aaron315
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From the Indianapolis Star
PLAINFIELD -- A child is choking and seconds count, while ambulance crews look for an address and find their way to a Brownsburg home.
Meanwhile, a runaway machine carrying a heavy load of boxes smashes a warehouse dock worker in Plainfield.
And a construction worker falls from the roof of a house going up in a new Avon subdivision.
All three scenarios are fictional, but they could happen, and quick help would be vital.
Today, the police, fire and ambulance services throughout Hendricks County will begin to have a long-awaited communications and dispatching center to speed their response to emergencies.
After years of debate, the Communications Center opens in Plainfield's police and public safety building.
The service starts today handling 911 calls and police-fire communications for Plainfield, and then adds all the other agencies over the next couple months.
The $7.6 million facility uses state-of-the-art technology. The goal is to get the right kind of help from the closest source, even if that means crossing old jurisdictional boundaries.
The key is that the communications facility serves all agencies equally.
The unified center brings together all the emergency response agencies in Avon, Brownsburg, Danville, Plainfield, the Hendricks sheriff and the small town marshals and township fire departments in the county.
"This is unique in Indiana. A lot of other counties are watching us to see how well this works," said Larry Brinker, executive director of the Hendricks Communications Center and a former Plainfield police chief.
"This is a new day and a new way of thinking about public safety."
Brand new is the way in which the Hendricks Communications Center is connected to other public safety communications systems.
It is tied to both the Hoosier Safe-T system of the Indiana State Police and to the Metropolitan Emergency Communication Agency's voice and record-keeping system for Marion County.
"We know that criminals pay no attention to the lines between cities and towns and counties. This new system will enhance our ability to track them and follow trends across county lines," he said.
For example, police could spot a series of residential break-ins in Pike Township in Marion County and across the line in Lincoln Township in Hendricks County.
Generations of town and county elected officials have talked for years about a combined center because it could save time and money, not to mention lives.
The roots go back to 1995, when a small surcharge for 911 emergency service was added to the monthly bill of every telephone land line in the county.
By 2002, the $1 fee generated $64,000 monthly and had built a reserve of $1.1 million. Even as police and fire chiefs tapped the money to equip and staff their own dispatching operations, then-Sheriff Roy Waddell conducted meetings to talk up a unified center.
The fee is now $2, and some of it is used to pay the lease to Motorola for the communications gear.
All of the 49 dispatchers and other workers from the 911 and dispatching centers in the towns and Sheriff's Department have been offered jobs in the center.
Through retirements and resignations, the center eventually will have a staff of about 38 to 40 to operate 24 hours a day with teams of eight to 13 dispatchers.
Brinker explained that all 250 police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and other public safety vehicles in the county are equipped with either laptop computers or a similar digital communications device in addition to radios. The system runs in the 800 megahertz frequency range, much higher than old police and fire analog radios.
All officers and vehicles can talk with each other. That's a far cry from the segmented systems of most counties.
It's a leap from past practice in Hendricks County, where police officers, say in Plainfield, might have to call on a cell phone to talk with officers in Avon.
The Communications Center is buried in several thousand square feet in the center of the Plainfield police station along U.S. 40 at Moon Road on the western edge of town. It is on land adjacent to the Indiana Department of Correction's prisons.
Inside the center, 13 work stations have been set up for dispatchers. Each station includes an array of six flat video screens. Among the displays is information about the location of incoming phone calls, including 911 emergency calls.
Because all 250 emergency vehicles in the county are equipped with the Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, dispatchers can see the location of every police car, ambulance and fire truck, Brinker said.
The dispatch system also will know the duty roster of each agency.
So, with information of available manpower and the location of an incident -- like the example of a choking child or injured construction worker -- dispatchers can send the right kind of help as fast as possible, he said.
While police officers or firefighters rush to a house or business, dispatchers calling up three-dimensional aerial photos of the area.
"They can see where the doors and windows and any other features are located, which can be important information in an emergency," Brinker said.
