"James" - MACRO-B Participant Story and Excerpts

From the MACRO-B interviews collected between spring, 2023 and spring 2024

“James” – a Black male resident of Indianapolis in his 30s or 40s. In his interview, he did not explicitly say if he had engaged in substance misuse. However, he did discuss the difficulty of entering recovery and related to the interview, who is in recovery herself. He also noted that he has been around a lot of people when they overdosed. He has engaged in harm reduction outreach, including educating people about Naloxone through his work. He noted that people seemed more willing to use Naloxone after learning about it, but still did not feel confident in the police and their desire to help his community.

Earlier in the interview, James recounted times he called 911 after a friend overdosed. He expressed the belief that police didn’t respond quickly because of the area he was calling from. “When you hear of a certain area, you know what type of people are there.” In his experience, people typically run away after an overdose. He reported that he has heard of people who decided to stay and help because they learned about Aaron’s Law. He believes that, if people see police respect Aaron’s Law and prioritize helping the overdose victim, they would be more willing to call 911.

“If I can see a police really, if a, if, if a police officer was educated about addiction and substance, uh, misuse and, and Aaron's law, if I actually see a police not lock me up, my buddy up and, And, and, And, and teach me about Aaron's law and say, no, you're not going to jail. Thank you for doing this good thing and saving the life. That's what's going to do it. But other than that, I'm running from you the police man. I'm, I'm gone. I don't know about no law. You don't even know nothing about the law. [Redacted] you need to be educated about Aaron's law because your initial thing is to arrest…But if you came and did that and gave them naloxone and, and actually helped save this life with this person and say, no, you're not going to jail. This is Aaron's Law. This is what it is. Look, I, we need more of this.”