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City of Centerville <br />Council Meeting Minutes <br />February 24, 2021 <br /> <br />Mr. Kane explained that everyone essentially gets the call at the same time, but often times the <br />Police Department is first to respond, and then it is either the Fire Department or M Health on <br />scene. <br /> <br />Council Member King asked for an explanation of Basic Life Support (BLS) versus Advanced <br />Life Support (ALS). <br /> <br />Mr. Edminson stated that BLS is EMT trained level staff on the ambulance who are able to do <br />quite a bit in a 911 setting. The ALS would be a paramedic level that are able to administer <br />medications and do more cardiac monitoring than the basic level. He explained that all of the units <br />in the northern region are ALS units and have a paramedic on board every vehicle. He noted that <br />Mr. Kane is also a paramedic and carries paramedic level equipment with him if those services are <br />necessary when he is on scene. <br /> <br />Mr. Dunn noted that when M Health took over in June, they tried to keep their deployment model <br />very similar to North Memorial which was three (3) of advanced ambulances and then added 1 <br />basic ambulance. He noted that as they started looking at the data, they made the decision to <br />increase the coverage and change the basic ambulance to a fourth advanced ambulance. <br /> <br />Council Member King asked for an explanation of Emergent and Combined from the data <br />presented. <br /> <br />Mr. Edminson explained that emergent would be where they are responding to the call with lights <br />and sirens and the combined data includes those that were non-emergent and did not use lights and <br />sirens. He clarified that for the Alpha and Bravo calls they do not use lights and sirens and the <br />Charlie, Delta, and Echo calls do use lights and sirens. He gave an overview of the trained <br />questions that the dispatchers ask in order to code the calls. He noted that after COVID settles <br />down a bit, they do offer ride-along opportunities so the Council could see, first hand, what the <br />crews do. <br /> <br />Mayor Love stated that one (1) of the areas where the City’s call volume seems the highest is <br />psychiatric care. He stated that he sits on a board for reimagining public safety on a national board <br />and one of the big topics of conversation is police response to psychiatric type cases. He asked, <br />from their point of view, as professional emergency service providers, the impact of having a <br />Police Officer on site in a psychiatric situation. He asked if it was a welcomed addition or <br />detrimental. <br /> <br />Mr. Edminson stated that in can go either way, but for the most part, for the safety of the First <br />Responders, a Police presence is definitely a needed resource to those type of calls because at <br />times, they are putting themselves into scary situations. He stated that there are times when a <br />Police presence can escalate the situation; however, he noted that he thinks they all work together <br />well. He stated that he knows that if the Police feel that their presence may be escalating the <br />situation, then they will back off a bit. He stated that they are training on psychiatric responses <br />and noted that they are working on numerous models throughout different cities they serve on how <br />they can better respond to these types of calls. He explained that one of the things that they are <br />finding is that when they get called to a psychiatric situation, they are in crisis, or near crisis and <br />it is difficult to talk them out of that situation at the time. He stated that in many situations the <br />Page 6 of 17 <br /> <br /> <br />