Croton on Hudson FD

[comspec]

I just noticed that Croton on Hudson Fire/EMS now appears to be dispatched by 60-Control instead of the police. This of course got me thinking about Westchester County 911 in general.

I beleive Croton PD is still the 911 PSAP (for Croton land lines of course). So now when a request for FD/EMS comes in, do they take the information then call 60-Control with it or do they transfer the call to 60-control then wait for 60-control to call them so they can dispath the PD. I am wondering becuase its not like Croton is so busy they don't have time to dispatch FD/EMS, so I am wondering what prompted the change.

I am speculating, because I am not sure how this really works, is it more efficient, is it better, is it more cost effective?

In reality while 911 is easy to remember, it does not always represent the "FASTEST" way to get needed services. In my town, for example I will not dial 911 from my cell phone, becuase it would then go to the State PD (TMC) who then have to reroute the call to my local PSAP. Since I know the dispacther's number (small department so the dispatcher answers the non-emergency number also) I usually dial that instead of 911. It works much faster then calling the state PD which (through no fault of their own) usually adds 3 to 5 minutes onto the response time as they collect enough information to properly route the call.

So based on this I have to conclude that having 60-control dispacth FD/EMS and Croton PD as the PSAP has to add to the response time.

Just wondering out loud and I am sure I will get a bazillion opinions.

 

[DaveNF2G]

I think your "3 to 5 minutes to gather information" is a serious exaggeration.

How long it takes to figure out where to route a call depends on the caller. If they don't have a clue as to where they are, then the calltaker will not be able to figure it out quickly, either.

If you know precisely whose jurisdiction you are in, then why not just tell the calltaker to connect you up front? That always works for me.

 

[Alarms50]

I can't comment directly on the Croton on Hudson situation, although I am in the area. There are issues that may have come in to play that prompted this change. I had heard rumors that the PD had been dispatching a PD car to "investigate" smoke or possible fire, and only dispatching the FD once the PD had confirmed, thus resulting in delayed FD responses.

Westchester County's 60 Control Dispatch Center is a top notch Fire/EMS Dispatch Center with Professional Dispatchers and state of the art equipment. The situation that caused this change with the CFD is not just isolated to Croton. I know of other PD's that do not always dispatch their FD's in a timely or correct manner.

As an FYI, Croton EMS is now a separate entity, no longer a part of the CFD.

As for your comment about "then wait for 60 Control to call them so they can dispatch the PD", the primary purpose of a Fire/EMS dispatch is to get Fire or EMS on the road so they can do their job in a timely manner. Dispatching PD for these calls is secondary. You wouldn't call the FD or EMS to check out a suspicious person or a DWI driver, then let us know if you want the PD to respond. Professional Dispatching gets the correct resources responding in a timely manner to the incident, whether the incident requires PD or FD or EMS..

As far as being cost effective, when I toured 60 Control last year I specifically asked what the cost was for a Westchester FD to be dispatched by them. The answer was $0. Their operations are all covered by County taxes, so there is no charge to the FD or EMS organization.

 

[comspec]

I think your "3 to 5 minutes to gather information" is a serious exaggeration.

How long it takes to figure out where to route a call depends on the caller. If they don't have a clue as to where they are, then the calltaker will not be able to figure it out quickly, either.

If you know precisely whose jurisdiction you are in, then why not just tell the calltaker to connect you up front? That always works for me.

With all due respect, it is not that simple. Jursitdiction is very complex and sometimes even the PD is not quite sure what ambulance district, fire district ALS district and/or police district is responsible for what. An furthermore Post Office names don't always match juristdictions either. To imply that an average caller should know what "juristdiction" they are in is asking a bit much. The majority of cell phone calls come in from drivers on highways and can go miles without seeing a road sign so they report the last know sign they saw. Confussion is not at all unexpected.

That being said however, 3 to 5 minutes is not a serious exaggeration, and I did state that it adds 3 to 5 onto response time. That may represent the "high end" of the delay but that hardly makes it an exaggeration. Again, as I said this is not TMCs problem, per se, but I am pointing out the fact that there is a delay when you use a 911 PSAP, that routinely has to route the call to another 911 PSAP.

I wanted a debate and knew I would get one, so this is great, but I wanted to go back to my original point to make myself clear asn to the points I was trying to discuss.

I have no problem with 60 control dispatching fire and EMS. My concern is the multiple 911 PSAP concept. For landline calls, this is usually not a problem as the call will be routed to the proper PSAP. For cell phones in Westchester, cell phone calls are router to a PSAP at the Hudson Valley TMC. If the call is for State PD services, then they get routed to the dispatcher for the TMC, but if it is for another juristdiction, that call needs to get sent to the proper agency. Does TMC still function as the PSAP or do they simply determine where the call needs to be routed to and then forward it to that agencies PSAP without any information being forwarded?

