HOLYOKE, Mass.- Sheriff Nicholas Cocchi and Holyoke Police Chief David Pratt announced on Tuesday their new plan is a six-day-a-week operation to better engage their community in ending substance abuse.

The program Hope through Help partners with Behavioral Health Network and is currently in its first full week.

Officers set up a booth in different parts of Holyoke where drug activity is a problem.

Teams then spread out and engage with the community to address drug addiction and offer mental health resources to people who may need them.​

“We have to engage. We have to offer hope, and we have to do it through helping people,” said Sheriff Cocchi. “Not chasing them, not necessarily locking them up, but offering them the resources and a hand of hope.”

The Holyoke Police Department started working with the Behavioral Health Network three years ago, and now is looking to focus more on using mental health services to protect the community.

Holyoke City Council member Linda Vacon said it will allow for more second chances in her community.

“If we help these people, then they won’t be in the arena of enforcement,” said Vacon. “We will hopefully get them on a new path and out of that grip of that terrible dependency that is bringing them down the other wrong path.”

Overdose deaths reached a record high in Massachusetts last year.

Sheriff Cocchi said the program has engaged with more than a dozen people a day since starting last week, and wants people to know the goal is to give hope through health.

“It’s a disease, and it’s a powerful one, and we got to treat it as we would treat people with cancer, diabetes and all these other diseases,” Cocchi said. “We have got to provide long-term care. Sometimes long-term care is just engaging and being present.”

The Holyoke Police Department said there are many mental health services available in their community, and there’s even a way to help get people to their appointments with transportation through AdCare, who is one of their partners.