While the opioid crisis takes lives, shatters families and shakes the foundations of communities, something far more positive is happening as well.

Police officers in departments across the country are changing the way they do their jobs. It’s an act of necessity more than anything else — an acknowledgment that the times are requiring a different approach from them. But it’s nonetheless a welcome development for a nation that’s been at loggerheads for years over how police departments should interact with their communities.

The most dramatic we’ve seen so far is happening in Chillicothe, Ohio, where the police department deploys a post-overdose response team (PORT) more often than a SWAT team. The officers visit the home of each person who overdosed during the prior week and provide information on treatment and support groups, as well as blunt honesty about users’ chances of survival.

Butler County doesn’t have anything quite like that, but the county does boast one of the highest coverage rates for police officers carrying the anti-overdose drug naloxone in all of Pennsylvania. County sheriff’s deputy Mark Pfeffer, in public comments at the county’s opioid forums, has talked about how the shift in tactics is manifesting itself here.

“If you walk up to us tonight and said, ‘I’ve got a stamp bag in my pocket but I’ve having second thoughts (about using),’ I’m not going to put cuffs on you,” Pfeffer said at a meeting last month in Slippery Rock. “I’m going to walk you over (to those tables) and get you some help.”

This point of view probably seems strange to many people. Police officers don’t provide counseling services, they fight crime and put people in jail. And to be sure, many police officers remain convinced that punitive tactics are the only effective way to discharge their duties.

But as Pfeffer and others note, they can’t arrest their way out of this problem. It’s far too big — opioids now kill more people than car accidents, and in 2015 heroin killed more Americans than gun violence — and the country’s prison system is too broken to make that a plausible solution.

So many police departments are asking their officers to rethink what it means to serve and protect. Officers are becoming social workers (connecting people with support services, as Pfeffer promised to do), doctors (carrying naloxone to revive overdose victims), and counselors (like members of the PORT team).

The change in policing, which so many people have been agitating for in recent years, is already under way. It’s likely that the next generation of police officers, who are cutting their teeth at a time of social upheaval will be far more attuned to the power of community, trust and empathy.

That’s a good thing. But it will be a short-lived transformation if those calling for change fail to recognize those efforts and respond in-kind.