Anthony Jordan has been working in the recovery field for 33 years — and he also has 33 years in recovery himself.
So, as the Multnomah County Health Department’s senior manager for addictions and prevention, he was ready to share his lived experience and professional expertise during a panel discussion on the County’s 5-month-old deflection program at a Jan. 29, 2025 City Club of Portland presentation.
Jordan opened the discussion by asking how many of the 32 people present had heard of deflection, a program created under a new state law to help people contacted by law enforcement to get services for substance use disorder. Most everyone in the room raised a hand.
Jordan then asked how many people had heard about the work happening with the County’s deflection program. Fewer than 10 raised a hand. And they were mostly made up of Jordan and his fellow panelists, Gresham Police Chief Travis Gullberg, and Tony Vezina, cofounder and executive director of 4D Recovery, and staff from Multnomah County, 4D Recovery, and Volunteers of America – all of whom support or engage with deflection-related programs.
Audience members expressed interest in – and a healthy dose of skepticism about – the County’s outcomes to date. In particular, many wanted to know what client success looks like and how the funding invested in the program — $4.3 million from the state through the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, plus $1.9 million from the City of Portland budgeted in Fiscal Year 2024-25 — will also improve community livability.
“The numbers are small,” Jordan said, pointing audience members to data updates posted on the County’s deflection website, noting the short timeframe since the program launched in September. “But given the complexities of the people, those numbers make a difference.”
Multnomah County is among 21 of Oregon’s 36 counties with a deflection program, which allows law enforcement officers and others to offer someone facing charges for drug possession to access services for Substance Use Disorder instead. The program helps connect people to a behavioral health pathway toward recovery instead of the legal system.
Jordan said people who choose deflection receive behavioral health and medical screenings that then shape a care plan that identifies individually tailored services including housing, behavioral health and medical needs.
“We connect them to those services,” Jordan said. “In order for them to be successful, they have to complete one of those services that’s been identified. We check and ensure that they went. If they do go, they are considered successful.”
He explained that not only was deflection developed as a first-ever program over a four-month period last spring, but that it is also in its infancy, having launched last fall, with a dedicated center for the County’s deflection program opening Oct. 14.
Vezina, with 4D Recovery, said his nonprofit works with, among others, communities and individuals to provide a variety of recovery support services to adolescents and young adults ages 14 through 35. He affirmed Jordan’s framing of the deflection program at this stage.
“Anythony is correct,” Vezina said. “Just getting a business up and running is hard. Imagine trying to launch a statewide business in a highly politicized environment, with under-resourced treatment providers, and get everybody on the same page to do something while the media is breathing down your neck about numbers every 30 days.”
He said 4D Recovery’s field-based deflection program has served 36 clients, 12 of whom successfully “connected to some sort of services.”
“It can take a person several attempts to get into recovery when you’re addicted to drugs,” Vezina said, speaking to his personal past. “That’s what people are up against.”
Indeed, Chief Gullberg stressed, livability improvements could take a while.
He said law enforcement statewide is committed to deflection, and he commended Multnomah County for “great leadership at the Commission and Chair’s office level.”
“Be patient with the entire process,” Gullberg added, “because I think we all want the same thing. And that is for a healthy and thriving community throughout Multnomah County — and, really, statewide.”
Still, as the nearly 90-minute meeting drew to a close, a skeptic pointedly asked: “If you don’t have any measurements or metrics, how do you know if it’s successful or not?”
“There isn’t an absence of metrics,” Vezina answered.
“There is an expectation that people are going to get help, and we’re using what’s called evidenced-based practices. In the most general sense, we know, scientifically, that they yield certain outcomes.”
