Rosenthal Favors

Police Station Dispatch Center

By Andrew Gorosko

Discussions with police about the site for a new central dispatching center have led First Selectman Herb Rosenthal to lean toward locating the radio communications facility in the police station, on the upper level of Town Hall South at 3 Main Street.

“They [police] made a convincing case to me,” Mr Rosenthal said Tuesday.

Late last year, following 21 months of work, the town’s Combined Dispatch Committee submitted to the first selectman its report on a proposal to centralize and modernize town emergency services dispatching facilities. The report proposes centralizing all town dispatching as a way to streamline town emergency services operations.

That report suggested combining all dispatching in the large room which formerly held the town building department in the lower level of Town Hall South, beneath the police station.

Currently, police department dispatching is done from a dispatching booth adjacent to the police station lobby. Dispatching for fire and ambulance calls is now done from a dispatching room about one-half mile to the north, in the basement of Edmond Town Hall at 45 Main Street.

Mr Rosenthal said he intends to locate the central dispatch center in the police station, unless fire and ambulance personnel can give him a good reason why it should be located elsewhere, such as the lower level of Town Hall South.

Police have said it would pose operational and logistical problems for them if the dispatch center were located in the lower level of the building, the first selectman said. 

As part of combining dispatching operations, the town will create an oversight agency to supervise municipal dispatching, Mr Rosenthal said.

Mr Rosenthal said he plans to seek Legislative Council approval for spending state grant money to centralize the dispatch center at the police station. He said he expects the maximum cost for the project would be $300,000.

In a central dispatch center, two dispatchers will be on duty around the clock. Under the current arrangement with separate dispatch centers, there is one dispatcher on duty around the clock in each facility.

Mr Rosenthal said he wants a central dispatch center in operation before Labor Day. When the new center starts operation will hinge on the availability of funding for the project, he said.

In a memorandum to Mr Rosenthal, Acting Police Chief Michael Kehoe described the police department’s proposal to locate the central dispatch center in the police station, instead of in the former town building department.

Mr Kehoe’s plan calls for creating the dispatch center in what is now the records department in the police station. The records department would then occupy what are now the dispatch booth and the adjacent former photographic darkroom. The wall between the current dispatch booth and the darkroom would be taken down to provide adequate space for the records department.

Locating the dispatch center in what is now the records department meets the needs of police, fire, and emergency medical service personnel, according to Acting Chief Kehoe. He provides a proposed floor plan depicting a general layout of the central dispatch center.

In a memo to Acting Chief Kehoe, Sergeant George Sinko described a January incident which he said showed the value of having a manned dispatch center at the police station lobby at the public entrance to the building.

In that incident, two potentially violent persons who were in conflict entered the building. The presence of a dispatcher there was instrumental in cooling off the situation, according to the sergeant.