FMPD Roll Call
The Fort Myers Police Department is taking listeners behind the scenes of the agency. Each episode will highlight department initiatives, community partnerships, and the people working to keep our city safe.
FMPD Roll Call
How A Police-Clinician Partnership Turns Crises Into Care
We take you inside Fort Myers’ Crisis Response Unit, where trained officers and behavioral health clinicians arrive together to stabilize high-stress situations, listen without judgment, and guide people toward care instead of cuffs. This is a ground-level look at what happens when public safety and mental health pull in the same direction.
We talk with Sgt. Antonini, who helped design the program, and Heather Cross from the Center for Progress and Excellence, the partner providing mobile clinicians. They share why local call data demanded a new approach, how training goes beyond a single 40-hour course, and what realistic scenario drills teach about scene safety, role clarity, and time as a de-escalation tool. You’ll hear concrete examples of on‑scene practice: slowing the pace, validating feelings, building safety plans that keep people out of involuntary hospitalization, and connecting them with case management that solves barriers like transportation, cost, and insurance.
The results are measurable. By tracking monthly outcomes—diversion rates, Baker Acts, arrests, and use of force—the team shows a clear uptick in diversions when the co-responder unit handles the call. That’s fewer ER beds and jail bookings, more trust with residents, and a stronger network of community partners ready to help. Services are free, mobile, and available 24/7 across Lee County, from homes and parks to gas stations and highway shoulders. If you can’t recall the 844 number, you can still ask 911 to send the co-responder team and request CPE by name for behavioral health needs.
Share the episode with a neighbor, subscribe for more frontline stories, and leave a quick review telling us what your city should try next. Your feedback helps this work reach the people who need it most.
Welcome back to FMPD Roll Call. I'm Megan Fuentes, the Public Information Officer. Today we're taking a closer look at one of our newest initiatives, the Crisis Response Unit, a partnership designed to better respond to individuals experiencing mental health for behavioral crises. Joining me are Sergeant Antonini, who helped lead the development of this program, and Heather Cross of the Center for Progress and Excellence, which provides the behavioral health clinicians who respond alongside our officers. Roll call begins now. Well, I'd like to get started first for learning a little bit about the background for each of you. So if Sergeant Antonini, would you like to go first?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. What would you like to know?
SPEAKER_02:Everything. Your educational background, what got you started here?
SPEAKER_00:All right. So I'm originally from Cleveland, Ohio. I was a patrol officer up there for several years, made the transition down here to Florida and decided on FMPD as a place to go. I've been here now for close to 22 years. I've done everything from basic patrol to housing to detective division homicide, where I spent the majority of my career, about 12 years there. I got promoted to sergeant in 2019, did some stints around the agency in training internal affairs, community engagement, and then finally brought me here to the crisis response unit. I have two master's degrees. And that's about it.
SPEAKER_02:What are your master's degrees in?
SPEAKER_00:I have one in forensic psychology and one in behavioral anal analysis.
SPEAKER_02:So you've basically done everything in this in this department. You've been everywhere and done everything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I guess you could say that, sure.
SPEAKER_02:Heather Cross, what about you? Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I come from Indiana. So I'm a Midwestern, received my bachelor's degree from Ball State University in Psychology, and then went back to school and double master's degree as well. I do have a certification or what we call a CAP. So I'm a certified addiction professional, so I have a history in substance use counseling, got my master's degree in executive development and public service, as well as adult continuing higher education. My background is I've worked in Department of Corrections where I was a director in a re-entry prison up in Tallahassee. I've taught at the college level criminal justice classes. Started my career in case management in mental health, as well as MAT treatment, so medically assisted treatment. Went on to be a parole officer for 10 years, worked at transitioning people back into the community after they were released from prison on parole. And then, like I said, moved down to Tallahassee, Florida in 2015 as a director of a re-entry prison. Then transitioned further south, where I operated a homeless shelter here in Lee County, and then was provided the opportunity to become a CEO of a mobile crisis response team, also known as CPE, and been in this position for about five years.
SPEAKER_02:So a lot of experience between both of you, essentially.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I'd say so.
SPEAKER_02:So tell me about this partnership. How did this all start?
