Erlanger experiments with combined public safety departments

The City of Erlanger is combining its police and fire departments under a single umbrella in an effort to streamline emergency operations and training.

The new combined public safety department will be headed up by former Police Chief Kyle Rader, who will now oversee both departments as the new director of public safety. The older departments will continue to operate under the direction of Fire Chief Randy Godsey and new Police Chief Mike Leming, who formerly served as the assistant police chief. Leming was promoted earlier this month.

“The cross training and having these two departments that work hand in hand every single day to actually be training together and be under that same leadership is really a tremendous benefit,” said Erlanger Mayor Jessica Fette.

The organization has been in the works for much of the year, and Rader said the idea came from his observations in the field, namely that police officers can often respond to emergency situations more quickly than fire or EMS. Plus, Rader said, it generally helps the two departments have a better working relationship.

“What started off as a conversation at lunch kind of morphed into, ‘you know, what if we could have police officers that were certified as EMTs?’ because of their quick response times,” Rader said. “They’re always out and about on patrol.”

Ambulances and fire trucks, on the other hand, are often parked in fixed locations, so their response process is more involved.

“We can be at certain calls a lot quicker than our ambulance who’s at their station most of the time,” said Erlanger Police Officer Megan Ryle, who’s currently undergoing EMT training at Gateway.

Sources who spoke with LINK nky said there are a lot of factors that go into who arrives on scene first, but the idea is to have police officers trained as EMTs so they can administer emergency medical care and have firefighters trained as police officers so that either could have a greater array of tools for emergency situations.

Rader gave the example of “God forbid,” an active shooter.

“Historically speaking, it’s very hard to get the scene safe, and then get fire or EMT/paramedics inside,” Rader said. “My feeling on this is if we have one or two police EMTs on each shift, if something were to happen and we had an active shooter type situation, the officers are already responding to the call. They can grab their bags, their EMT bags, and they can go in and render aid until we can make the scene safe and get the paramedics in there to continue the triage.”

The city already has three police officers, including Ryle, going through EMT training at Gateway.

They’re scheduled to complete their training by the end of the year. Three more officers will start training in January. Moreover, the city has retrofitted the old public works building on Jack Scheben Drive for both departments to use as a joint training center.

“We are currently training in it now,” Rader said.

Ryle has been with the city police since 2020. When she spoke with LINK nky, she said she had the opportunity to use her new training just the day before.

“We had a cardiac arrest, and I got there and started CPR before our ambulance got there,” said Ryle.

Once she’s finished her training, she’ll have access to a full EMT kit while on patrol, which will include various medical supplies, including glucose gel for diabetics, epinephrine shots for anaphylaxis, naloxone (which many officers carry anyway), and tools for ventilating patients, among other medical supplies.

One obstacle that Rader admitted was the longer training time required for police compared to EMT training. Moreover, police trainees are required to undergo a residential training program at state academies, a requirement that has exacerbated recruiting woes among departments in the commonwealth.

“That’s kind of the problem with the police academy, with trying to send firefighters to get certified,” Rader said. “You are losing that firefighter for a solid 18 weeks, whereas [EMT trainees] are going to class once or twice a week, maybe during the evening, maybe during the morning, learning, and they’re still able to work a shift.”

Rader said that while there has been some interest among firefighters in the city, they don’t currently have anyone in line to get police training.

Overall, Rader emphasized that this was an experiment. If it ends up not working, it can be scrapped down the line.

“If this doesn’t work, if this model just isn’t what works in our area, the only thing we are out is now we have better trained police officers running around,” Rader said.