Harris County leaders out west to learn about new options for low-level drug cases

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland, Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia and Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson are all out on the West Coast to possibly poach ideas about how to treat low-level drug cases.

It is no secret Harris County courts are clogged with low-level drug cases. There are more than 10,000 small marijuana cases every year; the majority end with pleas and no jail time, but with a lifetime resume that includes a drug conviction. It's not a new problem, it's a growing problem.

"We've got to start figuring out some alternatives for low-risk offenders," Anderson said.

So this week, two dozen Houstonians including Garcia, Anderson, McClelland and public defender Alex Bunin headed west.

"We want to find some way to get people out of the system who don't need to be there," Bunin said.

All of them are out of Houston this week and into the home of the Space Needle, coffee shops and Super Bowl champions. They're trying to find an innovative way to keep chronic drug users out of the jail's revolving door.

In Belltown, a downtown Seattle neighborhood, it wasn't uncommon to see open air drug deals.

Seattle police could catch the deals on surveillance camera, but couldn't always catch the dealers. And even when they did, the sentences weren't always long enough to solve the drug dealing problem.

In 2011, Seattle police, the DA, the ACLU and community leaders came up with LEAD, which allows police officers to decide if a drug user needs treatment or jail at the moment of arrest.

"They didn't necessarily want these people to go to prison, but they wanted them to get some help," King County DA Dan Satterberg said.

The program in Seattle, which our local team is taking a close look at right now, allows police officers to give chronic low-risk drug addicts a choice: Go to jail or go to intensive treatment starting that night -- not just for drugs, but housing, job assistance and life skills too.

"These are frequent flyers through our jail system," Satterberg said.

And while it may not be exactly what Houston will do, the fact that virtually every local law enforcement leader is looking at it suggests something big is about to change and soon.

"I'd like to do it this year," Anderson said.

The DA says she wants to start a program to offer a way out of a pot case to as many as 6,000 young first-time drug offenders that would offer treatment instead of a potentially life-changing drug conviction.

It's not legalization, not closing the courthouse to serious criminals, but seemingly an admission by people with power to change the system that it might be time to do it.

"We just can't punish everyone for everything we think is a bad thing," Bunin said.

Anything less than an ounce is legal in Washington State, but not in Texas, so you can't bring the Seattle system into the Houston area entirety. The efforts of this trip is to move these discussions along in a much more serious manner than they have been.