As law enforcement begins to enlist social workers for crisis situations, police see positives, but training needed - Yahoo News
Nov. 26—Hector Matascastillo has a chip in his front tooth that serves as a reminder of where he was nearly two decades ago — suicidal and desperate for help.
During a January blizzard in 2004, Matascastillo, an Army Ranger veteran, awoke from a dissociative flashback to find himself sitting in the snow on his front step, facing a line of Lakeville police officers with guns drawn, pointed at him.
Through the haze of post-traumatic stress disorder, he thought they were enemy combatants. He credits the officers for not firing at him as he struggled to lay down his own unloaded weapons. He chipped his tooth during that time practicing his own suicide.
Fast forward 17 years.
In September, Matascastillo, now a psychotherapist, was on the other side this time. He was standing with Dakota County South Metro SWAT officers in a stairwell in a West St. Paul apartment complex facing a suicidal man with a knife, talking to him about all the reasons he should choose life.
The man surrendered after three hours, and the incident serves as a positive example of what can happen when police and social workers team up. Departments treading this mostly uncharted territory have found training for embedding social workers to be scarce and have taken to handcrafting programs to meet their needs.
"There isn't a formal training for social workers being embedded," Matascastillo said. "It's been kind of a mess, actually. My fear is that eventually social workers are going to get themselves into a jam that they can't get out of."
He's currently writing a training program designed to help his colleagues better understand how to work with police. A possible title? "A Day in the Life of," he said. It will be geared to teaching social workers how police operate, and how to stay out of their way when necessary.
MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS NUMBERS INCREASING
In Ramsey County, plans for law enforcement to partner with social workers were in motion nearly five years before the murder of George Floyd pushed the topic to the headlines.
source: https://news.yahoo.com/law-enforcement-begins-enlist-social-073300564.html
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