Meet the new 911 boss in Bridgeport

By Aaron Leo
ConnPost Staff writer
Updated: 01/24/2009 06:49:17 PM EST

BRIDGEPORT -- There are things Doree Price won't do -- like ski the black diamond trails. But one thing that doesn't faze her is taking on the management of the new combined 911 dispatch center in a city that fields 100,000 emergency calls a year.

Dealing with frantic callers did not overwhelm Price 24 years ago when she first took an emergency dispatcher job in Concord, N.H., after graduating from the University of New Hampshire.

"It was going to be a temporary thing. I ended up enjoying the challenge," she said, seated recently in her office in the mostly finished North Washington Avenue building slated to open late spring or early summer. For her $105,000 annual salary, she will oversee 37 civilian dispatchers, who will have been moved from the city's current police and fire dispatch sites. There will also be another civilian supervisor, she said.

In addition to improving the speed and efficiency of dispatching, the center's digital and encryption technology ends a tradition of listening to police broadcasts on scanners, acting Police Chief Joseph Gaudett Jr. has said. He was on the committee that chose Price.

She was one of two candidates who passed all the tests, out of 52 total applicants, said city Personnel Director Ralph Jacobs. Of those, 28 lacked the educational experience, 18 failed either the written or oral examination and four were disqualified for other reasons, leaving the final selection between Price and another candidate.

Price, who declined to reveal her age, worked her way up from dispatcher to trainer over 12 years, and by 1995 was training coordinator for the New Hampshire Bureau of Emergency Communications, which handles all the state's 911 calls. From 2000 to 2006, she ran a dispatch facility in Illinois that covered 13 agencies, including fire and police departments and ambulance services.

"It was challenging, but the people were really good," Price said. "We performed well and had [more agencies] come in to the center."

She left in 2006 when her husband of 17 years, an FBI agent, was transferred to Connecticut. After working as consultant for two years helping New England communities to regionalize their dispatch operations, she applied for the new job as the city's director of public safety communications.

While her office has only a telephone, desk and table, and the center at this point has desks but no computers, Price is still busy. She has taken over the implementation of a digital radio and dispatching system and must teach the city's operators how to use the new technology.

The center will combine the fire and police department dispatchers into one room, she said. Now, fire dispatchers work from Fire Department headquarters on Congress Street, and police dispatch from City Hall. They use different computer systems, she added.

"Everybody will be trained to do everything," Price said, adding that the new dispatch system will make scheduling shifts easier and reduce call transfer times.

Emergency 911 calls from cell phones in the area go first to the State Police Troop G barracks, are transferred to the Fire Department and then to police if the calls are police matters. Now, Troop G will forward such calls immediately to the dispatch center, Price said. Currently, the Fire Department receives 911 calls from land lines first and transfers them to police. At the new center, the calls all will be handled in one spot, according to Price.

The technology will be state-of-the-art, as will the desks. Operators can raise or lower their work stations, and can adjust the temperature and light around them, Price said.

In all, the new system "will hopefully make the job easier for them," she said. The operators appear to have a knowledgeable and adaptable leader in Price, a member of APCO, or the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International, and NENA, the National Emergency Number Association.

Fire Chief Brian Rooney, a member of the committee that selected her, called her "very capable."

Gaudett, who was working on the dispatch center technology before his promotion, has also publicly praised her, as did police Capt. Brian McCarthy, who oversees CAD.

"She seems to be OK. From what I understand, she has a pretty good background," McCarthy said.

Detective Keith Bryant, department spokesman, added, "I think she's going to be very good for the city."

But Price isn't resting on her laurels. Instead, She's moving forward with several ideas to improve the city's dispatching. One plan is to add the ability to track police cars in real time via computer.

"That's really going to be an advantage," she said.

She also wants to create a more efficient records management system. Getting more tools to improve emergency dispatching is key to making it work, according to Price.

"Computer-aided dispatch is as good as what you put into it," she said.