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Ward 6 Ald. Mark Mahoney has repeatedly reported his
constituents’ complaints about the Sangamon County 911 Dispatch
Center, and this week his persistence finally paid off. He raised the issue with Ralph
Caldwell, chief of the Springfield Police Department, at last week’s
City Council meeting and again with Robert Williams, new assistant police
chief, at Monday’s meeting of the public-affairs and safety
committee, requesting that the director of the dispatch center meet with
aldermen to address constituents’ concerns. A recurring complaint, and one of
the most worrisome, Mahoney says, is that residents sometimes wait two
hours before law-enforcement or other emergency personnel respond to their
911 calls.
“If people can’t
count on a 911 call, what can they count on?” Mahoney says.
“It’s there for emergency situations, so if there is an
emergency, someone should respond.”
The issue is further complicated,
says Mahoney, by constituents’ dissatisfaction with the dispatch
center’s nonemergency numbers. He says that residents feel that they
are given “the runaround” and wind up calling 911 for problems
such as loud music. Caldwell says that the police
department has received similar complaints but attributes the problem to
general confusion over the workings of the dispatch center — which
receives calls for the Springfield Police Department, the Sangamon County
Sheriff’s Office, and all of the county’s fire and emergency
situations. “The aldermen thought if
they called that number they were getting a police officer, but it’s
always been a dispatcher,” Caldwell says. “They thought they
had complaints with the police department, but in reality they
weren’t happy with the response from the 911 center.”
Tod Rowe, who took over as director of
the Sangamon County 911 Dispatch Center in February, says that he inherited
several issues, including serious understaffing. He says he has worked to
fill the open positions with qualified candidates.
“One of the biggest issues
is that dispatchers work between 60 and 70 hours a week,” Rowe says.
“When your people work that amount of hours, you’re setting
yourself up for mistakes.”
Rowe also admits that his
dispatchers were overwhelmed with the amount of daily calls coming in on 25
different nonemergency numbers. The dispatch center’s floor plan was
recently altered and several employees have had their duties changed to
free up dispatchers to “truly focus on emergencies,” he says. Rowe will further address these
issues and answer other questions regarding dispatch-center procedures at a
Sept. 17 meeting of the public-affairs and safety committee.
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Aug 16-22, 2007.
