Niles to lead Olmsted County effort to include more social workers in law enforcement

Nikki Niles has spent her professional career moving around the sphere of law enforcement — through 18 years, she’s worked as a police officer, police academy instructor, and probation officer specialist. 

Over the next few months, however, her role will shift in a new direction: toward building and expanding a new program in Olmsted County, one that focuses on developing more equitable ways for law enforcement to respond to calls of crisis. It’s a job that she says represents the pinnacle of nearly two decades of work.

“I formally started in the role [last] Monday, but I started doing this work years ago,” said Niles. “Everything that I’ve done so far in my career has led me to this moment, right here.”

Niles is the first program manager for Olmsted County’s Diversity, Equity, and Community Outreach Team. She is charged with overseeing the work of four community outreach workers on the Law Enforcement Liaison Team, in addition to the county’s Pretrial Services Team (which Niles developed) and its Children on Incarcerated Parents program.

The position was created in July, after the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to expand a pilot program from 2017 partnering social workers with police officers on certain calls. 

Since the program’s initial start, mental health crisis calls have continued to rise in Olmsted County. For the majority of these calls, Niles says there aren’t criminal laws being broken — meaning police officers aren’t always the ones best equipped to help the person in need.

The expansion of the liaison program, she adds, is intended to add another ‘tool in the toolbox’ for law enforcement officers, and provide a more meaningful response to people going through a mental crisis.

“I think this program will allow our men and women in uniform to focus on the crime aspect of the job, and it will invite more space for our social workers to respond to those types of calls for service,” said Niles. “Policing has been this catch-all entity for a while, and that’s not fair — to the community or to our officers.”

These types of mismatched situations — when a person in mental distress calls for help, but is met with a criminal law-esque response from an officer — have too often led to people being thrown in jail, disproportionately affecting people of color. By meeting a mental health crisis call with more compassion and less force, Niles hopes Olmsted County can begin to address one small part of the larger issue at play. 

“We can send people to jail all day long, but they’re still going to have the same issues that at some point, somebody’s going to have to resolve,” said Niles. “If we can take a proactive approach to that, and offer them community resources first, then maybe we can help diminish those outcomes.”

Over the next few weeks, Niles says her main job will consist of filling out the three new outreach worker positions and getting the liaison program off the ground. By mid-October, she says, the full four-person team will be responding to calls. 

With a track record of success already present in the program, Niles says she hopes her team can maintain forward momentum — and hopefully, continue to build on what’s already been done.

“There’s been a social worker in this capacity for three years,” said Niles. “This is about growing and expanding on what she’s done, and taking it up a notch or two.”

Isaac Jahns is a Rochester native and a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. He reports on politics, business and music for Med City Beat.