SPEAKER_00:Well, about two years ago, roughly, I started thinking about and and breeding about and and you know, through social media and whatnot, a lot of situations that law enforcement was encountering with mentally ill folks. And a lot of the situations did not end well, meaning that there's a lot of suicide by cop. There's, you know, some situations out there that require, you know, sometimes deadly force and whatnot. And officers were basically being arrested and losing their jobs and going to jail for situations involving the mentally ill. So having watched that and you know doing some research, I realized that something had to be done because based on what I knew, at least here at our department, and which our department does a very good job of, but other departments are severely lacking in training for dealing with the mentally ill. So case in point, I mean, like I said, our department is very good at it. Officers, once they graduate the academy, are put through 40 hours of crisis intervention training. However, that's usually where the mental health training stops with us and with also with most agencies, not just in Florida, but across the United States. So with 40 hours of training, it does not bode well when you're dealing with somebody that's in crisis. So I started doing some research uh across departments and things like that, and found several departments that had some form of mental health response to these situations, probably because they were in the same boat that we were or we are. So I took a lot of information, reached out to a lot of people and or other departments, and kind of got an idea of what I wanted to do as far as forming a unit here. So once I got the idea, I researched several local mental health agencies that that were in our community here in Lee County. And it just so happened that my first call was to Heather, and Heather and I met, and she loved the idea of getting law enforcement involved with her mobile crisis team and creating a partnership. After Heather, I did meet with other agencies that just and I had a great feel when we left that room. All of the other agencies just didn't have what I was looking for as far as how I would envision this unit becoming. So I called Heather back and Heather and I sat down and we hashed out a few things and got the ball rolling.
SPEAKER_01:These calls that are coming in has allowed us to partner with FMPD and just meet people where they're at, with lessening the chances of people being, you know, hospitalized or incarcerated by offering them the resources to keep them in the community, right? So, you know, there's risk factors that obviously contribute to people's mental health or people going into crisis. And so, you know, us being at a collaborative approach and in the field, you know, with these calls that are coming into dispatch has, you know, really allowed people, you know, to not be hospitalized, not to be incarcerated, and stay in their homes and you know, work with other community partners at whatever needs are identified with those individuals.
SPEAKER_02:When Sergeant Antonini brought this up to you, what was your initial response?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. People call 911. You know, people don't know of any other agencies that they can call to help with what he mentioned, you know, public assist calls. If people don't know where they're going to, you know, get their next meal, or people, you know, just recently received an addiction and they don't know who can help with rent, a lot of times people will go into a mental health crisis. And, you know, if we can help them with those resources and help with alleviating them going into a crisis, it's a win-win all the way around.
SPEAKER_02:And for both of you, what have you seen around Fort Myers that made this unit materialize?
SPEAKER_00:What I did as part of the research was I looked into our calls for service. I actually had dispatch track the calls that turned out to be mental health related. And once I was able to acquire that data, it showed that roughly 60% of our calls were involving either somebody in crisis or somebody that was mentally ill. So that's that's a lot. A lot to put on the officers, a lot to to deal with on a call for them. With that volume of calls for service, that it would be beneficial to have a unit that was educated both on the mental health side, but also with officer tactics to be able to respond to these folks and obviously de-escalate the the crisis and then provide them with the services that they need, again, in an effort to keep them from being baker acted and or incarcerated.
SPEAKER_01:And Heather, what do you see on your end? You know, when the clinicians are coming back from a call or, you know, finishing up with a call, you know, we're we're seeing the data come in that you know, people are learning what's available in Lee County. And, you know, we rely, CPE relies so much on our community partnerships because CPE is looked at as the front end of mental health care. And so people are calling us at a time in crisis or looking for services. And so a lot of information is getting passed down just because of our mental health team in the field with FMPD and and and we really complement each other. We don't have the answer, you know, FMPD has the answer or vice versa. But we also have the ability to take it a step further. And if we don't have the answer, you know, we have the case management services that are the individuals that are looking for those resources, you know, based on several things, based on transportation, you know, can the person get to this resource? And then the second thing we look at is affordability. You know, if they're looking for some type of service, you know, can they afford it? Do they have insurance? And if they can't, then let's find that partnership where that individual can get those needs met.
SPEAKER_02:Now I want to go into what kind of specialized training did these officers and clinicians need in order to be out on the road with our officers and respond to these calls?
SPEAKER_00:Both Officer Bradford and Officer Donahy, they went through mental health first aid. They went through crisis intervention training, realistic de-escalation, which is more from a law enforcement perspective, identifying behaviors that would indicate whether somebody was in crisis and or suffering from a mental illness and how to differentiate between somebody that's schizophrenic, somebody that's bipolar, could be depression, could be, you know, personality disorders, whatever it is. So they've been put through the gamut as far as that's concerned. Also, you know, communication and understanding that, you know, time is of the essence and we have the time to spend with the folks to get them out of that crisis type of situation. And then Michaela and Hannah, who are the folks from CPE, they already had that background. So we included them in our tactical training to help them to understand what we do in situations that are highly volatile and the need for them to stay out of that and how to keep them out of that so that you know we don't put them in harm's way. So we've done a lot of realistic scenario-based type of stuff that where the officers will handle the front end of it to make sure that the scene is safe before that they before they get brought in. So there was a lot of realistic exercises where we just kind of played it out as what we're going to do in these types of environments if we run across them.
SPEAKER_02:What do the clinicians do while on scene and talking through people who are possibly in crisis or even referring them to services?
