Copyright 2006 Chattanooga Publishing Company
By HERMAN WANG and GINNY LaROE
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
A Chattanooga mother whose repeated 911 calls on Monday went unanswered might have been able to reach an operator if the Hamilton County 911 Center had a consolidated dispatch staff, the center’s director said Wednesday.
“We have a lot of assets but not the flexibility to use them all efficiently,” director John Stuermer said.
To rectify that, Mr. Stuermer and others are pushing the four agencies whose dispatchers use the 911 Center to consolidate their call-taking operations, as Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis have done.
Chattanooga police, Chattanooga fire, Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department and Hamilton County Emergency Medical Services personnel use the center.
The center’s 11-member board has commissioned a study, expected to be complete in about five months, to explore the feasibility of consolidation, Mr. Stuermer said.
As it is, the four agencies do not assist one another in taking calls, officials said.
“In the event one agency is overwhelmed, that agency cannot pull personnel from other agencies for help,” Mr. Stuermer said at a news conference. “It’s not the most efficient operation of personnel in the center.”
Chattanooga Police Chief Steve Parks said he does not know if consolidating the county’s 911 call-taking services is the solution. However, he said the center could be more efficient if unification is done properly.
“When you merge employees from several different agencies, there are always some difficult issues to overcome such as salaries and pensions, change of command and those type of things,” Chief Parks said Wednesday.
Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey, who serves on the 911 board, said he would welcome the opportunity to consolidate 911 dispatchers. He said he did not know if the sheriff’s department has experienced instances of repeated unanswered 911 calls.
“I suspect the different jurisdictions haven’t really looked at it as strongly as they should,” Mr. Ramsey said. “I know the 911 board has had some discussions about it. It’d give us an opportunity to coordinate the resources if everybody was working for one jurisdiction.”
Dan Johnson, chief of staff for Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield, said the city’s administration would support consolidation.
“You’d lose those employees as city employees, but you’d have a 911 section that could control everything, provide better training and standardize the procedures,” Mr. Johnson said. “It would make sense.”
Stacey Hunter and her family called 911 at least a half dozen times Monday when a fire broke out in their Brainerd home’s kitchen.
At the time, one Chattanooga police dispatcher was taking calls, while three others were on break.
When a Hamilton County 911 call comes in, the 911 Center’s computer system directs the call to Chattanooga Police Department dispatchers if the call originates inside Chattanooga’s city limits.
The computer system directs the call to Hamilton County Sheriff Department’s dispatchers for calls from outside Chattanooga, except those originating in East Ridge, Soddy-Daisy, Lookout Mountain and Signal Mountain.
East Ridge 911 calls are routed to the Hamilton County EMS dispatchers. Calls from Lookout Mountain, Soddy-Daisy and Signal Mountain are routed to dispatchers in those towns.
The 911 Center oversees the computer routing system, the telephone equipment and computer banks in its facility. However, each agency is responsible for its dispatch staffing and the answering of calls routed to it, Mr. Stuermer said.
Records show the Chattanooga Police Department’s dispatchers did not answer 20 percent of the 10,650 calls routed to them in February. Nearly 27,000 calls to police dispatchers from January to October 2005 went unanswered, according to a department report.
Chief Parks said there is no easy answer to reduce the abandoned-call rate.
Neither increasing staffing nor unification would ensure all calls get through to dispatchers immediately, he said.
He said in the last fiscal year he increased the number of communications positions from 66 to 68. The department also created a “power shift” between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. to have more employees working during the busiest hours, he said.