With mitigation funding from the State of Utah, the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) is able to employ two full-time police squads that are charged with proactive policing in the neighborhoods around the city’s two homeless resource centers. More information on these squads is available here.

The Community Connection Center’s mission is to provide a safe environment for people to access individualized care, support, and appropriate community resources. This is accomplished through three teams.

Community Connection Team

The community connection team, which is comprised of case workers and social workers have become the liaisons between front line police work, the community, which includes service providers, and individuals/families that are in crisis. The Community Connection Team provides the following services:

• Triage of an individual and/or family
• Intermittent, short-term therapeutic intervention
• Care coordination between agencies
• Case Management, which includes but is not limited to:
  • Housing Application and Navigation Assistance
  • Basic Needs
  • Navigation of the Behavioral Health System

Homeless Outreach Service Team (HOST)

The Homeless Outreach Service Team (HOST) is a proactive and collaborative effort to move the community in Salt Lake City, into a partnership with the police and homeless service providers to connect homeless individuals with social services and resources.

Crisis Intervention Team (CIT)

The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) includes specially trained law enforcement officers that are trained to effectively deal with a situation involving a person experiencing a mental health crisis. CIT officers are trained to assist in identifying characteristics of various mental disorders. CIT officers provide a safer intervention for the person experiencing a mental health crisis, their family members, the community, and the officers themselves.

Having social workers in emergency responses is critical for ensuring the well-being of residents in crisis. Firefighters and EMTs are trained and prepared for many emergencies, especially life-or-death scenarios, but they aren’t always as prepared to handle people who are in the middle of a mental health crisis or who are experiencing substance abuse problems. The CHAT is alerted during an original emergency dispatch so that a patient can receive the assistance they need as soon as possible. CHAT team members may direct a patient to mental health assistance, drug treatment options or even offer help while responding to a traumatic incident or call where someone has died.

SLCPD police substations are not functional police stations, like the Public Safety Building or Pioneer Precinct. Substations are utilized primarily by the department’s Bike Squads, which are proactive squads focused on reducing street crimes and building relationships with community members. The substations give Bike Squads the opportunity to have a recharging location central to their patrol area.

There are multiple Substations in the city, including locations in the Ballpark neighborhood and new substations on North Temple and Regent Street.

The Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) – or Miami Model – is a strategy to offer treatment and resources to individuals instead of incarceration. The SIM process brings together stakeholders, different agencies, and systems to work together to identify strategies to divert people with mental and substance use disorders away from the justice system into services that best support individual needs.