HARTFORD — Roughly 80 to 85% of calls to which Hartford police officers respond are not criminal in nature, Police Chief Greg Sheldon said recently.

“They are quality of life issues,” involving mental health issues, housing, and other challenges, he said in an interview at his office last week.

The best outcome for everyone involved in any 911 call sometimes depends on police officers “putting our egos aside and recognizing when we are not the right tool,” said Sheldon, who has been Hartford’s police chief since February 2023.

To better identify the “right tool” for any given situation and to support and complement the work of its patrol and criminal investigation divisions, Hartford police created a community outreach division almost a year ago. The division includes a full-time social worker and a substance use responder embedded within the police department.

Now, with the hiring last month of Amie Wunderlich as its first crime data analyst, the department is a step closer to staffing the division.

“We’re going to look like a different department, hopefully in about six to eight months,” Outreach Division Commander Karl Ebbighausen said recently.

The social worker and substance use responder positions have been in place for more than two years, Ebbighausen said. They have been vacant since this summer due to staff turnover and the department is in the process of working to fill them.

Wunderlich, a Colorado native, has called the Upper Valley home for the past 10 years. She currently lives in Cornish and came to the police department from her previous role as projects director at the Hartford Community Coalition.

Wunderlich’s role in the division is to help the department determine which tool — a police officer, mental health or social services professional — will be the most effective in each situation.

“What I’m really excited about is being able to take all that data from the police reports and the call logs and trying to determine how much of the resources are being used for law enforcement purposes and where it’s going to be helpful to have other resources and other tools to come in,” she said.

The data analysis will also allow the department to measure the impact of its responses and continually adjust how its resources are deployed.

“For the police department, that’s going to free up officers to be more effective in the places that they’re meant to be effective,” Wunderlich said.

Both Wunderlich and Ebbighausen declined to provide information about her salary. Town Manager John Haverstock was out of the office this week and could not be reached by deadline.

Crucial to the outreach division’s work are two community partners, the Clara Martin Center and Health Care and Rehabilitation Services, which will provide full-time staff embedded within the Police Department. Clara Martin will provide a substance use responder and HCRS, a police social worker.

Hartford police has collaborated closely with its counterpart in Rutland, which is one of the few police departments in the state to have a crime data analyst. Sheldon spent more than 21 years with the Rutland City police department before becoming Hartford’s chief.

“There is no perfect way to measure data,” Nate Thibodeau, Rutland’s “crime and intel analyst,” said. “You do your best to figure out how it can be helpful.”

For example, Thibodeau said, collecting information on retail theft and areas of drug activity allows the department to try to deter crime by creating a visible presence at times and in places where crimes are likely to occur.

Rutland makes its crime data publicly available in a bi-weekly map and analysis of police calls it refers to as “RutStat.” Hartford will take Rutland’s example and create a program called HartStat, which will allow the public to view local crime statistics.

“We’re going to tailor it to our needs,” Ebbighausen said. “Rutland has some very, very complex issues involving crime. We don’t tend to have that level and type of problems here,” he added. HartStat will allow the department to share crime data with community partners and residents.

“It’s really just us being super transparent, putting it all out there for the community,” Ebbighausen said.

Another component of the department’s community outreach efforts will be the creation of a community coalition along the lines of Rutland’s Project Vision, which brings together social service agencies from across the city to address problems.

Ebbighausen said that he hopes that staff from every local social service agency will become engaged with the HartStat process to help improve outcomes for individuals in our community when the police are called.

“I’m really excited to be able to hear what the community is concerned about, what their questions are, and be able to show them what we’re seeing,” Wunderlich said.

The first HartStat public meeting is scheduled for Feb. 11 at the Hartford public safety building, starting at 8 a.m.

“We’re tactically scheduling these for 8 a.m. because we’re hoping that the employers of partner agencies will allow their employees to come here first for the meeting” before heading to work, Ebbighausen said.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.