By Bonnie Adams, Managing Editor
Westborough – Now that he has been in Westborough for a few months, Police Chief Jeffrey Lourie is aiming to meet with residents to share updates from the police department and hear from them on their concerns. As such on the first Friday of each month he will be holding a “Coffee with the Chief” at the Westborough Senior Center.
For the first event, held Nov. 2, he updated the residents about a new grant that the department has received that will allow a counselor from Advocates Inc. to ride along with police officers on calls. The so-called Jail Diversion program, he explained, has a counselor respond to calls with the police in situations such opioid overdoses, domestic abuse, and other kinds of trauma.
He then introduced Sarah Abbott, Ph.D., the program director for the Advocates jail diversion program, to further explain how it would work.
Police officers, Abbott noted, “are asked to do so much, yet 70 percent of the calls they have to answer have nothing to do with crime.”
Having a police officer and a counselor respond to a crisis call can help service be delivered in a quality and humane way and help defuse what is often a very tense and at times, dangerous situation.
“We are not interested in the criminal justice piece, “Abbot said of the counselor’s role, “but rather the human services piece.”
“A big part of our job is notifying next of kin,” she added. “We never leave anyone alone who receives news like that until someone else can come and be with them.”
The program, funded by the Department of Mental Health, will be utilized with Northborough and Southborough. It initially started in Framingham and is currently being used in Marlborough as well as several other local communities. Lourie said he hopes to have it start in January 2019.