Bringing back a dedicated police gang unit and setting up a second navigation center in northeast Salem were two early ideas floated by Salem city councilors as the city pivots toward addressing drugs and substance abuse.  The conversation started during the council’s Monday, March 23, meeting when Salem City Manager Krishna Namburi presented a new city plan to find long-term strategies to help get people into drug treatment programs. Other city goals are preventing people from becoming addicted and strengthening law enforcement efforts to reduce the flow of drugs into the community. The effort is part of a larger city push to respond to concerns about cleanliness and safety. That began last year when business owners demanded the city do something to address issues related to unsheltered homelessness and livability concerns.  Salem residents, in an October community survey, listed drug-related issues as a top issue they wanted the city to address. The new program is called the “Prevent, Treat, and Enforce initiative. At the moment, it is focused on mapping out the existing resources at the city’s disposal to address drugs, coordinating with partners, and identifying gaps within the system.  On May 26, city staff will return to the council with suggestions for long-term strategies.  The process is intended to unfold similarly to the city’s Clean, Safe and Healthy Salem pilot program launched earlier this year, Namburi said. That program successfully expanded police and cleaning crews downtown and in northeast Salem, and stood up a new fire department-run mobile crisis response team for at least six months. Those efforts largely focused on downtown Salem. On Monday night, Councilor Irvin Brown said he’d hope to see his ward in northeast Salem be the testing ground for any future pilot programs. Brown represents Ward 5, which includes much of the Highland, North Lancaster and Northgate neighborhoods. He said it’s an area where Salem’s drug impacts are concentrated. “We have spent so much time taking care of our downtown folks. Northeast folks, they’re thinking, ‘OK, can we get a little bit of that love too?’ That’s where they are saying, ‘Hey, we want to be a part of this discussion,” Brown said. “If we are going to find a way to bring the community together, we can’t do it without northeast Salem. We can’t do it without those brown and Black communities. We can’t do it without the poor folks.”  Brown floated the idea of bringing back a dedicated police gang unit as one important step to addressing the issue in his ward and elsewhere. He said the gang unit in the past was helpful in working with people who were either in or used to be in a gang, or influenced by a gang. Police disbanded the unit in 2019.  Namburi said more focus is likely to be placed on northeast Salem as Prevent, Treat and Enforce is rolled out in the coming months.  She said the city picked downtown based on the available data, but that providing the same services for northeast is critical.  Namburi said Monday that the goal of the new initiative is to develop a long-term strategy for Salem using a data-informed approach that is heavy on coordination with other jurisdictions and community partners.  Some of the gaps city staff identified in an early report include a lack of police officers dedicated to drug prevention and enforcement, a scarcity of resources for youth, and a lack of jail space and public defenders.  Namburi pointed out that treatment is largely outside the city’s purview, so partnerships will be critical to the plan’s success.  Salem City Councilor Mai Vang said she’d hope that as the process unfolds that the city will seek to replicate its past successes. She pointed out the city’s success with Salem’s navigation center, a low-barrier homeless shelter at 1185 22nd St. S.E, that has seen half of its departing residents get into permanent housing.   “I would love to see another navigation center with our community partners out in east Salem, northeast Salem, in the area with the most need,” Vang said Described as the “crown jewel” of Salem’s response to homelessness, the navigation center hosts up to 75 people, while offering case management to stabilize their housing, mental health and employment. It’s run by the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency. The shelter opened in 2023 after years of effort and escalating construction costs. The city of Salem invested $15.5 million to renovate and open the shelter, including about $4.8 million for two years of operation. The money came from the city’s share of federal pandemic relief, state grants and funds from Marion County. Community Action Agency contributed $1.3 million. After June 2025, the city stopped funding the navigation center due to budgetary constraints. The center’s operations are now funded by the state.  Jimmy Jones, executive director of Community Action, said opening up a second navigation center on the east side of Salem would be a challenge given the current level of state commitment, and the city’s fiscal restraint.  He agreed that there is a lack of resources on the east side compared to downtown and said it shows.  “It is light years better than it was in 2019 (downtown),” Jones said. “But that is not true of the east side of town. And so you are seeing increasingly larger and larger problems over there compared to what you did ten years ago.”  Jones said the navigation center is only funded through July 1, 2027, meaning the organization will have to go back to the state and appeal for more money.  His organization is able to run the center for about $1.4 million per year. Navigation centers like Salem’s remain a high funding priority for the state, he said, but that doesn’t necessarily make things easier.  “Things could get worse, they could stay the same,” Jones said of the center’s funding. “There’s no dedicated long-term funding to support the current existing capacity.”  Contact reporter Joe Siess: [email protected]. “My go-to source every morning for accurate, local news.” Make Salem Reporter your trusted source for independent local reporting – every day. Stay informed and connected. Subscribe today. The post City unveils new drug prevention, treatment and enforcement initiative  appeared first on Salem Reporter. ...read more read less