[music playing]
[siren wails]
[music playing]
[dispatch radio]
KEVIN SIMMERS: My name is Kevin Summers,
and my daughter Brooke's case will stay with me forever.
[music playing]
KEVIN SIMMERS: I grew up in Clear Spring, Maryland,
which is a small town in Western Maryland, population about 400,
one stoplight.
[music playing]
I enlisted into the Air Force in 1983.
I'd never been in any kind of trouble
or used any kind of drugs.
So when I completed my basic training in the military,
they sent me to the law enforcement academy.
[music playing]
KEVIN SIMMERS: I was hired in by the Hagerstown
Police Department in 1988.
I was transferred into a street-level narcotics
unit, where we just did low-level,
street-level investigations.
[music playing]
During the 1980s, the Reagan administration instituted a war
on drugs, because that's when crack cocaine
was coming onto the market.
[music playing]
There was a lot of violence associated
with that, a lot of drive by shootings,
and a lot of street-level dealing.
[children shouting]
When Reagan was in office, he was big on the "Just say no."
Handcuffs and incarceration is the answer to the drug war.
[applause]
So I bought into that hook, line, and sinker.
[music playing]
We need more money, we need more task force,
we need more manpower, and more jail spaces,
and we'll be able to win this war on drugs.
[dispatch orders]
I wanted to make more arrests than everybody else.
If I caught somebody with a stem, a can,
paraphernalia, marijuana, anything at all,
we'd place them under arrest.
[sirens wail]
I just kind of looked at it as a cat-and-mouse game.
[music playing]
During my early days in the police department,
my attitude towards drug addicts and alcoholics
was that they were just weak-minded people.
I felt like it was a choice, 100% a choice,
and if they wanted to quit at any time, they could.
[music playing]
My daughter, Brooke, and I were exceptionally
close, especially through her elementary, middle school
years.
I coached her in soccer, I coached her in basketball.
She was exceptionally athletic.
But by the time she got to high school,
you could see that there was a storm brewing inside of her.
[click]
She withdrew from all of her friends.
Ninth grade-- finding cigarettes, finding vodka.
10th grade-- finding marijuana.
[music playing]
[car passes by]
In August 2013, I got a call from Brooke.
She had something she wanted to tell me.
I'm thinking, my daughter's 18 years old,
she wants to meet me and tell me that she's pregnant,
which, hindsight, I wish that was
what she was there to tell me.
[music playing]
When I sat down with her, she said
she had been on something that was horrible
and needed my help.
[music playing]
She told me she was taking Percocets.
She said she was taking them every morning.
[impact boom]
[music playing]
And after she took the pills, the only thing
she thought about was how she'd be able to get
the Percocets the next day.
[birds fluttering]
The only drug treatment available for her,
at that time, would be outpatient canceling.
[music playing]
Christmas dinner in 2013, that's where she told me her life
was spinning out of control.
[high-pitched ringing]
She could no longer afford the Percocets.
She could no longer afford to buy the pills on the street.
So she was now using heroin.
And she was shooting up with heroin every morning.
I felt like my heart was totally ripped out.
[music playing]
So we started calling around at different drug
treatment facilities.
And it was so difficult to check into a drug treatment facility.
It's much easier to go out and get heroin
than it is to get into drug treatment.
I'm the father, I'm a police officer,
and I am unable to find that help.
I am unable to provide her the treatment
that I know that is needed.
[music playing]
[sirens wailing]
[dispatch radio]
KEVIN SIMMERS: Here I'd been locking people
up my entire career, telling them, go get help,
and all I do is close the case, go on to the next case,
go on to the next person.
Little did I know, I'm telling people to go get help,
to go get treatment, and there's no treatment available.
[sirens wailing]
[music playing]
But Brooke wanted to succeed.
She wanted to beat this.
She did not want to be a drug addict.
We checked Brooke into a long-term facility
in the Baltimore area.
[music playing]
Within two to three weeks, we get a call from the facility
that Brooke had left.
So now she is working the streets of Baltimore City
as a prostitute to support her habit as a heroin addict.
[music playing]
This is truly, truly a father's worst nightmare.
[music playing]
I said, I have got to save her life.
