Many years ago I was a sworn officer for a suburban Chicago village. I had been charged with overseeing the 9-1-1 Center’s technology and maintenance for several years since I was a “radio guy”. My buddy Ted was a lead 9-1-1 dispatcher for us and helped handle many maintenance duties in our small 9-1-1 Center located at the PD. He also had been the Best Man at my wedding and a friend for many years.
Our town has about 14,000 people and we ran a 24/7 9-1-1 center with 2 positions, usually staffed with a single operator on most shifts. Being a small but progressive community, our people all wore multiple hats. Our town also has a reputation for handling many tasks in-house that most other places hire out for. For example, the Village owns its own electrical plant and distribution network and Ted and I handle most maintenance of the 9-1-1 center and other communications equipment for the village.
I had written the RFP for the 9-1-1 equipment and radio consoles and supervised their installation a few years before these events. Ted was the only other guy on the department that understood technology intimately. Between the two of us we handled just about anything with a wire attached.
Our 9-1-1 Comm Center at the time of this story (late 1990’s) used a two-position DOS-based ModuCom radio console system, a Plant 20-line APU, an admin phone and a pair of Windows computers at each position. The furniture was steel cabinets and desks all bolted together in a large U against the back wall, all placed on industrial carpet over a concrete floor.
After a few years the carpeting had worn and needed to be replaced. The Deputy Chief (my boss) at the time was told by Ted and I that a raised computer floor was the preferred solution. We had tried to have one put in during the major building rehab 5 years previous when the center was built but it was cut due to budgetary constraints. The D.C. had decided to arrange for the raised computer floor to be installed when the carpet was worn out. Great idea but he never told us of his plans. He got busy with multiple projects and that fell thru the cracks.
On a Thursday afternoon the DC came to me and said that the flooring guy would be there Tuesday morning to put in the computer floor and that I should arrange to have the desks and consoles pulled out on Monday evening so he could put the new floor in. Easier said than done!
I explained that the whole furniture system was basically a single unit, in 3 15-foot long main sections, all bolted together and with miles of cables running thru the sections. It took weeks to install it, it would take weeks to take it apart and reinstall it. In these days this kind of stuff was hardwired, not just a bunch of networked computers like they are now. This was not a one-day job!
I was told Thursday afternoon in no uncertain terms that the room would be ready Tuesday for the floor guy. I could take the time off to do the job and have my lead techy dispatcher (Ted) work with me but it was going to happen. I told him the best thing to do would to relocate our dispatchers to our back-up PSAP, the next town west of us but he didn’t want any part of that. They had hosted us for almost 18 months just a few years back during our building gutting and rehab and he didn’t want to put them thru that again, even if only for a week. It was going to stay here and Ted and I were tasked to make it work.
We worked over the schedules and arranged for Ted and myself to be reassigned to this project and I called Ted at home. I told him to drop his plans for the next week or so, and bring several changes of clothes as well as any tools he could lay his hands on. I went home, kissed the wife goodbye, grabbed all my tools and went back to work. I stopped at the store and bought a case of Coke and a box of donuts on the way.
Ted and I sat down and worked out a plan. We would relocate a position to the adjacent Records office and set up what we needed. It was also behind bullet-protective walls and glass and close enough to run back to access unmovable equipment. Since we could not relocate a complete radio position we set up a couple spare Motorola GM300’s on our VHF and UHF freqs and planted a couple mag-mount antennas on top of the metal ceiling above the ceiling tiles. An Astron 50-amp 12-volt power supply handled these right nicely, so I ran home again and got one. This also meant that we would need to keep at least one of the positions in the soon-to-be-disassembled 9-1-1 Center operational at all times to operate tornado sirens, fire alerting (we were the backup for the regional Fire dispatch coop), garage and cell doors and be able to run into the other room to do so.
We set up a scanner (BC780XLT probably, I can’t recall for sure) for the dispatchers as well, they were by then used to having one available to them so we wanted to make them feel at home in the temporary digs.
