The Newport Police Department is following suit of others in the county by considering adding a police social worker position.
On Dec. 9, the Newport City Commission heard the first reading of an ordinance adding the position to the police department. Utilizing police social workers helps to limit the number of calls police officers have to respond to situations far outside their training, such as with crisis intervention.
Newport Police Chief Chris Fangman said he has been working to ensure the department uses the opioid settlement funds appropriately, which are paying for the role.
Kentucky is set to receive $478 million as its share of two national settlement agreements. The agreements require manufacturers and distributors who flooded the states with opioids to settle 4,000 claims by state and local governments that they created and fueled the opioid epidemic.
Municipalities in Kentucky can apply for a share of the funds, but there are restrictions on how the funds can be used. Providing a dedicated social worker available through and in support of police departments fits the requirements to receive the funds.
“To date, the opioid settlement money has primarily been used for Narcan in a very limited scope,” Newport Mayor Tom Guidugli Jr. said. “The funds are available, and this is a viable spend.”
Fangman said the process took slightly longer than he wanted to ensure compliance. He also said one of his original concerns was opioid overdoses being down significantly, with meth use being up across the board. He said they were looking at it from the perspective of its opioid settlement money. Would they be able to apply the money to things outside of opioids, which are on the downturn?
“With any settlement funding, the audits are coming,” Fangman said. “We have had to work with finance diligently to ensure that this is going to be an auditable situation and to make sure we’re in full compliance no matter what.”
Fangman said he was excited to start the process of hiring the police social worker. He said a police officer in uniform can sometimes be inherently intimidating and trigger feelings for some people.
“A lot of my officers are crisis intervention trained,” Fangman said. “Through that training, we do understand that it’s important to have the right person talking someone through a mental health crisis or a drug abuse crisis right then.”
Fangman said while a police officer is trained to deal with criminals, aside from their 40 hours of crisis intervention training, they are not experts on things like mental illness and substance use disorders, which is where the police social worker comes in.
“They’ll be able to do what I call detective-style work,” he said. “They’re going to do a lot of follow-ups. They’re going to develop relationships. They’re going to ensure that the people of Newport know every avenue there is to get help.”
Fangman said the social worker will have a caseload and work with people regularly. The position will also be on call, including in the middle of the night, should a police officer need their service.
“It’s going to be very demanding,” Fangman said. “We’re very excited to find the right person to fill that position for the residents of Newport.”
Newport Commissioner Julie Smith-Morrow said she was also eager for the position to be filled.
“Adding this layer of additional help for someone, it’s pretty phenomenal,” Smith-Morrow said. “The fact that a little city like Newport can do it is really great.”
Newport isn’t the only Campbell County city that has taken advantage of the opioid settlement funds. Most recently, Campbell County contacted its cities to gauge interest in reimbursing them for providing police social worker services on their behalf, with Bellevue and Dayton using those services so far.
