Atlantic City, NJ - Atlantic City PD Will Soon Have Silent Dispatch over MDT's

[KC2GVX]

Atlantic City Police Department takes steps to update its crime-fighting technology - pressofAtlanticCity.com: Breaking News

 

[PM08203]

So does anyone have first hand knowledge of the East Orange system? Is it as good as the hype? Do they do "silent dispatch"?

 

[Thunderknight]

I think the OP's subject line is a little ahead of itself. This is what the article actually says about silent dispatch:
"Global positioning systems and silent dispatch - a way to send officers to calls without going over the public radio - are just some of the things they hope to incorporate in the new system, Foley said"

They "hope" to incorporate in a new system that the are just hiring the project manager for. So I'm not sure "soon have" is an appropriate description for one of the items they hope to have in a new system.

 

[fmulder13]

Additionally, I think having the ability to dispatch calls for service without broadcasting over the radio does not necessarily mean all calls will be dispatched silently. In monitoring departments that have consummate CAD systems up and running, I've noticed the lowest priority calls (vehicle lockouts, etc) may be dispatched silently, or an officer may request to be sent information for, "the domestic on 10th," for example. The ability to dispatch calls without using the radio doesn't mean the death of the radio.

 

[K2AFY]

Radio won't die there has to be a backup system. How many times does your PC or laptop lockup?

 

[902]

Sounds like they need a systems integrator. They can use AVL to track their positions and then have the CAD and UCR export to crimemapping.com to do a snapshot of criminal activity to the public (it's not a secret... yet...). Now, for all this video... everyone has an attack of the nifties when it comes to this sort of thing. But say you're a busy department with 50 officers on the road, and all of them are streaming video wherever they are. Who sifts through all this "situational awareness?" Especially when we are in austerity mode and dispatchers are short-staffed? They'll be taking text 9-1-1 calls soon, with videos of the scene, and they'll have to determine an appropriate response with a poorly worded one sentence message and a cam image. You can't inundate limited staffing with information overload. A balance will have to be reached on how to process all of this data.

Sadly, the glitz of the beltway bandits selling this ideal wears off once it's in and now you have to find warm bodies to handle the human factors. Unless they come up with some kind of heuristically-driven computer system that analyzes trends and does law enforcement system status management (it works so well for EMS *cough* *cough*).

I suspect it will not revolutionize police work a whole lot, but it will be a nifty toy until the next latest and greatest comes out.

As for East Orange, anything is a plus as long as no one has to to unplug the coffee pot to run it.

[For the out-of-area people, the running joke for some big departments in NJ was that all of the outlets in dispatch had something plugged into them, so, to accommodate the coffee pot, something had to be unplugged. Between East Orange and Newark, coffee seemed to get in the way of SPEN traffic over the years... "Ee-yo ta Nerk on SPEN"]

 

[redhatnick]

Additionally, I think having the ability to dispatch calls for service without broadcasting over the radio does not necessarily mean all calls will be dispatched silently. In monitoring departments that have consummate CAD systems up and running, I've noticed the lowest priority calls (vehicle lockouts, etc) may be dispatched silently, or an officer may request to be sent information for, "the domestic on 10th," for example. The ability to dispatch calls without using the radio doesn't mean the death of the radio.

I tend to agree here. I do monitor Atlantic City PD and Fire while I'm on vacation here in the summer and these guys seem to be enormously under-automated for the type of population they have in such a small area. I can see having to call dispatch to run an out-of-state plate, but these guys have to even call dispatch to run a local plate. It would probably be faster for them to run your drivers license through Facebook its so sad.

I wouldn't worry about MDTs taking away all the fun. North Carolina Highway Patrol is heavily MDT based (see North Carolina State Highway Patrol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) so you won't hear them call out a traffic stop, but not to worry, when something has their attention, they're too busy talking on a radio to bother with a MDT.

 

[SCPD]

New Mexico State police uses this and it's very effective.

 

[RadioDitch]

So does anyone have first hand knowledge of the East Orange system? Is it as good as the hype? Do they do "silent dispatch"?

East Orange is hardly silent.

 

[n9rmg]

Additionally, I think having the ability to dispatch calls for service without broadcasting over the radio does not necessarily mean all calls will be dispatched silently. In monitoring departments that have consummate CAD systems up and running, I've noticed the lowest priority calls (vehicle lockouts, etc) may be dispatched silently, or an officer may request to be sent information for, "the domestic on 10th," for example. The ability to dispatch calls without using the radio doesn't mean the death of the radio.

I agree with this, nothing will be as Reliable as the Radio.

 

[kd0fmg]

I live in a small town where they do a lot of "Silent Dispatching" through CAD. When they first switched to it they basically did everything over CAD, but they soon found out that due to computers locking up or hiccups in the mobile broadband network, that only non priority calls were suitable for this. A lot of the officers are also against the computers and just make the dispatcher give them the call over the air. The only thing that will kill land mobile radio and is way into the future is LTE. I can guarantee that a vast majority of public safety agencies are not going to give up LMR because instant PTT communication will ALWAYS be essential in any public safety platform. There is also perhaps thousands of agencies in rural areas that will not have the infrastructure for LTE for a very long time or maybe never.

MDT's backed with CAD are good for reports or low priority calls. It is obviously not practical to type up an armed robbery call with only hope that it will get out to an officer.

 

[b7spectra]

Not all calls will be dispatched "silently", mostly the ones where they don't want the public to hear. You won't silently dispatch a call that requires multiple officers there in a hurry.

 

[w2txb]

Radio won't die there has to be a backup system. How many times does your PC or laptop lockup?

With anything from MicroShaft, too often.