PJH, that is NOT what the people in the field think. Talk to the agencies that get dispatched by them (like the cops on the road) and they will tell you otherwise. Talk to the PDs that have their own dispatch and they will also tell you otherwise. Many of them keep logs to keep track of all the mistakes. No, it's not everyone...there are some really good people there. But you have to look at the history of 911 in the County to get a bigger picture. Politics definitely comes into play....the first Commissioner was a General Manager from Frontier who was connected and got her son into NYSP as well. The second was a retired FBI Agent with a retirement gig. The current a retired police Chief with a retirement gig. Do you think they knew or know anything about radio communications? Do they have an engineering background? Same goes with the Supervisors. When they gave the original PSD-I (call taker) PSD-II (dispatcher) and Supervisor tests there was no upward mobility. You did have to have previous experience to be a PSD-II such as dispatcher with NYSPIN certification (already doing it with another agency), volunteer Fire or EMS for a determined number of years, etc. Calltakers though could have been customer service representatives from Walmart and that's where the problem started. And PSD-IIs didn't qualify as Supervisors because you needed supervisory experience....BUT, it didn't have to be in comms. There were those that came from Camp Laguardia where they were a Supervisor and those that came from appliance stores where they were an manager and they were telling the people that have been doing the job for with years of experience how to now do there job. It was a cluster. Eventually the union fought for promotional exams, but then the customer service reps that were Calltakers became dispatchers. You knew who they were just by listening to the radio. Now let's look at their CAD and RMS systems. Original CAD was from Printrak and I know one of the Supervisors at 911 that jumped ship and got a job with them. They are still using that system (bought out by Motorola). Then they decide to get RMS countywide so all the PDs can be on the same page and go with Impact. Do you think they went with VCAD from Impact....nope....still using Printrak. So the systems don't talk to each other which means all the PDs have to re-enter the information from one system to the other. Another cluster.
Sorry to go off topic here but I have a lot more facts that support their problems. Even their new Communications Specialist lacks the experience to run a project this large. Just look at his LinkedIn page. Recent grad two years ago with no engineering experience.
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