The City of Holbrook will be better able to address public intoxication if the Arizona Legislature passes a new forced rehabilitation bill in its next session.
Senator Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, will be advancing legislation that would allow municipalities and counties to regulate liquor sales and enforce a mandatory 72-hour hold of intoxicated individuals.
Navajo County Attorney Brad Carlyon has drafted the proposed legislation, which is an outgrowth of an ad hoc committee assembled by Allen including, among others, Holbrook Mayor Jeff Hill, Navajo County Sheriff K.C. Clark and Page Mayor Bill Diak, who represent communities greatly affected by public intoxication.
It isn’t unusual to see apparently drunk individuals lounging on sidewalks or in parks in Holbrook at all hours of the day. Frequently, people can be seen passed out in a doorway, stumbling across roadways or sprawled near a busy street.
Currently, there isn’t a law in Arizona allowing individuals to be arrested for being intoxicated in public, and municipalities and counties are prohibited from passing local laws to make public intoxication a crime. The lack of such a law keeps Holbrook Police Chief Mark Jackson and his officers from being able to simply take people off the street who are obviously intoxicated and hold them until they sober up.
“We’ve passed city ordinances related to possessing alcohol in culverts and alleys, and enforce open container laws, but we can’t pick someone up just because they’re intoxicated, unless we believe they are an immediate danger to themselves or others,” said Jackson.
“The container ordinances have definitely helped, but they don’t allow us to tackle the bigger issues,” said Jackson.
Jackson is in support of legislation that would require a 72-hour hold of intoxicated individuals in a treatment facility, as is Mayor Hill.
“Right now, we can take people to a detox center, but we have no legal way of holding them there,” said Hill. “If we could keep people in a center until they’ve sobered up, there’s more potential that that person might agree to get treatment to address their addictions.”
The committee’s draft legislation would allow substance abuse treatment centers to hold individuals up to 72 hours after they request to be released. Existing legislation only allows up to a 24-hour hold.
“There’s no question if we were able to keep people longer, we’d have the chance to do a more thorough evaluation and identify individualized treatment plans,” said Stephanie Siete, director of community education for Community Bridges Inc., which operates a substance abuse and mental health treatment center in Holbrook. Community Bridges provides detoxification treatment at its facilities.
“Right now, Community Bridges has to release someone when they sober up, if they want to go,” said Carlyon.
This results in many publicly intoxicated individuals spending brief amounts of time “sleeping it off” in a detox center or a jail cell, if a criminal violation took place while the person was impaired, then being released a short time later to start the cycle again. Repeat offenders are common in this arena, without any real mechanism in place to break the cycle through treatment.
The language associated with a 72-hour hold modifies Title 26 of Arizona’s mental health statute, which allows a law enforcement official who has reasonable cause to believe that a person is intoxicated in public and may be a danger to themselves or others, to transport that individual to a local treatment center.
“This (bill) treats public intoxication more as a public health issue than criminalizing it,” said Carlyon.
“Right now, we have no ability to send someone into court-ordered substance abuse treatment unless they’ve violated a criminal law,” Carlyon continued. “Here, a clearly intoxicated individual could be picked up and taken to Community Bridges, and a determination can be made by the treatment center if the individual needs to remain.”
The draft legislation also amends liquor ordinances, and would allow limited local control related to liquor sales.
Currently, municipalities and counties cannot limit alcohol sales. Proposed changes to law would include allowing cities and counties to prohibit or regulate the hours of beer and liquor sales at walk-up or drive-through windows, and prohibit or regulate the hours of sale of 40 ounce or larger beer containers.
To avoid the eventuality of beer and liquor purveyors attempting to skirt the municipal laws by providing prohibited walk-up services or containers just outside of city limits, counties would have the ability to set up enforcement zones in unincorporated areas.
Carlyon hopes the proposed amendments will be passed by the legislature, allowing communities to more effectively address public intoxication.
“We know from decades of throwing people in jail and letting them sleep it off, that it doesn’t work. We’re hoping that by treating this as a public health issue instead of a criminal justice one, people can begin to get out of this vicious cycle,” said the county attorney.
