Olmsted County expands program pairing law enforcement officers with outreach workers
Three new community outreach workers will soon join law enforcement officers while responding to mental health crisis calls in Olmsted County.
On Tuesday, the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners approved the expansion of an existing program designed to pair social workers with police personnel. The program had been in the pilot phase since 2017, with a community outreach worker embedded inside the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office and the Rochester Police Department.
The results of the pilot — widely considered a success among local law enforcement and policymakers — led the two entities to expand upon the existing structure.
According to Paul Fleissner, Olmsted County’s deputy administrator of health, housing, and human services, the partnership makes intervening in a crisis situation much easier — for the officers and the person in crisis.
“In addition to protecting public safety, our officers were trying to be social workers and that’s just not what they are trained to do,” said Fleissner. “Partnering the two entities just made sense.”
The county plans to have a total of four outreach workers staff the program, preliminarily called the Diversity, Equity, and Community Outreach Team. No new employees will be hired as a result — the county plans to shuffle existing employees around to take on the three new positions. Social workers and probation officers, among other candidates, will fill the roles.
Both Sheriff Kevin Torgerson and RPD Chief Jim Franklin supported the measure, with the sheriff on Tuesday noting the benefits a social worker can provide in a crisis situation — a situation he says has become quite common in recent years.
“In my day as a deputy, I used to take around three crisis calls every year,” said Torgerson. “Now, we regularly take three crisis calls every day. Unfortunately, it’s become routine.”
The measure passed unanimously, with commissioners noting the program’s potential to act as a guide for other departments across the state. With Rochester’s mental health crisis center also under construction, commissioner Sheila Kiscaden said she hoped Tuesday’s changes would be one more step to better serving people in need of help.
“We’ve been reacting too long,” said Kiscaden. “This is proactive, to move the path forward for a lot of kids to be healthy and whole rather than being punished for things that they, mostly, weren’t even in control of.”
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.
Cover photo licensed via Getty
