A social worker riding alongside an officer? It's the new norm for SLCPD


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SALT LAKE CITY — Jessica Waters is a licensed clinical social worker and a first responder with detective Joe Taylor with the Salt Lake City Police Department.

Social workers are embedded with police every day in Salt Lake City as a part of the Community Connection Team.

"It can be confusing," Waters said. "Yes, I am wearing a police department lanyard, but I'm a social worker."

The social workers provide police with helpful tools. "I'm a therapist. Explaining the dynamic of, 'I'm held to a different standard.' If you share something personal with me, I don't have to share it with everyone else," Water said.

Police provide security and check for warrants. Social workers address housing needs, food, and health care.

"They're dressed in civilian clothes," Taylor said. "They're able to look at people and go, 'Hey, we're here to help you out,' just to talk with people."

The goal is reaching people who are vulnerable and connecting them with services, Waters said.

"It's a weird dynamic," she said. "They're like, 'An officer is talking to me and they're going to help me?'"

On this day, they check on a homeless camp behind a target store. Patrol officers have asked a "street family" to relocate.

"A lot of people don't have their families out there," Waters said. "They may be in a different state, so you build a rapport with one another. You look out for each other."

The team makes sure they have somewhere to go and access to health care. The key, Waters and Taylor said, is building trust and helping people navigate the system.

"How do we get a driver's license when you've never been a legal resident and you need that to get a job. How do we do it?" Waters said.

(Photo: KSL TV)
(Photo: KSL TV)

The approach is finding success. In the first year, July 2016 to June 2017, the program helped almost 7,000 people, according to Lana Dalton with the Community Connection Center. The majority of those calls addressed housing, substance use and mental health.

"We always stand off to the side until they clear it, until they're like, 'OK, we're good to go,'" Waters said. A camp near State Street is empty; the people have left and are likely looking for food. Waters plans to follow up. With boots on the ground, they say they can provide immediate help and solutions.

"When you take homelessness as a larger issue, it can be frustrating, aggravating, the solutions aren't apparent to what you can do," Water said. "But when you look at it as one individual at a time and seeing the results, that's when it becomes rewarding — to see them become successful."

Waters added, "Victory can be just someone trusting me enough to talk to me. That's a victory in itself. Or victory can be we house someone or we get someone into substance abuse treatment and they complete treatment." And that, she said, is what is keeping her going. One call at a time.

Social workers said along with accessing basic needs, they work toward getting people back on their feet and decreasing calls for service.

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Heather Simonsen
Heather Simonsen is a five-time Emmy Award-winning enterprise reporter for KSL-TV. Her expertise is in health and medicine, drug addiction, science and research, family, human interest and social issues. She is the host and producer of KSL-TV’s Positively 50+ initiative.

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