Keeping Communities Well in Addition to Keeping Them Safe
Judy Gerhardt joined the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department 40 years ago at age 18 as a dispatcher and recently retired as Commander of Special Operations, where she oversaw emergency operations, criminal intelligence, the K9 unit, a fleet of helicopters, and crisis negotiation and SWAT teams.
But she’s probably best known for her “extra-curricular” work. “They call me the Opioid Queen,” she says, because combatting substance use disorder is her passion.
Gerhardt adds, “No one chooses to be an addict, and no family is untouched by the crisis.” Not even her own. She confides that she grew up in a dysfunctional family and, as a child, had a lot of contact with law enforcement. She watched what alcoholism can do to a family and how law enforcement officers can help. That may be why three of her siblings also chose law enforcement as a career.
“I had to do something. I could no longer stand on the sidelines and watch this happen. I knew I had to share my experiences and raise awareness of what addiction looks like, who’s affected by it and what steps we can take to do something to change the paradigm.”
Gerhardt has seen first-hand the devastation of drug addiction. In 2016 one of her nephews died of an opioid overdose. She supported a friend as she dealt with her 17-year-old son’s addiction to heroin. One of her daughters had a friend who overdosed and died. In 2017, another nephew died of an opioid overdose.
“I had to do something. I could no longer stand on the sidelines and watch this happen. I knew I had to share my experiences and raise awareness of what addiction looks like, who’s affected by it and what steps we can take to do something to change the paradigm,” says Gerhardt.
After going public with her story, many people responded by sharing their tragedies. This inspired her to create a safe place for people to talk about solutions to the epidemic, so that families didn’t continue suffering in silence.
One of the first things she did was work with the Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors to bring together County departments—public health, mental health, emergency management services, fire department, coroner’s office and others—to collaborate, educate and raise awareness about the opioid epidemic and work together toward common goals and strategies.
She admits that there are challenges to changing how law enforcement sees addiction. “Law enforcement’s mission is to keep communities safe. Drug use is a criminal activity, and it’s their responsibility to aggressively pursue those who manufacture, sell and distribute drugs to vulnerable populations. We have to impact the supply, but we know that we won’t solve the problem by arresting our way out of it. As long as there’s a demand, illicit drugs will be available.”
The challenge is to prevent people, especially youth, from getting involved with drugs and the law enforcement community in the first place. That’s why she advocates for early prevention by working closely with parents, school and adolescent sports communities to educate them about addiction, that it is a serious disease and how to recognize the signs.
Another challenge is what to do when someone finds themselves or a loved one suffering from addiction and they don’t know where to turn. Not everyone knows what to do when someone wants treatment, and the window of opportunity and willingness to get help has to be captured quickly or it will close. Options for treatment may be limited, expensive and difficult to find.
She worked closely with first responders to save lives from overdoses. Naxolone is an easy-to-use medicine that reverses overdoses, but Gerhardt says that there were too many hurdles to jump to get it into the hands of law enforcement and other first responders. So, along with Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, she drafted Assembly Bill 2256 to allow law enforcement to purchase Naxolone. The bill passed 80 to 0 in 2018. Then she secured more than $2 million in grant funding to pay for the life-saving drug.
“Law enforcement’s mission is to create safe communities, but safe doesn’t always mean well,” says Gerhardt. That’s why her goal, now that she’s retired, is to use her unique skillset, many contacts and passion to build bridges between all of the silos. She believes that the faith community, public health, mental health, correctional health, criminal justice, schools and other stakeholders are all essential if we’re to have safe, healthy communities. The private sector has a major role in this as well. She wants to see private companies and large corporations partner with government and non-governmental institutions to raise awareness, eliminate stigmas and offer employment opportunities to people who have successfully recovered from substance use disorder.
Gerhardt ended by saying, “Long-term solutions are complex, but not impossible.”
