Opinion: Consolidated County Dispatch Services Up To The Task
Bergen County Police Chief/Acting Director of Public Safety Brian Higgins weighs in on consolidating Fair Lawn's dispatch services
To the editor:
In response to the letter to the editor in the Fair Lawn Patch dated Thursday, March 01, 2012 titled, "Consolidating Dispatch Is Wrong for Fair Lawn."
The authors wrote that consolidating dispatch services would not be beneficial in Fair Lawn. I must begin by saying that the men and women of the Fair Lawn Police Department and their dispatch are professionals. They provide a very valuable service to the residents of Fair Lawn, but I respectfully disagree with the points on which these two men base their reasoning for Fair Lawn not to use the Bergen County Public Safety Center (PSOC). The dispatchers of the Bergen County PSOC handled almost 300,000 911 and administrative calls for service in 2011. As a matter of fact, during the snow storm of October 2011, the PSOC handled 2,200 calls in a ten hour period. The Bergen County PSOC provides primary dispatch services to all county facilities and 11 towns and 911 primary public answering services to 21 municipalities with a combined population in excess of 200,000 residents.
When a 911 call for a medical emergency is received in the Bergen County PSOC pre-arrival instructions are provided “in-house”, or as the Record states “under one big roof”. Those types of calls are not handled by Fair Lawn Dispatch, but are forwarded out of Fair Lawn to another location. By those calls remaining in the BC PSOC, any additional information received to update responding units would be immediately available.
With today’s technology, when a 911 call is received in the PSOC, the address, including the “dash” is displayed on a screen at each console. In addition, our in-house mapping program is able to locate the caller.
The writers indicate that robberies, burglaries, assaults and car thefts have increased and that having a local dispatcher would benefit the residents of Fair Lawn by saving time. Fair Lawn, like many towns in New Jersey, was forced to lay off police officers due to budgetary issues. The money saved by Fair Lawn contracting with the BC PSOC for dispatch services may have saved the jobs of some, if not all, of those police officers. I believe those officers might have a greater and more direct impact on those crimes.
Our armed services are able to conduct military operations, even remote control of drones and weapons systems with precision from thousands of miles away; I know that the Bergen County PSOC can provide excellent dispatch services from Mahwah to Fair Lawn.
The concept of county-wide dispatch Shared Services and Consolidation is not new to public safety. It is being performed across the US as well as in several counties here in New Jersey. The Bergen County mentality of “home rule” seems to be delaying Bergen County from moving forward and catching up with technology.
We are committed to providing the best services to the residents of Bergen County in the most cost-effective manner. Instead of addressing this issue from a negative point of view and starting out the answer with “it can’t work here”, I invite the authors to work together with us to make this state-of-the-art facility the best it can be to best serve our residents.
Brian Higgins
Bergen County Police Chief
Acting Director of Public Safety
Bruce Knuckle
10:24 am on Saturday, March 3, 2012
Adolpho, I'm not to sure Trawinski and Barratta are using Fair Lawn once again for personal motives. The Chief certainly comes across positive. Can anyone find the Fair Lawn chief these days? It would be nice to see that side too.
tacitus
10:41 am on Saturday, March 3, 2012
What Chief Higgins fails to point out is that the County dispatch center using a totally different computer aided dispatch program than Fair Lawn. He also fails to make note that they are still having issues with their system and that their system is not compatible with Fair Lawn's. So the question one must ask is who will have to change systems and who will cover that additional cost? and oh did he fail to mention that the county uses a CAD that Fair Lawn gave up up as not being adequate and therefore had to start all over again with a new one? There are pros and cons to this idea but let's be honest with the total cost and total savings no matter how large or small, then and only then can we make an informed choice.
The other issue not being discussed with consolidation is what happens to the employees, in this case dispatchers? Are they laid off, will the county take them on and if so will they be forced to take a big pay cut or not?
Finally, with all this talk of merges, consolidations etc; when will we see the County take lead and practice what they are looking to force upon the local governments? Seems to me we have a lot of wasteful spending and duplication of services on the county level, how about we merge the county police with the sheriff department like the rest of the world?
Go Figure
10:50 am on Saturday, March 3, 2012
It is my understanding that there have been many mistakes made too. I would like to hear about those problems (i.e., dispatchers who have no knowledge of a town or who dispatch the wrong town). One mistake can be fatal to citizens and emergency responders.
Go Figure
10:55 am on Saturday, March 3, 2012
If Chief Higgins really wants to save money he should consolidate his department with the County Sheriffs Department. This would save the taxpayers much more than consolidating only dispatch services.
ITneverENDS
11:01 am on Saturday, March 3, 2012
This is very interesting, how does a Bergen County Chief, also with a title of Acting Director of Public Safety ( here we go again, 2 titles) , appointed by Trawinski and Baratta (they have County and Fair Lawn titles too), would make a statement like this as his bosses want this same idea pushed unto local taxpayers. ( NO DOUBT A CONFLICT OF INTEREST) I also find it funny how Trawinski and Baratta, unlike the rest of the State of New Jersey, have not abolished one the most expensive county services in terms of payroll. I say this Mr. Higgins stick to your own policing, Bergen County does not need a 8th freeholder. The recent police study of over 600k says your department should be closed. The fact you commented here tells me something about your character!
delgado
1:12 pm on Sunday, March 4, 2012
the biggest fraud is that Mayor Barratta supports dissolving town dispatching centers, yet as Fair Lawns Mayor is 100% opposing. Also Bergen Republicans pledged smaller government and disbanding BCPD and got BC Police Chief political endorsements - which totally supports disbanding BCPD and now that they won, they pretend or forgot that they pledged this. THIS IS THE CONFLICT of Mayor Barratta and Trewinski working for a government position!!!!. Additionally Higgins and family member have given big poltiical donations to Republicans... Worst yet is Freeholder Bernie Maddoff Hermansan has approved the massive expansion and wasteful spending in Bergen government.
johnduran
3:24 pm on Saturday, March 10, 2012
Fair Lawn Police Dispatchers are NOT trained in emergency medical call dispatch. Having dialed 9-1-1 for a medical emergency before I was transfered to a separate "EMS Dispatcher" in god knows where. After researching this a little I've found that other towns have their police dispatchers give CPR and emergency medical instructions on a 9-1-1 call. Why isn't Fair Lawn up to speed with this? I'm sure Bergen County PD is up to speed with emergency instructions. Perhaps one dispatcher is on the phone giving the instructions while another dispatches the paramedics and another dispatches police? There will be no delay if that happened
The Most Interesting Man in the World
3:17 pm on Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Every politician and every goverment agency has an angle on this, but here is a service that is easily consolidated, using better technology and saves money. You could probably fire most county employees and none of us would even notice, however here is something county government could actually be useful for.