I am using Croton as an example because I knew that they were self dispatched at one time. If Croton PD is the PSAP for its residents then they have ultimate responsibility to handle ALL calls for service in their juristdiction. If a resident calls 911 the person answering the call can still make the decision to send a PD car to investigate before they send the FD, if that was their policy. A policy decision is just that a policy and it can be changed without changing who does the actual dispatching if that was the problem.

I guess what I am really curious about is, once the PSAP has collected the information is it electronically forwarded to 60 Control or is the call simply transfered and 60 Control also acts as a PSAP? Or does the PSAP operator pick up the phone and request 60-control to do the dispatch?


In other words, do all the E911 terminals at all these PSAPs talk to each other?

 

[comspec]

As for your comment about "then wait for 60 Control to call them so they can dispatch the PD", the primary purpose of a Fire/EMS dispatch is to get Fire or EMS on the road so they can do their job in a timely manner. Dispatching PD for these calls is secondary. You wouldn't call the FD or EMS to check out a suspicious person or a DWI driver, then let us know if you want the PD to respond. Professional Dispatching gets the correct resources responding in a timely manner to the incident, whether the incident requires PD or FD or EMS..
QUOTE]

Again, to clarify my point. I call 911. I do not call the PD, Fire or EMS Agency. I know in this county 99 and 44/100% of the PSAPS are the PD becuase, well with so many volunteers they are probably the only ones there 24 hours a day. So even though it may be the same place/person I am talking about a seperate function. Do not confuse "Dispatching" with the functions of a PSAP. Part of the PSAPS responsibiliy is to determine what resources are needed and then forward the information necessary to the proper dispatcher. In it greatest form we can look at NYC where all the PSAP terminals and all the Fire, EMS and PD dispatching terminal all talk to each other. Yes, requests for fire department get routed to dispatchers who specialize in FD comms and police requests get routed to "professional" police dispatchers.

In this county there are so many PSAPS it just seems to create a lot of extra handoffs

 

[DaveNF2G]

With all due respect, it is not that simple. Jursitdiction is very complex and sometimes even the PD is not quite sure what ambulance district, fire district ALS district and/or police district is responsible for what.

My apologies. I was not clear as to what I meant by jurisdiction. If you know what PSAP handles the area that you are in, then you can instruct TMC to route your call there.

I should also clarify that this has worked for me in the Troop E and Troop G areas. I haven't had to make a 9-1-1 call from within Westchester County yet.

To imply that an average caller should know what "juristdiction" they are in is asking a bit much.

Probably, but I thought your original post was a complaint about the way your calls are handled. If you know more than the "average" caller, then you can and should put that knowledge to work for you - and for whoever is suffering the emergency that you are reporting.

That being said however, 3 to 5 minutes is not a serious exaggeration, and I did state that it adds 3 to 5 onto response time. That may represent the "high end" of the delay but that hardly makes it an exaggeration. Again, as I said this is not TMCs problem, per se, but I am pointing out the fact that there is a delay when you use a 911 PSAP, that routinely has to route the call to another 911 PSAP.

Yes, delays occur. But I still say that 3 to 5 minutes is a very long time. When waiting for something to happen, especially in an emergency, our time perception can be way off.

I have personally observed 1 to 2 minute lag times (which do seem very long even when I am only an observer) between a request for a specific resource and the dispatch of that resource. For example, sometimes it takes far longer than necessary to tone out fire mutual aid. When I was a dispatcher in a CAD-based center, I would be sending tones within seconds of a specific request. I don't understand why it should take a whole minute or more to honor the request.

I also note that dispatchers tend to be somewhat robotic in how they dispatch calls. Why do they need to give cross-streets on a major landmark? Does the fire department really not know how to find the shopping mall or city hall? What a waste of air time, especially when extraneous information is repeated over and over again.

My last pet peeve for the day - dispatchers should read over the call information before they start talking on the radio.

 

[SCANdal]

Yes,the same county were odor investigations get sent out as possible structure fires

I have personally observed 1 to 2 minute lag times (which do seem very long even when I am only an observer) between a request for a specific resource and the dispatch of that resource. For example, sometimes it takes far longer than necessary to tone out fire mutual aid. When I was a dispatcher in a CAD-based center, I would be sending tones within seconds of a specific request. I don't understand why it should take a whole minute or more to honor the request.

I also note that dispatchers tend to be somewhat robotic in how they dispatch calls. Why do they need to give cross-streets on a major landmark? Does the fire department really not know how to find the shopping mall or city hall? What a waste of air time, especially when extraneous information is repeated over and over again.

