Joplin Police Chief wants social workers added to the force to help handle social problems

Being homeless is not a crime even though police receive calls about the homeless. 

Joplin Police Chief Richard Pearson has a solution.   

“We can’t police our way out of many of these social problems, because some of these things are not illegal.  We can’t police our way out of them.  We can’t arrest our way out of them.  We have to work our way out of these problems from a social perspective.  So I want to have social workers embedded within the police department meaning they work at our direction and they work on the problems that we need help with.” 

Pearson told Newstalk KZRG the social workers could help the police deal with problems of homelessness, mental illness, food insecurity and domestic violence