Identify who said the following:

"We can do all the enforcement we want, but if we don't help people find work, find affordable housing, get treatment, we'll just keep doing what we're doing, locking the same people up."

a.) a social worker

b.) a cop

c.) a minister

d.) a bleeding heart

e.) a dad

The answers are b and d.

James Hamm, the police commissioner of Baltimore, has instituted a program called "Get Out of the Game" in which community affairs officers "patrol some of Baltimore's toughest streets in search of addicts and low-level dealers — not to arrest them, but to help them find treatment, job training, counseling and other social services," according to a front page article in today's New York Times (free registration required).

Hamm's 36-year-old stepdaughter Nicole, according to the lead paragraph, "sells her body to buy heroin, living from trick to trick and fix to fix while dodging police officers who chase her from the street corners she haunts ..." The former star athlete first snorted coke at 17, and has been through the all-too-familiar cycle of recovery and relapse.

Hamm is quoted as saying that she hasn't reached the point of being sick and tired of being sick and tired. That reminded me of another quote in today's Times by New York Yankee outfielder Gary Sheffield regarding his uncle, former pitching star Dwight Gooden.

"I've done pretty much everything you could possibly do," Sheffield said. "It just comes to a point where you have to let him go through what he's got to go through. Sometimes, it is God's plan for us to back off and let him do it, because the family has tried everything."

Gooden, who has been through several well-publicized rehabs, refused a roadside sobriety test in Tampa the other day, and then drove off after handing his license to officers. Police, in the interest of safety, did not pursue his vehicle. Gooden has not surfaced yet.

It's certainly a positive sign to see enlightened police in Tampa and Baltimore. Perhaps their lead will lend some backbone to politicians, who think that rhetoric about locking up addicts is the ticket to winning elections. Baltimore's mayor, in fact, refused to comment on Hamm's "Get Out of the Game" program, no doubt fearful that he'll appear "soft on crime."

We've got to let our legislators know that treatment for addicts and low-level dealers is more effective than locking them up time and again. To do that, they have to get the message that being compassionate about addiction is not the same as being soft on criminals.

"We're going to deal with crime," Hamm told the Times. "This is not a feel-good, touchy-feely, give-you-a-break thing."

It's more like a common-sense thing: Fix the addicts and you'll stop the crime. And recognize that, as with any disease, relapses happen and need to be treated again. And again.