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Social workers train, respond to 911 calls alongside St. Pete police

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St. Petersburg Police Chief Anthony Holloway, flanked by City Council members, Deputy Mayor Kanika Tomalin and Mayor Rick Kriseman, announcing the establishment of the CALL program, July 9, 2020.

Twelve social workers from the Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services are responding to 911 calls and training in police facilities after the city approved an $850,000 contract for unarmed first responders early this year.

According to Nicole Guincho, Regional Director at Gulf Coast Jewish Services, her organization developed the training for these responders, who work under the the St. Petersburg Police Department-created Community Assistance and Life Liaison (CALL) program, and the SPPD is helping them develop the “safety side of things.”

“(The police are) helping us recognize what we should be responding to, what we should not be responding to, and what to do in a call that comes through as non-violent but becomes violent,” Guincho said.

Currently, CALL has 16 members. Travis Atchison serves as the program director over three clinical supervisors who oversee 12 first responders, or navigators, working in groups of four. In a phone call with the Catalyst, Atchison spoke about the different training CALL navigators have been attending, including scenario workshops at the SPPD’s 13th Avenue North training center.

“The purpose of the scenario-based trainings were to increase our situational awareness of things to look for, and then increase our overall capacity for safety in the field,” Atchison said.

One scenario the group practiced responding to was getting a distressed individual to leave their home, instead of having navigators enter an unknown space. According to Gulf Coast Jewish Service’s website, emotional distress calls are one category of emergencies the city is handing off to CALL members. Others may include drugs, homeless complaints, truancy and “neighborhood disputes.” 

Aside from a few Zoom meetings and classes, Atchison says much of the first-responder training is happening in the field, as police, navigators and community members adjust to the new system. Eventually, navigators could have their own fleet of vehicles and respond to calls on their own, but for now they ride in police cruisers and respond to scenes alongside officers.

Megan McGee, special projects manager for the SPPD, said that despite their department’s involvement in CALL’s training and rollout, Gulf Coast Jewish Services designed the curriculum and employ program members. The department wants residents to know that police and CALL are separate entities.

But CALL is still dispatched through 911. Atchison says community members that CALL responds to receive a direct contact in case of future crises, but police communication-center employees are still responsible for deciding whether to send police or navigators to the 911 calls they receive.

According to Travis, when people call Gulf Coast Jewish directly, it doesn’t always require a dispatch. 

In one instance, the program director reflected on a mother who called him amid a domestic dispute with her daughter. Typically, the mother would have called 911 to have her daughter “Baker Acted,” or held for psychiatric evaluation, but Atchison says his training in de-escalation allowed him to resolve the conflict over the phone.

Situations like this make the program director optimistic about CALL’s place in St. Pete. “The community feedback as far as who we’ve engaged (with) I think has been very positive,” he said.

CALL is currently responding to crises from 8 a.m. to midnight seven days a week. According to the SPPD, the city council will decide whether to renew the contract with Gulf Coast Jewish this summer. 

 

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2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Avatar

    Janet Arnold

    April 23, 2021at4:29 pm

    I thought city approved $3 million for the CALL program with Gulf Coast Jewish Services? Was it decreased to $850,000? Hope not.

  2. Avatar

    Scott Simmons

    April 23, 2021at5:20 am

    Tremendous program. How many are there like this nationally? I would like to see monthly updates.

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