PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) \u2014 The Pinellas County Commission voted to end its annual contract with the Suncoast Center, which provides 24\/7 access to sexual assault evidence collection kits.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething needs to change so that the survivors can continue to receive the services that they need,\u201d said Karen Yatchum, director of Pinellas County\u2019s human services.<\/p>\n
County commissioners are asking local hospitals to step up in order to offer the same service.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think these victims need a good, reliable, comfortable place that\u2019s going to treat them the way they need to be treated, collect the evidence that needs to be collected and processed swiftly,\u201d said commissioner Kathleen Peters.<\/p>\n
The contract termination passed in Tuesday\u2019s commission meeting, but on Monday they held a closed-door discussion meeting about the change.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we heard a lot yesterday in the community meeting is having that trauma-informed approach is a really, really, really big part of this work,\u201d said Yatchum.<\/p>\n
Yatchum says hospital representatives told her they were working to find ways to implement the service. Yatchum added that county law enforcement were less keen on the idea of decentralizing their evidence collection sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spoke with the Assistant Chief Deputy on Monday and I would say they are not on board with all of the hospitals taking over their [Suncoast Center\u2019s] responsibility because of how complicated it creates a situation for their investigations,\u201d said Yatchum.<\/p>\n
8 On Your Side reached out to the Pinellas County Sheriff\u2019s Office about it. Cpl. Jamie Miller sent a statement on behalf of PCSO saying:<\/p>\n
\u201cOur interest is to ensure that sexual assault victims receive appropriate services and that we can effectively collect evidence to hold perpetrators of these heinous crimes accountable. We look forward to those responsible for conducting sexual assault exams determining a permanent funding stream that provides effective exams in a compassionate setting.\u201d<\/p>\n
8 On Your Side also reached out to the Suncoast Center for comment. We did not immediately hear back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) \u2014 The Pinellas County Commission voted to end its annual contract with the Suncoast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-428079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}