County 911 systems to see upgrade
October 04, 2009 10:46 PM
Sedalia Democrat
Pettis County will receive $28,000 in grant money for upgrading the emergency call system for the sheriff’s office and police department.
Missouri was awarded $1.7 million in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration to help 911 call centers across the state upgrade their 911 systems.
The funding will be distributed to 19 call centers in the state, including Pettis, Saline and Moniteau counties. Pettis County will receive $28,000, Moniteau County’s call center will take in $16,266 and $42,245 will go to Saline County.
Pettis County Technologies Director James Theisen said the county will use its portion of the grant funding to purchase a new 28-channel recorder for the 911 system to replace the recorder that has been in use since 2001. The recorder will be housed at the Sedalia Police Department, serving both the police department and the Pettis County Sheriff’s Office.
Sedalia Cmdr. John Rice said once equipment for the 911 system reaches a certain age, it is more cost-effective to replace it rather than keep it under a service contract.
“If you make it five to seven years with a piece of equipment, the whole industry has changed,” he said.
Rice said the new recorder will record city and county calls along with traffic over the police radio. The separate channels allow police to pull out specific tracks and electronically transfer the files to CDs or across computers.
The new recorder will also help police provide more detailed reports, Rice said. It will make it easier for law enforcement agencies to track the number, frequency and length of emergency calls coming into either the county or city.
A state review board determined the grant awards after local jurisdictions proposed the areas in which they were most in need of assistance and agreed to provide matching funds. In applying for the grant, local governments were required to show they have spent an amount at least equal to the grant funding they received to upgrade their 911 system in the last year.
“We were able to get the $28,000 because I can show we spent $28,000 on upgrades already. If we didn’t match, we wouldn’t have received that grant,” Theisen said.
Theisen said the county has been working to upgrade the 911 system to develop the ability to determine the location of cell phone calls coming into local dispatchers. Local law enforcers can usually see the phone number and service provider of people making emergency calls under the current system, but they cannot pinpoint the location from which the call came.
In recent weeks, T-Mobile has been testing the implementation of the tracking technology in the county. Theisen said once their system is up and running, the five other cell phone service providers will follow.
More than 50 percent of emergency calls coming into the sheriff’s office and the police department originate from cell phones, Rice said. He said developing the ability to track locations of cell phone callers is a priority for law enforcement agencies because the technology could save lives.
“A lot of lives are lost across the U.S. ... when officers can’t find where the person is calling from in an emergency situation,” Rice said. “Even if it saves just one life in Pettis County, that is one life.”
Because the majority of callers are using cell phones, receiving grant money is vital for upgrading and replacing the 911 system, Rice said. Unlike landline callers, cell phone users do not pay the 911 surcharge tax that helps fund the system.
“I’m happy we were able to get the grant,” Theisen said. “With 114 counties in the state, we were one of only 19 to get it.”