My last pet peeve for the day - dispatchers should read over the call information before they start talking on the radio.

Dave,

Regarding Paragraph 1 above: A number issues are at play here. Aside from the obvious - level of dispatcher experience - which touches on everything we're talking about here... The CAD system in the center you worked in (was it a single municipality center?) must have been very user friendly. I have done "ride-alongs" in multi-town centers where the CAD systems are very anti-dispatcher and, from what I've been told in one instance, repeated requests by the end-users (the dispatchers) to upper management to implement simple steps to improve and enhance the useability of the system have fallen of deaf ears. Also, the availablity of that single resource needs to be verified. No need to drop tones for a mutual aid ladder from x FD when x FD's ladder is out-of-service. Either A) that info needs to be relayed back to the IC so he can make a decision as to where he wants a replacement ladder to come from, if he really needs one, or B) the dispacther needs to make a decision as to were a replacement ladder will come from, and, if procedure states to, notify the IC that a ladder is coming from y FD instead of x FD and (if the IC is okay with that) then start the process of getting them going.

Regarding Paragraph 2 above: I've noticed the same thing. Again based on my "ride-along" experiences, when you have a-hole chiefs of departments more than willing, almost anxious to fax over dispatch complaint forms to dispatch supervisors about 'the script' not being followed on every single solitary tone out, the dispatcher only needs his pp spanked once to get it in his head that if procedure calls for the incident type followed by the full address followed by both cross streets followed by a time stamp followed by a dispatcher ID number then the incident type followed by the full address followed by both cross streets followed by a time stamp followed by a dispatcher ID number is going to get read every time someone gets sent there, even if they just returned from a false alarm at that same place not an hour ago. Don't get me wrong here; I am in total agreement with you. I absolutely love the Mobile Life Support or NJ's Mobile Intensive Care Communications (MICCom) method of dispatching - short, sweet, to the point ["412 to 298, Trauma, Goshen"]. Get the unit rousted and then when they are ready, with pen in hand, give them the details once. Don't worry, if they need a fill or readback, they'll ask you for it. Yet, one the other hand, there is one county that shall remain nameless were whoever wrote 'the script' for Fire and EMS dispatch procedures must love to hear himself talk.

Regarding Paragraph 3 above: Again, the CAD system you might have been familair with may be different from the ones I've seen around. With so-called "Live" terminals, I job pops up in front of the dispatcher and as he/she begins to read it out to the field units, additional information begins to fill that same screen - as the dispatcher is on the air - because whatever the calltaker types in will appear on the dispatcher's screen as well (in blocks). Therefore I've seen (and heard over the air, with the quick re-key ups) dispatchers reading out a job and immediately update the field units with the new info - should it be pertinent enough to let the field unit know. Sounds sloppy, yes - but the fact that a gun has appeared on the scene of a domestic is something that the responding cops need to know about as soon as possible.

SCANdal

 

[DaveNF2G]

Dave,

Regarding Paragraph 1 above: A number issues are at play here. Aside from the obvious - level of dispatcher experience - which touches on everything we're talking about here... The CAD system in the center you worked in (was it a single municipality center?) must have been very user friendly.

The CAD interface issues should be irrelevant to the immediate dispatch of specific mutual aid requests. Tone now, update CAD later.

The exception that I could imagine would involve those poorly designed (IMO) systems where no tones can be generated except by the CAD system itself.

Regarding Paragraph 2 above: I've noticed the same thing. Again based on my "ride-along" experiences, when you have a-hole chiefs of departments more than willing, almost anxious to fax over dispatch complaint forms to dispatch supervisors about 'the script' not being followed on every single solitary tone out,

Tin gods with white hats and coats are a statewide problem.

I think it sounds really stupid to dispatch a department to their own quarters using the full street address and cross streets, which I have heard on several occasions from more than one dispatch center.

Regarding Paragraph 3 above: Again, the CAD system you might have been familair with may be different from the ones I've seen around. With so-called "Live" terminals, I job pops up in front of the dispatcher and as he/she begins to read it out to the field units, additional information begins to fill that same screen - as the dispatcher is on the air - because whatever the calltaker types in will appear on the dispatcher's screen as well (in blocks).

This is still a procedure and training issue. Upon initial dispatch, the call should go out as planned by the dispatcher until that transmission ends. In other words, when the protocol is to transmit the info twice during a transmission, both repetitions should be identical. If there is additional information, then it should be sent out as a separate transmission. If the additional information substantively changes the nature or location of the incident, then it should be re-dispatched.

What I am hearing sounds more like dispatchers failing to read ahead and plan what they are going to say before keying the mic. They sound disorganized and confused, and cause much confusion in the field.

