St. Pete community leaders reflect on first two years of CALL program
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - St. Petersburg community leaders discussed Tuesday the first two years of a program that connects callers with mental health professionals instead of police officers.
It’s called the Community Assistance and Life Liaison Program (CALL). It’s a partnership between the St. Pete Police Department and Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services.
St. Pete Police Chief Anthony Holloway said the idea started after several meetings with the community following the death of George Floyd. He said officers were wearing too many hats and weren’t experts in all of them.
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"Law enforcement took on all of this responsibility," he said. "Well, low and behold that we’re not experts in this. We have a very young law enforcement agency, so we thought about what’s a better way of doing this and a better way of doing this was hiring experts that could do this and that’s how the CALL program came about."
All officers and civilians are trained in the CALL program at the police department. Dispatchers can send a CALL team to nonviolent, noncriminal calls, or officers can call for one when they evaluate a scene and think a CALL team would better handle the situation.
CALL teams provide coping skills, deescalation, referrals for long term care and practical support.
Dr. Sandra Braham, President and CEO of Gulf Coast JFCS, said when she heard the chief’s idea, she immediately thought they have resources to help.
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"This really seemed ideal, because it addressed so many areas in the programming areas that we have expertise in, from behavioral health and elder services and youth services and foster care and adoption and refugee services and all of these areas that we find where people are experiencing trauma and need," she said.
"St. Petersburg is a very diverse community in many ways as I’ve already alluded to, but especially amongst the African American community where we have seen so many encounters not go well with law enforcement across the country, and I think it shows the innovation of this department and chief to really say let’s do things differently," Braham said.
The Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg funded the USF Center for Justice Research and Policy’s study that found from the beginning of May 2021 to mid-February 2022, CALL responded to 57% of nonviolent, noncriminal calls. Most calls were mental health related. Almost half of the calls were follow-ups as well.
CALL teams requested law enforcement for six percent of the calls. The average age of the person CALL responded to was 43.6-years-old. The average age of someone in St. Pete is 43.1-years-old.
"I feel like talking to our officers now and talking to our union president this program is working," Chief Holloway said. "I think we try to get rid of now I think the officers would be upset because now you have professionals handling calls that they should handle and not a law enforcement officer."
"It’s letting the community know that we heard what they had to say. We listened to what they had to say, and we came up with a solution to the problem that we saw, and we shouldn’t say problem, an issue that we saw that we needed to address as a law enforcement agency that we don’t need to wear all of these hats," Chief Holloway said. "That there are other people that’re experts in the field and we in law enforcement should give them those hats back to those experts," he said.
Most of non-crime calls, the findings show, overlapped in areas that have a high amount of crime calls.
St. Pete City Council approved funding for the program in 2021. This is the first phase of USF’s study. They plan to go even more in-depth and provide recommendations.
Chief Holloway also talked about the program’s success to a national panel Tuesday.