SPEAKER_01:Obviously, a lot of listening. But one of the things that, you know, obviously we try to de-escalate the situation. We also do what's called a safety plan where we're going through a plan of action so that that individual does not harm themselves. And so if we can successfully safety plan with someone, again, that keeps them out of the hospital. It keeps them from going into, you know, an involuntary hospitalization that we call a Baker Act. So, you know, that those are the those are the two main things. You know, we de-escalate and we we perform a safety plan. And at that point, you know, the officers are still there, but we're doing our thing. And it and it ends up, you know, more times than not allowing the person to not be Baker active.
SPEAKER_02:What types of calls are we seeing?
SPEAKER_00:Just a lot of crisis calls. Folks that for whatever reason they have a stressor in their life where it could be homelessness, it could be some type of substance abuse, it could be divorce, it could be a good I mean, a gamut of things that somebody has kind of pushed over the edge and they don't specifically know how to deal with it. And so they'll be acting out in some way. And, you know, obviously we'll get the call for service and we'll go out there and try to kind of figure out what the problem is and help them to again get into that state where they're not in crisis, de-escalate them down so that we can talk with them rationally and we can make decisions with them. But, you know, the majority of the calls that we go on are to some degree stressful, but again, it's it's because of a situation that has happened that has caused them to be put into crisis. And some of these folks may have been previously diagnosed with a mental illness. We're just trying to help them navigate through that, through whatever crisis that they have.
SPEAKER_02:How do you know what approach to take?
SPEAKER_00:As with anything else, I mean, what it boils down to is communication. There's really no secret sauce to how to deal with somebody. It's being able to listen, provide feedback, empathize with them, and help them through whatever situation they're going through. We don't offer advice. Most of the time is we just listen to what they're feeling. And again, we empathize with them and we get them into a situation where they can, they're not thinking with high anxiety, they're thinking more on a rational level, and then we're able to help them plan what would be the best way to, you know, move on from here so that we can not have them go into crisis again, provide them with services, those types of things like that. But that's basically it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot to be said too, you know, with with the way that we're communicating with individuals, right? We're not rushing them, we're not putting words in their mouth, we're validating their feelings, and we're doing a lot of listening. You know, sometimes people just want to be heard. And so, you know, the way that we're delivering information, you know, anywhere from our nonverbal communication to, you know, verbally what we're saying can really gauge what's going to happen next in those conversations. So being patient with that individual, empathizing, listening, validating feelings really goes a long way with people that have already been heightened, you know, in their anxiety or in crisis. So it's, you know, really taking control of the conversation and and helping navigate through all those different mechanisms.
SPEAKER_02:For this unit, how do you measure the success that it's had so far?
SPEAKER_00:So monthly, what we're doing is we're compiling this the statistics of the calls that my the unit responds to versus the calls that patrol responds to and what the outcomes are, be it a Baker Act, be it jail, be it use of force. Use of force, those types of things like that. So I'm compiling the statistics on a monthly basis to be able to present them to show the success. Our diversion rate is higher than the national average right now, which is really good over the last two months. And so we want to keep that off because again, the purpose of this unit is to divert somebody from being bakeracted andor being incarcerated. And the calls that the unit responds to, there is a much higher diversion rate, a considerably higher diversion rate than the ones that basic patrol responds to. And that's what we want to see and get across is that the statistics, the numbers, prove that it's working. And the more that we focus on this and get the unit to build, or you know, obviously make the unit bigger, the more success we're gonna have with those diversions, which obviously is gonna save the jail money, it's gonna save the facilities money, the hospitals and whatnot, because we're able to handle the situation on the front end.
SPEAKER_02:What do you want the community to know about this unit? It is a brand new unit with FMPD and our partnership with you, Heather. So please explain or just anything you would like the community to know that we haven't already expressed so far.
SPEAKER_01:From my end, I, you know, I want the community, you know, if they do, if they can't remember our number, and you know, our our services are 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You know, we do have an 844 number. It's obviously longer than 911. But if you do have to call 911, you know, ask for the co-responder team. Tell them that you need CPE, you need to talk with CPE, you know, especially if it's, you know, behavioral health and nature, mental health and nature, just getting public awareness out there that, you know, we're we're broadening our partnerships because we know mental health is a real thing. There's still a stigma behind mental health. And so, you know, having the partnership with FMPD allows us to broaden much bigger and assist on the calls that we aren't getting, but maybe should come to CPE so that we are alleviate alleviating more crises in the community. That's what I would say from my end is just awareness about the unit, awareness about our free, all of our services are free, and all of our services are mobile. So, you know, nobody ever has to come to us. We go to people. You know, we've been out on 75 before talking with people. We've been in gas stations, we've been in parks. And so, you know, having FMPD have a broader range of calls that come in allow us to reach people through that partnership as well.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you both for joining me and for the work you're doing to keep our community safe and supported. The Crisis Response Unit is a great example of how teamwork and compassion can truly change outcomes. Until next time, thank you for listening to FMPD roll call.