By Doug Auer
The Staten Island Advance
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A Staten Island-based grass-roots organizations rallied yesterday in Brooklyn against the city’s plan to consolidate emergency service dispatchers to a central location.
Unready New York, formed by public safety advocate Dominick DeRubbio of Silver Lake, held a press conference opposite Metrotech Center, a sprawling communications complex in downtown Brooklyn.
Metrotech eventually will house all 22 dispatchers who currently work out of the Castleton Corners center, as well as dozens of dispatchers from Manhattan and Brooklyn. A new, yet-to-be-built center in the Bronx will house dispatchers from that borough and Queens.
“The biggest risk that I see is that they’re clustering all the agencies - FDNY, EMS and NYPD - in one building and there’s no back-up location,” said DeRubbio during a phone interview. “What if something goes wrong? What about a terrorist attack?”
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration already has heavily invested in the $1.5 billion overhaul, which began in May.
The administration has previosuly said the plan will reduce response times and save lives by eliminate the redundant step of 911 callers sometimes providing information to two different call takers.
DeRubbio also expressed concerns involving caller information possibly being routed to the wrong agency and how NYPD dispatchers were trained for six hours, which he feels is insufficient when compared to the 90 days FDNY dispatchers train.
DeRubbio was joined at the rally by 45 emergency dispatchers and firefighters, as well as John Sollazzo, president of FDNY Retirees Association.
Councilman Kenneth Mitchell (D-North Shore), who has introduced legislation that would require each borough to maintain its own dispatch center, and John Luisi, candidate for borough president, also voiced outrage over the plan in separately released prepared statements. They were unable to attend the rally, DeRubbio said.
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