionally, about 18 months ago, government officials and service providers introduced a pilot program called Pathways to Housing aimed at helping the chronically homeless, many of whom also had substance abuse problems. Police helped identify 17 of the city's most chronically homeless citizens and gave them an apartment of their own.
"The idea is to not just give them a place, but also make them more productive in society," Burbank said. "It's a catalyst to get these people out of chronic drunkenness."
Prior to Pathways, those people cost police some $1 million each year for the times officers were called to a problem involving those individuals, Burbank said. Since the program began, he said the total cost to police now has been just $840.
The city has been exceptional in its approach to homeless and mental health issues, Gill said, but added that not every homeless person is an alcoholic.
"There's a lot of people homeless for economic reasons and not involved in any criminal activity at all," he said.
