By Matt Breslow
Staff Writer
January 24, 2006
NORWALK -- Emergency dispatch services are now staffed entirely by civilians, as the city yesterday completed a longtime plan and freed an extra police officer for patrol duty.
The move will allow more officers to hit the streets, since a patrol officer had been working at the dispatch center at all times, Police Chief Harry Rilling said.
"It will, in effect, give us one more police officer seven days a week, 24 hours a day" in the Patrol Division, Rilling said.
The increase is the equivalent adding five-and-a-half police officers to the force, the chief said.
The next step is to move fire department dispatch from Charles A. Volk Central Fire Station to the communications center at police headquarters.
After a consultant's study, then- Mayor Alex Knopp in 2002 announced a plan to consolidate fire and police dispatch and staff it with civilians.
Michael Dolhancryk, the city's emergency dispatch director and disaster response coordinator, said a benefit is that everyone working at the communications center is a specialist.
When the city hired Dolhancryk a year-and-a-half ago, a police officer usually staffed the main radio in the dispatch center while two or three civilians took calls and assisted with radio communication.
Soon after the new police headquarters opened in May, police began letting dispatchers run the operation but continued to staff the center at all times.
Officers were there to make decisions if needed, a task that now falls to dispatch supervisors working with patrol sergeants, Dolhancryk said.
Detective Marc Lepore, police union president, said his membership has two concerns about the changes -- that all dispatchers undergo background checks and that they are properly trained, because a mistake could be fatal.
Background checks are standard practice, Dolhancryk said.
But the dispatchers' union represents workers in other city departments, so the city had to honor a union member's right to take a dispatcher job, he said.
According to an agreement between the union and the city, candidates must pass tests in dispatch and typing and undergo full background checks before starting as dispatchers, Dolhancryk said.
He said he hopes to bring fire dispatch operations to police headquarters soon.
About two weeks ago, dispatchers at the police station began taking fire department calls seven to eight hours a day.
Someone at fire headquarters "shadows" the operation in case of a glitch, but none has occurred, Dolhancryk said.
Response times for fire calls have decreased during those hours.
Under the existing system, a dispatcher at the police station takes a caller's information for a 911 fire call, then transfers the call to a fire dispatcher, who also takes the caller's information, then dispatches emergency workers, he said.
"A lot of technical issues" have held up merging police and fire dispatching, Dolhancryk said.
The state now gives the city a 911 subsidy of $18,000 to $20,000.
The subsidy will increase to $130,000 to $140,000 when fire and police dispatch operations are combined, he said.
Copyright © 2006, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.