Angie Weinel said police social work is like a natural disaster: Everyone shows up at first, but, after the initial assistance, everyone is gone, and that’s when people really start to suffer.
Weinel is a social worker with the Highland Heights Police.
“I kind of look at it as it’s their natural disaster in their own life, coming in the beginning, but also staying until they have that warm handoff to something that’s more sufficient for them, more long term,” she said.
Police social work is expanding across Northern Kentucky. Cities across the region are in the process of hiring police social workers, have added programs or have had programs running for the last few years. The idea is relatively new, but departments are recognizing the gap in services those positions fill.
Weinel said police social work originated in Illinois around the 1970s, where local college students training to be social workers took internships at a police department. Alexandria Police Department’s Kelly Pompilio was the first police social worker in Kentucky; she was hired in 2016.
“I remember sitting in the class at Gateway, and I heard about all these people coming in contact with the police, but then they end up getting arrested or getting in trouble later on in life,” Weinel said. “I was like, ‘It seems like somebody could intervene way before it even gets to that.’ That’s when my professor said, ‘You know what’s really cool is Alexandria just got one.’ That’s when I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”
Weinel is another police social worker hired in the early days of police social work in Northern Kentucky. She was hired in 2021 through a grant as a shared position between the Campbell County Police Department and the Highland Heights Police Department. The departments quickly realized that there was too much work for one person, and so Weinel became full-time with Highland Heights in 2022, and Campbell County created a new position of its own.
When she started, Weinel had a bachelor’s in social work and got her master’s in her first year on the job. Before becoming a police social worker, she worked at a nonprofit and a teen residential treatment facility.
Highland Heights Assistant Chief Nick Love said the department was hesitant about adding the position. He said they thought police social workers were coming in to do their jobs, when, in fact, they were coming to relieve some of the department’s stress.
“Around that 2020 time when there was some social unrest and whatnot going around the country, and everybody was demanding and saying, ‘Hey, there’s a need for social workers,’ and we were a little resistant to it,” he said. “We didn’t know what it really was.
“Once she started, we saw the benefits almost immediately,” he said.
Highland Heights’s population is around 9,000, but, with Northern Kentucky University in session, the city could have 20,000 people, leaving it in a unique situation.
One of the main areas that police social workers help police officers with is repeat calls. Weinel said folks with mental health disorders or elderly people who don’t have a family to call know that 911 is always going to pick up the phone.
Love described a situation before Weinel’s hiring where police received calls and went to a specific residence four to six times a day. “I think within a month, she [Weinel] had [the resident] in a treatment facility,” Love said. “She had her in a position to be successful in her future, with guardianship and people taking care of her.”
Once the officers witnessed that situation, Love said they realized how beneficial Weinel’s position was.
Working in tandem
Police social workers do not respond to calls alone. They are always accompanied by officers, or officers will go and secure a scene and then call them. They also are responsible for the follow-up that comes after the initial call to ensure individuals receive the help they need. Weinel said police social workers are also victim advocates and go to court.
Love recalled a domestic incident when officers worked with Weinel. Dometic incidents can be any dispute, act of violence or report of an alleged offense among members of the same family or household where police intervention occurs. It is not necessarily a violation of the law.
Love said they responded to a residence with an adult and two kids and found their heat had been turned off (before the big snowstorm in January) because they had not paid their bill.
“The victim, she was a little ‘hesitant’ to deal with us,” Love said. “That happens a lot. So this was a prime example. Our officers are going to go to an active scene; make sure the scene’s safe and then, if it’s needed, we’ll reach out to Angie.”
Weinel was called in this case. Within minutes, Love said Weinel contacted the electric company, got the heat running and gave the woman a working cellphone.
Similarly to how the Highland Heights program came to existence, Weinel is now supervising interns at Southgate and Wilder Police departments, which do not have their own police social worker programs.
Opioid settlement funding
More recently, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office began its program in July with three full-time police social workers. Laura Pleiman, director of Boone County Community Services and Programs, said that, when the county became aware of its opioid settlement funds, conversations arose about investing in police social workers.
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.
