LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
LoudounNow
[ Vol. 4, No. 20 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
[ April 4, 2019 ]
■ PUBLIC AND LEGAL NOTICES - PAGE 30 ■ EMPLOYMENT PAGE 40 ■ RESOURCE DIRECTORY PAGE 42
From Tragic Crash, Life-Saving Program Launched in Region BY NORMAN K. STYER
for a judgeship from Loudoun’s already overtaxed Circuit Court. Drug court, which includes weekly meetings with a judge, was deemed impossible with a shorthanded bench. But in a dramatic turn of events, in May 2018, the General Assembly voted to restore funding for every unfunded judgeship in the commonwealth. That gave the county government, which had already been studying a drug court, the go-ahead. On Jan. 2, county supervisors voted unanimously to set up a drug court to accommodate up to 25 people in the first year, with the help of $373,000 in county funding, five new hires, and $500,000 in federal grant money. And the people leading the new drug court—many of whom were involved in the last one—are optimistic. Now, there are more ways into the program, such as a plea deal, and the only major restriction on eligibility is a conviction for a violent felony.
Emergency responders in Northern Virginia are rolling out a first-of-its-kind program to help treat trauma patients in the field based on lessons learned at the site of a horrific Loudoun County crash. Inova Health System, Inova Trauma and Blood Donor Services, and the Northern Virginia EMS Council, in collaboration with the Fairfax County and Loudoun County Fire and Rescue Departments, have launched Field Available Component Transfusion Response (FACTR) to provide blood to entrapped trauma patients at crash scenes. In announcing the initiative, leaders from the agencies described FACTR as a groundbreaking program not available elsewhere in the U.S. that will provide lifesaving training and supplies to first responders—providing a dramatic increase in the level of care they can provide in the field. The program keeps large-volume massive transfusion blood products at area hospitals from where they can be rapidly deployed to rescue workers in the field. The program was a direct result of the September 2017 crash on Evergreen Mills Road south of Leesburg when a passenger car was hit broadside by a food truck with failing brakes. The driver, Erin Kaplan, died at the scene, but her mother and three children, all passengers in the car, were severely entrapped. As firefighters worked to cut the metal away, paramedics determined the patients would need blood before the hours-long extraction would be complete. They called to have additional blood from Inova Loudoun Hospital and StoneSprings Hospital delivered directly to the scene. That decision and the ability to transfuse blood products during the extrication was credited with helping the critically injured family members survive. After that incident, representatives from Loudoun and Fairfax Fire and Rescue departments, Inova Trauma Center, Inova Blood Donor Services and the Northern Virginia EMS Council began working to create a formal procedures
DRUG COURT >> 47
INFUSION >> 47
Sarah Waybright uses a propane torch to flame-weed a row of soil to prepare for Gathering Springs Farm’s first round of planting. The new Middleburg-area farm hopes to provide agriculture education, as well as fresh produce, to the community. See story, Page 24.
Patrick Szabo/Loudoun Now
Drug Court Launches Anew BY RENSS GREENE Seven years since the county’s last attempt to offer a specialized program for addicts was dismantled, Loudoun launched a new, improved drug court Wednesday. A partnership between a broad spectrum of legal, human services, and law enforcement agencies, the drug court diverts people whose felony offenses are driven by their addiction, whether it be heroin or alcohol. Offenders get a chance to avoid jail time—and break the cycle of addiction and incarceration—by going instead to an intensive, outpatient treatment program. From 2004 to 2012, Loudoun tried operating a drug court, but county supervisors closed the program when they decided they weren’t getting their money’s worth. Between the restrictive conditions on who could qualify for the program, and a stricter policy for kicking out offenders who fell off the wagon, relatively few people entered the pro-
gram, and fewer successfully completed it. Only people who had violated probation on a non-violent drug offense—not including possession with intent to distribute—could be channeled into drug court. “With all these eligibility criteria, we kept limiting the number of possible participants, so that was one problem: we had a very small pool of people that were potentially eligible to get into the program,” said Director of Community Corrections Jim Freeman. “For those that did get into the program, we were very strict. People got terminated for various reasons of noncompliance, and so the net result was, we wound up with less than 95 participants total, and only 26 graduates, over a six-year program.” In 2016, as the opioid crisis raged, leaders in the county government and justice system started talks to reestablish a drug court based on the lessons learned from the last one. But those conversations were cut short when in 2017 the General Assembly stripped funding
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