I've got to get her incarcerated to get her sober
so I can talk to her.
I sent out an email to all my law enforcement
brothers in our community saying,
my daughter is in a bad way.
She cannot help herself.
So I'm begging you, if you come in contact with my daughter,
place her under arrest to try to save her life.
[dispatch radio]
[music playing]
KEVIN SIMMERS: Within 24 hours, she was arrested for having
needles in her possession.
We went to court, the judge sentenced her to four months
in jail.
[jail door closes]
[music playing]
During that time is when Brooke started
to get her sense of humor back.
She started to get her personality
back to where she was loud, and obnoxious, and outgoing.
I could see my daughter coming back.
[music playing]
That's when Brooke told me that she wanted to have
her own sober living house.
And she wanted to call it, "Brooke's House."
And I told her, I said, if you get out of jail,
and you stay sober for a year, you
continue to take your classes, I'll get you that house.
[music playing]
I started to see that this whole drug
war is nothing but bullshit.
And I really felt like I'd just wasted 20 years of my life
putting people in jail that serves no purpose, that
does nobody any good.
[tv static]
Because what we should be doing is
we should be opening up rehab space,
and beds, and rehab facilities, not beds in jails.
[flag flapping]
[music playing]
When Brooke gets out of jail, she's 19 years old,
and she's got needles on her record.
Finding a job is nearly impossible.
[music playing]
About two weeks after she got out of jail, she relapsed.
She went to a drug dealer's house,
and she shot up with heroin.
[music playing]
She started to overdose and they threw her out on the street,
just like you'd throw a dog out.
[music playing]
She got in her car and she drove to a nearby church,
where she'd learned to play basketball as a kid.
[thunder, rain]
[music playing]
And she crawled in the back seat of her car,
and she died there from a heroin overdose.
[music playing]
At her funeral service, there were hundreds
of people that showed up.
And the first couple rows were family,
and then the next 10 to 15 rows was
all police officers that I had worked
with throughout my career.
But then the rest of the funeral home
were people that I had arrested throughout my career, people
who were in active addiction, people
were in rehab with Brooke, or who were in jail with Brooke.
[music playing]
They weren't criminals.
They were people just trying to get by, wanting to get well.
[music playing]
[sniffles]
After the funeral service, we started to get calls
from people who have suffered from addiction
and asked us if we could help them.
[music playing]
Because when Brooke was in treatment, or she was in jail,
she would tell everybody that I could help.
That I could fix things.
[music playing]
So my wife and I decided about a month or two after she passed,
that we were going to try to fulfill Brooke's dream,
and answer Brooke's prayer, and build
that facility as she wanted--
Brooke's House.
In the summer of 2015, we started to raise money.
At the end of the year, December 2015, we formed a non-profit.
[music playing]
All of a sudden, the entire community
started to rally behind us.
[music playing]
And in February of 2019, we did a ribbon
cutting on Brooke's House.
It's a 9,000 square-foot facility located in Hagerstown.
[music playing]
We provide outpatient counseling,
drug and alcohol counseling.
We provide mental health counseling.
We also do medically assisted treatment,
and we also do job training.
It's exactly what Brooke dreamed of.
It's what she prayed for.
It's the most beautiful facility that I've ever seen in my life.
[music playing]
I can see Brooke in almost every girl that comes in there.
Whether they're hyper, they're amped-up, they're outgoing,
they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're joking.
I remember being in active addiction,
just wanting so badly to be a part of this.
Because I could just see from the outside that there was
love here.
And I'm actually starting to love
the person that I am today.
[applause]
[music playing]
KEVIN SIMMERS: She had a heart.
She had a heart for other people.
I can remember when I'm taking her to rehab,
there was somebody at the gas station who ran out of gas.
She's got, like, $5.00, in her pocket, and she
gives him $5.00 for gas.
After Brooke's case, I'm much softer than I ever was.
I'm the guy now that pulls up the red light,
and I hand $1.00 out to one of the guys washing cars.
The person that's a drug addict, just
remember that person has a father, has a mother,
has a brother, has a sister, and they don't want them out there.
Nine out of 10 times, that person out there
doesn't want to be out there.
[music playing]
Do something.
Don't just keep a blind eye.
Do something.