The Austin Public Safety Committee is seeing good results from a counselor program added to the 911 system.
The Committee, which is made up by Austin City Council, is looking for ways to retool and reimagine the way the city addresses public safety. In a meeting Monday the Austin Police Department’s Lt. Ken Murphy announced, a counselor program initiated by the city in December of 2019 has been handling more and more calls instead of police officers.
His latest count shows more than 800 calls successfully diverted away from officers, “so we are heading in the right direction and i think we will see a significant increase in these diversions, once we are able to have a counselor on 24/7. ”
In August alone Lt. Murphy believes, had there been more counselor on hand they could have diverted 157 more calls.
