I keep listening to Police and Fire dispatch from various agencies and Central County keeps up their terrible dispatches. Their CAD system is definitely messed up. One of the problems is when they merged they took the long time dispatchers from that agency and have them dispatching strange areas now. The dispatchers from the old centers knew their area and didn't make the mistakes that are happening now. I don't blame them at all. Central Co dispatched equipment just a short time ago for a vehicle rescue and sent one truck that wasn't too far away and one truck miles away when a truck and ambulance were sitting in service at a fire station just a couple a blocks away. A Chief realized the Central Co mistake and had them dispatched.Thank God it was not a life or death situation but could very well have been .St. Louis County PD is sounding better and better as a replacement for Central County.
This is the big issue in the area. I went to school out at WUSTL and having worked in the STL system and a few other systems, there were a lot of limitations back a few years ago with having 70-some dispatch agencies. But when they consolidate, they need to keep dispatchers in the areas they are familiar with. Around here, they just consolidated 3 dispatching centers, but all of the personnel are still dispatching for the same departments they have been for years. The only difference is now they sit in the same room and don't have to call around for mutual aid.
Well, what ticks me off is that they encrypt most everything (except for fire, I believe). I'm sick and tired of departments using encryption! Here in St. Louis, a large city and county area with approx. 3 million people, there is little encryption, if any. I've worked closely with County PD on many things and what encryption means is that good people cannot monitor - I find that unacceptable...what are they trying to hide? That's the crux of it, IMHO. *sigh*
I will be interested in hearing the locution dispatching for EMS and Fire - I haven't monitored it before!
Locution is an interesting beast. One of my current departments has 2 dispatchers since we are on a municipal border. Locution dispatches over our main dispatch frequency, and the other county still uses human dispatching. (We monitor the other county to speed up response times, we don't technically have to, but about 30-40% of our runs come out of there).
I like locution since the pronunciation is always the same. And if it's off of what we were used to, it off every time so you get retrained to it. It's also a lot more efficient. If you are in house, there is no dispatching delay where runs are stacked and waiting to be put out over the air. Since it's IP based, it just sends a data burst to the station house and your box plays the tones and dispatch. There have been times that we get on a scene and we're just then hearing the dispatch go over the air. It's also nice because it can target stations a lot easier than a human can. For example, for responses involving a large number of companies, a "batallion drop" was done where everyone in the area would get the dispatch, even if it was 2 in the morning and none of the units at their station was on the card. Locution has completely solved this problem.
But the thing you have to realize is that it's not a dispatcher REPLACEMENT. With the human dispatchers, we can get a lot more information. With Locution, we get exactly this everytime:
"Tones, Radio Channel the response is on, Equipment dispatched, Street address, business name (if applicable), Nature of the run" some of that information is repeated again, then we get the radio channel again and the time of dispatch.
It's very rigid as to what we get. The Nature of the run is one of about 60 or 70 pre-programmed messages. With the other dispatchers, for medical runs, we'll get age of the patient, and often a lot of other information. For fire runs, we get additional information about the nature, exact location, if it's a car accident .we might get the color of the car, if it's off the road in the ditch, etc. Yes, the dispatcher can override Locution and get out a manual dispatch but I can only remember of hearing that happen once.
As with everything, there are pros and cons, so it'll just be what the guys in the area like more.