LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Trained social workers will soon be available 24 hours a day at Louisville's 911 call center to help people in mental crisis, freeing up police officers to concentrate on crimes.
The program will expand its service hours to 24 hours a day, seven days a week in all eight LMPD divisions beginning Monday, July 1, 2024.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg joined other city officials to announced the expanded program late Thursday morning. It's all part of the city's Crisis Call Diversion Program that was launched in March 2022, allowing professionals trained to deal with mental health crises to answer 911 calls from people in crisis who may not need a police officer to respond.
It's called "deflection," and city leaders believe having those trained social workers available at Louisville's Metro Safe 911 call center will better serve the public and police. The idea is to free up officers to handle violent crime, and officials said it's working.
That's why city officials have added more qualified staff, or a total of 46 mental health professionals now available around the clock.
The program started in 2022, with the deflection team's Crisis Triage Workers answering calls and offering resources like transportation to area hospitals or treatment centers to distressed callers -- and then following up with those callers.
The program was last expanded to operate for 16 hours a day in January 2024. At that time, Emergency Services executive director Jody Meiman said the initiative started in LMPD's Fourth Division because that's the area that was generating the most mental health calls.
However, that's no longer the case. According to the latest data, the First Division now receives the most calls for issues related to mental health.
Since then, the diversion program has resulted in thousands of Crisis Triage Worker encounters, with the average interaction lasting about 16 minutes, but some encounters can last more than an hour.
In 2023, the MetroSafe 911 Center deflected more than 1,800 calls to a non-police response. The Mobile Crisis Response Team (MCRT) made more than 700 mobile runs to help nearly 500 individuals, with the average mobile encounter lasting about 40 minutes in duration.
That translated to more than 2,000 police hours saved.
The Deflection program is different from the 988 suicide prevention hotline, because the diversion team helps connect callers with community resources or help them reach out to family members for additional support.
The city plans to continue to hire more people with backgrounds in social workers to staff call center.
Related stories:
- Louisville program deflecting some 911 calls to non-police response expanding
- Louisville launches pilot project to deflect some 911 calls to a non-police response
- LMPD body camera video contradicts part of the reasoning for officers' use of force in 2019 arrest
- Louisville to launch pilot for crisis intervention teams to respond to some 911 calls
- Initiative in Louisville would allow mental health, social workers to respond to some 911 calls
- New program will find better ways to respond to 911 calls outside LMPD's scope
- Jeffersontown police adding 3 social workers to support officers on mental health runs
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