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Tom Carr

Senior Fellow

Thomas H. Carr is a Senior Fellow with George Mason University. He served as the Executive Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP) Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) Program for thirty years.

Tom currently serves as chairperson of the Performance Management Process Committee, Mr. Carr established metrics to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of drug control efforts in the fields of drug law enforcement, criminal intelligence, treatment, and prevention for the HIDTA Program. HIDTA’s Performance Management Process system electronically collects outcome performance data from 33 HIDTAs and shares this information with Congress on an annual basis. He was awarded the ONDCP Director’s Award for his work in performance management in 2004.

In response to the nation’s opioid epidemic, Mr. Carr has worked with the Office of National Drug Control Policy and other HIDTA programs on the Overdose Response Strategy (ORS). This strategy resulted in the creation of a public health-public safety partnership supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the hiring of drug intelligence officers and public health analysts. The ORS’ development has led to the unprecedented sharing of overdose data among law enforcement and public health agencies.

Mr. Carr spearheaded the development of the Overdose Detection and Mapping Application Program (ODMAP), a real-time overdose syndromic surveillance system used to identify spikes in fatal and non-fatal overdoses. ODMAP was cited in both Good Morning America and Roll Call newspaper for identifying a rise in overdoses during the Coronavirus pandemic in May 2020. In July 2017, Mr. Carr and the ODMAP development team received the Special Achievement in GIS award from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), an international supplier of geographic information system software.

Mr. Carr was the lead designer for HIDTA’s Case Explorer system. Case Explorer is not only a case management system, but also an event deconfliction and target coordination system in use nationwide by law enforcement agencies at all levels of government. Overdose investigations reported in Case Explorer are instantly reported to ODMAP, allowing analysts to explore links to drug trafficking organizations likely responsible for spikes in overdoses.

Prior to serving for the Washington/Baltimore HIDTA, Mr. Carr was a Lt. Colonel with the Maryland State Police, and retired as chief of the Bureau of Drug Enforcement. He graduated with honors from Towson University and was first in his class at the Maryland State Police Academy in 1971. He attended the FBI National Academy, the DEA Drug Commanders School, and the Federal Executive Institute. He served as an adjunct instructor with the University of Maryland College Park, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology from 1993 to 1999.