I don't believe this has been brought up in this forum
yet, Hennepin County Sheriff Communications offered to
take over 911 & Public Safety Dispatching at no-cost
to any interested city within the county. I believe
this was a zero cost offer for a 7 year period. The
offer stipulated that any interested cities had to
sign an agreement as of last week. Most of the
independant PSAPs (911 centers) declined; Bloomington,
Richfield, Hopkins, St Louis Park/Golden Valley, and
MAC Airport are maintaining their independance.
Brooklyn Center was the only city to sign up and will
be closing it's own dispatch center.
Minneapolis tendered a conditional acceptance, under
the clause that them joining be based on a
cost/benefit study to be done in 2005. I don't know
whether Hennepin County accepted that stipulation or
not.
I noticed in today's Strib that future mayoral
candidate Peter McClauglen (sp?) is in favor of such a
deal, citing the presumed cost savings to the city.
I haven't seen any coverage of this scheme in the
Strib (or maybe I just missed it).
In my opinion, such a move could be disasterous to the
city's responders and citizens. The current 911
call-load and police/fire radio traffic for
Minneapolis alone exceeds the total load for the rest
of Hennepin County combined and would require major
transformation of Hennepin County's capacity (and of
course, a tremendous infusion of cash, which we would
still end up paying for - just to the county instead
of the city).
The plus side could be that there would be more 911
operators on duty, and thus quicker answering, but
only during slow periods. During busy times, bad
weather especially, the pool of potential 911 callers
would be the entire county instead of just the city's
residents.
A huge, more subtle factor in favor of localised
dispatching is that the telecommunicators (911
operators) and especially the dispatchers have years
of experience taking calls in Minneapolis and
therefore have developed their own internal knowledge
bank of cross streets, landmarks, and other "hints"
that only someone intimitely familiar with the city
would know - and be critical in interpreting a
hysterical 911 caller. Simple things like knowing the
importance of "North" and "South" in an address, or
"Grand Ave" vs "Grant St", or recognizing immediately
where "Old Colony" or "that big gas station on
Washington by the freeway" is.
It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Seems like another "cost" vs "acceptable level of
service" issue.
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