Boone County is set to receive an estimated $4.6 million distributed in yearly allotments until 2038, according to a database published by the Kentucky Association of Counties.
Similarly, the Campbell County Police Department made a move in December, using its opioid settlement funds to hire three additional police social workers, bringing the county’s total to four positions: one supervisor and three police social workers.
Those positions serve the primary police jurisdiction, which are unincorporated Campbell County, Silver Grove and some smaller cities without police departments, such as Melbourne, California, Crestview and Mentor. Additionally, Bellevue and Dayton entered an interlocal agreement with the county to share social worker services.
The Newport Police Department on Dec. 17 advertised a police social worker position. The department also plans to use opioid settlement funds to pay for the role.
Saving a life
Jared Owens is a police social worker at the Boone County Sheriff’s Office. Before becoming a police social worker, Owens was a probation officer and worked in mental health court, a voluntary program for people with mental illness who are charged with misdemeanors or felonies.
Before becoming a police social worker, Owens said he wasn’t particularly familiar with the roles. He heard about the position from a friend at the sheriff’s office.
Like Weinel, Owens said his role is to help with repeat calls that the office receives. He points to a situation he helped mitigate when he arrived at the sheriff’s office.
The office received multiple calls from concerned citizens about a man in a wheelchair with umbrellas trying to shade him from the hot summer sun. Owens said the man wasn’t doing anything wrong; he was unhoused and experiencing mental health issues.
“The police did not want to arrest them,” Owens said. “They did not want to charge him with anything, but they can only do so much. So, we were able to get him mental health treatment, and then, ultimately, they found placement for him.”
Pleiman said that Owens suggested they look at the people who had already responded to the man in that situation. They all happened to be men, so he recommended sending out a female police social worker and female deputy to help.
“They were able to work with the Boone County Attorney’s Office to get a mental health warrant to get that individual into treatment and, I don’t think it’s too much to say, saving his life,” Pleiman said. “It was pretty impressive, the immediate kind of impact into the community here, and especially the sheriff’s office. I think it really sold the worth of the program pretty quickly for the deputies here.”
‘Same thing over and over’
In Kenton County, the Independence Police Department is just beginning its program. The department officially hired its police social worker the week of Jan. 13.
Sgt. George Kreutzjans is spearheading the program. He said there were places in the city or residences to which officers were responding a lot.
“Whether it be domestics or elderly people with dementia, we were going back to [them] regularly – mental health issues in general,” he said. “We were really frustrated going back, and the same thing happened over and over, and nothing got improved.”
Kreutzjans said the police were being forced to become social workers in addition to the other things that they do, and they don’t have the resources social workers have. Kreutzjans said that, even after doing his job for 25 years, he wasn’t too familiar with police social workers or the need for them until a specific instance involving an elderly man.
Kreutzjans said the man was a veteran who had lost some of the services he had been receiving. The man was not computer savvy. He had been attempting to connect to service providers on the phone, but he was getting the workaround and was getting overwhelmed.
“He was so upset, he was becoming depressed, he couldn’t function and he just needed somebody to walk him through those systems, to find those services,” Kreutzjans said. “He was going to get kicked out of his home. He had no family in the area and no children. His wife had passed. It was a really hard situation.”
Kreutzjans said officers spent two hours with him, trying to calm him down and then figuring out which resources to connect him to. He said a social worker would have made a difference in this situation.
The department also had a repeat case of a man with dementia straying from his home. Kreutzjans said a social worker could have met with the man’s spouse and discussed resources to keep him safe.
Kreutzjans said the department looked at others with the program – Erlanger, Alexandria, Boone County and Highland Heights – and determined what would work for them. The department had 43 applicants for the position.
Whether it’s Independence, Highland Heights or Boone County, each entity agrees that police social work programs are growing.
Owens said he thinks the trend comes from recognizing that people need help and treatment more than they need to be locked up and that they can use their toolbelt of resources that police officers may not be aware of.
“I’m glad that people in Northern Kentucky, the state of Kentucky, United States, are seeing the benefits of what police social workers can do,” Love said. “I suggest that every agency get one. I really do.”