As far as the length of a dispatch transmission, due to updates, inexperience, or whatever, I have heard some that were so lengthy that the first units were on scene before the dispatcher unkeyed.

Here's another gripe: When the nature of the call has changed due to on-scene assessment and activity by responders, why can't that be reflected in subsequent transmissions by dispatchers? For example, the "possible structure fire" that turns into a fully involved automobile fire, for which a fire investigator is requested. Why do so many dispatchers tone out the investigator for the original "possible structure fire" rather than the more accurate "automobile fire"?

 

[comspec]

Thanks for the great discussion. This is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to generate.

As scanner hobbyist we certainly have a greater appreciate for what happens behind the scenes. I was involved with the E911 implementation with this county and I know one of the things we noticed was the large number of PSAPS that were requested.

I compare this to Dutchess, Orange and Putnam and many other counties across the country where a single PSAP handles all the calls and dedicated dispatchers (integrated with the PSAP) do the on the air dispatching. Sometimes this is through a polling channel, but other times this is through a county dispatch center and a county channel plan. Personanlly I think this is more efficient, but I am sure this has its problems too.

I know the large number of PSAPS (each department wanted their own) was requested becuase many departments claimed that a county dispatch center would not be farmiliar with local landmarks and problem areas. That sounds like a valid concern to me, but I still think there has to be a better way to do this. When I listen to counties with a "plan" they seem to be much more efficient in their dispatching procedures.

 

[GTR8000]

In Rockland, the town/village PDs are the PSAP for landline 911 calls, not 44-Control. Since the vast majority of 911 calls are for PD or EMS assistance, and the PD dispatchers handle both those agencies within their jurisdiction, this makes perfect sense. 911 calls looking for FD assistance are transferred to 44-Control, at which point both dispatchers take the info, then PD dispatcher sends their patrol car (and EMS if necessary), while 44-Control tones out the FD. There is little to no time wasted, maybe 5-10 seconds during the transfer, if that.

44-Control is the PSAP for cellular 911 calls within Rockland's borders. This was done to simplify the process, it would be a pain in the ass trying to dissect the cell towers by town/village. Rockland was the first county in the state to push for the law to be changed to wrestle cellular 911 calls away from the state police. It was ridiculous having these calls bounce all over the place, sometimes to two counties away or NJ even. This was bad news and resulted in several documented incidents of delays that had severe negative consequences to life and property. Anyway, cell 911 calls go right to 44-Control, who then either dispatch the FD for fire calls and notify the PD over the radio at the same time (some PDs have a fire radio and monitor, the rest of them are called over the Countywide PD repeater or via landline). 911 cell calls for PD/EMS are transferred from 44-Control to whatever PD has jurisdiction, including Troop F for the Palisades Interstate Parkway, or Troop T for the Thruway. Most times for calls on the Parkway, they will call for any SP car over the Countywide PD repeater, as they usually monitor and it's quicker than calling SP Monroe.

Bottom line: In Rockland County, having the town/village PD as the PSAP is the most efficient way to handle 911 calls.

 

[radioman2001]

westchester dispatching and psaps

I have been reading with interest this thread, I havn't lived in westchester for about 25 years, but I can say that one of the reasons for all these psaps has nothing to do but political childishness. (may not have anything to do with this thread, but just some past info) At one time I was a member of a mid-county fd, and the in-fighting with 60 control ( and the police departments was intense) which at the time was nothing but a mutual aid dispatch center on the second floor of the parkway police building in hawthorne, with volunteer and some paid dispatchers. When 911 calling was in the process of being designed and before it was implemented, all and I repeat ALL of the departments, fire and police didn't want it because they felt they would loose control over their respective departments. They demanded in an era before the power of todays computers, that new york telephone create a system to direct calls based on call exchanges and even addresses in bordering areas. Thats one of the reasons the 911 system was delayed for nearly 20 years. The local departments felt they would loose funding from their local administrators for that dispatcher position, which most of the time was a police officer. Now fast forward to today, after virtually all of the volunteer positions in the westchester government fire have been replaced with paid personnel, (thats a whole another story) and there really is no need for local dispatching of fire and ems, there shouldn't be any delay in call handling, I believe it still looks at your telephone exchange and or address to direct your call to the local police, and it SHOULD also direct the call to 60 control. I don't know the intricacies of the system now, but if there is a problem with fire and ems dispacthing in your area, you need to go to you local adminstrator, mayor, etc and have the system changed. The best case should be that when a 911 call comes in, the first operator hands off the call to 60 control for fire and ems and also rout it to the local police for notification. If it's a police call it should go directly to the police whether local or county.