PLAINFIELD -- A child is choking and seconds count, while ambulance crews look for an address and find their way to a Brownsburg home.
Meanwhile, a runaway machine carrying a heavy load of boxes smashes a warehouse dock worker in Plainfield.
And a construction worker falls from the roof of a house going up in a new Avon subdivision.
All three scenarios are fictional, but they could happen, and quick help would be vital.
Today, the police, fire and ambulance services throughout Hendricks County will begin to have a long-awaited communications and dispatching center to speed their response to emergencies.
After years of debate, the Communications Center opens in Plainfield's police and public safety building.
The service starts today handling 911 calls and police-fire communications for Plainfield, and then adds all the other agencies over the next couple months.
The $7.6 million facility uses state-of-the-art technology. The goal is to get the right kind of help from the closest source, even if that means crossing old jurisdictional boundaries.
The key is that the communications facility serves all agencies equally.
The unified center brings together all the emergency response agencies in Avon, Brownsburg, Danville, Plainfield, the Hendricks sheriff and the small town marshals and township fire departments in the county.
"This is unique in Indiana. A lot of other counties are watching us to see how well this works," said Larry Brinker, executive director of the Hendricks Communications Center and a former Plainfield police chief.
"This is a new day and a new way of thinking about public safety."
Brand new is the way in which the Hendricks Communications Center is connected to other public safety communications systems.
It is tied to both the Hoosier Safe-T system of the Indiana State Police and to the Metropolitan Emergency Communication Agency's voice and record-keeping system for Marion County.
"We know that criminals pay no attention to the lines between cities and towns and counties. This new system will enhance our ability to track them and follow trends across county lines," he said.
For example, police could spot a series of residential break-ins in Pike Township in Marion County and across the line in Lincoln Township in Hendricks County.
Generations of town and county elected officials have talked for years about a combined center because it could save time and money, not to mention lives.
The roots go back to 1995, when a small surcharge for 911 emergency service was added to the monthly bill of every telephone land line in the county.
By 2002, the $1 fee generated $64,000 monthly and had built a reserve of $1.1 million. Even as police and fire chiefs tapped the money to equip and staff their own dispatching operations, then-Sheriff Roy Waddell conducted meetings to talk up a unified center.
The fee is now $2, and some of it is used to pay the lease to Motorola for the communications gear.
All of the 49 dispatchers and other workers from the 911 and dispatching centers in the towns and Sheriff's Department have been offered jobs in the center.
Through retirements and resignations, the center eventually will have a staff of about 38 to 40 to operate 24 hours a day with teams of eight to 13 dispatchers.
Brinker explained that all 250 police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and other public safety vehicles in the county are equipped with either laptop computers or a similar digital communications device in addition to radios. The system runs in the 800 megahertz frequency range, much higher than old police and fire analog radios.
All officers and vehicles can talk with each other. That's a far cry from the segmented systems of most counties.
It's a leap from past practice in Hendricks County, where police officers, say in Plainfield, might have to call on a cell phone to talk with officers in Avon.
The Communications Center is buried in several thousand square feet in the center of the Plainfield police station along U.S. 40 at Moon Road on the western edge of town. It is on land adjacent to the Indiana Department of Correction's prisons.
Inside the center, 13 work stations have been set up for dispatchers. Each station includes an array of six flat video screens. Among the displays is information about the location of incoming phone calls, including 911 emergency calls.
Because all 250 emergency vehicles in the county are equipped with the Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, dispatchers can see the location of every police car, ambulance and fire truck, Brinker said.
The dispatch system also will know the duty roster of each agency.
So, with information of available manpower and the location of an incident -- like the example of a choking child or injured construction worker -- dispatchers can send the right kind of help as fast as possible, he said.
While police officers or firefighters rush to a house or business, dispatchers calling up three-dimensional aerial photos of the area.
"They can see where the doors and windows and any other features are located, which can be important information in an emergency," Brinker said.
