SALT LAKE CITY ā On World Social Work Day, the Salt Lake City Police Department gave KSL-TV an exclusive look at how its social work team assists and responds to people in the community.
The department’s 16 social workers, who cover shifts from 8 a.m. to midnight daily, are focused on helping people facing mental health crises, substance abuse issues, and homelessness.
“Our team frequently comes out to try to just offer services to folks, see if they’re going into a shelter, especially on, like, today is a code blue night,” Salt Lake police social work director Karen MontaƱo said.
She and her team wear a uniform, but they typically arrive at people’s homes or to scenes, across Salt Lake City proper, in unmarked vehicles.
“I think it definitely helps because I think it calls less attention because it is a very vulnerable thing to be going through a crisis,” MontaƱo said. “When you have all these police cars show up and your neighbors are watching through the windows and stuff, it can be very, very intimidating.”
Every day they typically go in pairs to make contact with people throughout the city. They work alongside crisis intervention team detectives.
MontaƱo said they can be called out to scenes to assist police.
“We had a call last year, actually, the main library, where it was an individual that had climbed the staircase on the outside and was at the top of the building, and they had called in to dispatch, ” she said. “One of our social workers was on the phone with them for, I want to say, close to two hours.”
She said sometimes they’re helping the victims or witnesses of traumatic incidents, like a fatal car crash or a suicide.
“We usually will follow up within a day or two and check in on them,” MontaƱo said. “And if they’re struggling, if they need more services, maybe they’re not connected to any services in the community, we will offer them therapy.”
KSL-TV rode along with MontaƱo and her colleagues on Tuesday. Their first stop was at a house in the Avenues. She said the individual’s neighbors called in requesting help. This was a follow-up visit.
“We’ll typically get involved to try to find some common ground and some peace amongst the neighbors,” MontaƱo said.
The person they were trying to meet at this house didn’t answer the door.
“One of our detectives are saying they usually poke out the window, and we know they’re here, and so since they’re not doing what they typically do, we’ll probably just leave and then come back at a later time,” MontaƱo said.
Their next call took them to Palmer Court, housing for people who have experienced chronic homelessness.
“We’re just stopping by, making sure they’re OK and deliver some food,” MontaƱo said. “This usually helps us to divert people from calling 911 for nonemergency reasons.”
She said most of the people who call them frequently are unmedicated or haven’t been diagnosed with a mental health disorder.
“They’re trying to look for some sort of relief,” MontaƱo said. “Sometimes for them, they believe that calling 911 will help them because an officer will investigate what’s going on and help stop that stressful situation.”
At Palmer Court, the detective and social workers asked the man in this apartment about his health and how his dog was doing.
“We were able to connect him with a veterinary clinic,” MontaƱo said.
Caseworker Leo Abila asked the man if he’s talked to another social worker on their team, to ensure he’s checking in with her.
He said it takes time for most people to open up to them and accept help.
“There’s times where we can build that trust with a person in a month; sometimes it takes a year,” Abila said.
That’s a huge part of their work with the homeless.
KSL-TV went to Liberty Park with the team, where they approached homeless people and offered them resources.
MontaƱo said they’re doing more outreach as part of Mayor Erin Mendenhall’s safety plan.
According to data from the Salt Lake Police Department’s Community Connection Team, in the first two months of 2025, the department’s social workers made contact with more than 600 people. They also completed more than 260 follow-ups.
“The resources vary from what code blue shelters are open tonight to what shelters have availability and space,” she said. “Other times it’s checking to see if the detox centers have availability to for us to take someone over who is willing to go into treatment or start the detox process.”
MontaƱo said sometimes, they’re offering people a bus ticket; other times they can offer therapy.
“We don’t always get folks to accept the resources, but, when we do, we’re more than happy to help them get there,” she said. “If we’re only interacting with people when they’re in a crisis, it’s not always the best to get to the nitty-gritty.”
The social workers respond alongside officers, but they have their own building. It’s where people can come for counseling, clothes and food. The food bank supplies the center with donations.
The Salt Lake police department’s social work team is hiring. MontaƱo said eventually, the goal is to have social workers staffed 24/7.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.