For the administrative phones we had a simpler plan, just relocate the phone to the new desk and change a couple jumpers in the basement equipment room. At the time our security camera system used a large CRT TV for a display (this was before flat screens), so we borrowed the Training Room wheel cart-mounted TV and ran an RG-59 coax between the rooms to view the video. We couldn’t switch cameras from the temporary position so we just set up the cameras we HAD to have for the project.
9-1-1 was the big problem. We called our friendly rep from AT&T 9-1-1 Services and he agreed to stop by that Friday afternoon and help devise a plan.
At the time we used a Plant 20-line APU and MAARS-View (a Windows application that displayed ANI/ALI and logged calls) so we would need to put in a computer and associated wiring, including serial cables, between the APU and computer, and other accruements.
The most interesting thing was that these old Plant systems had a pair of 25 pair cables with Centronics-50 connectors that ran to the equipment rack in the basement. There was no way to reroute these. We were lucky to have an industrial electronics shop (Graybar) a half hour away and we ran over and got there 5 minutes before closing. Luck was shining on us when they said they indeed had a pair of 100-foot cables with male and female ends we could use to extend the APU’s reach. We ran these thru the ceiling tiles and dropped them at one of the positions and the other end at the desk we would be using for the temporary position. These cables were left in the ceiling afterwards in case we had to relocate again, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are still there 25 years later.
Using a spare power supply and handset we were able to get one of the APU’s working in fairly short order but the cobbled together picture was too much for our AT&T buddy. He walked in the front door looking at the mess we had made of the system he sold us and put together a couple years before, his mouth agape, and said not a word. He traced with his eyes the wiring we did and every few seconds his expression got more and more concerned. He just about messed his drawers when he heard the 9-1-1 ring and get answered at the temporary position. He then turned around and walked out the door, never having said a word, and never spoke of this again. This is the kind of guy that never got rattled; I am guessing this was just a bit too much, even for him.
Once we got the temporary position going and moved the dispatcher there we set upon the Comm Center like a pair of hungry pack-wolves. We unbolted everything we could and pulled out everything that wasn’t nailed down. All this stuff was brought to the nearby training room and laid out. Much of the stuff that was nailed down was un-nailed and removed. We were hobbled by the fact that some cabling could not be pulled out and ran thru multiple furniture sections. In these days point-to-point wiring was still the norm so this stifled our efforts at removing it without destruction.
When we had pulled out everything we could we were left with a partial skeleton of our furniture with some cabling thru it. We also left one of the radio positions working with the monitor, keyboard and mouse on a wheel cart. This allowed access to critical stuff like siren control and doors but also permitted it to be moved so the flooring guy could work.
By this time it was Monday morning and we had been at this for 3 days straight. We were eating pizza and drinking pop all weekend and catching catnaps when we couldn’t stand or work anymore. We had a training room full of 9-1-1 Center stuff, a dozen coffee cups full of nuts, bolts, washers and other hardware, and 2 dog-tired, smelly and dirty dudes. Due to the cobbled together nature of the system we decided to have one of us stay on while the other went home for a much-needed sleep. 8 hours later we swapped.
Tuesday morning the floor guy showed up at 7:00, He was surprised that there was still some stuff left in the room but he was pretty flexible with it. We had thought ahead and had Public Works drop off a couple dozen cinder blocks that morning. We would set the furniture up on the blocks to allow the floor guy to set up the floor supports underneath. These were metal brackets that had threaded elements that allowed the elevation to be adjusted to level out the floor.
Once the new floor panels were ready to be placed, we would grab some cops off the street or firefighters from the firehouse next door and lift the furniture pieces and remove the cinder blocks. Once the panels were in place we would lower the furniture on to them.
The floor guy was a true professional and was able to do what was thought to be a 4-day job in two. We helped out by doing the take up of the old carpet before he arrived and scraped out all the old carpet glue. We also found a dollar or two of lost change and half a dozen pens along with several pieces of old candy and other food items that found their way into the bowels of the furniture. I had brought in my heavy-duty shop vac and gave it a good workout.
By Wednesday night the new floor was in and leveled. We took the night off and got some rest after realizing the temporary position was working great. Thursday morning, bright and early, well rested and cleansed of the caffeine highs were had been working under we started putting things back together.
We decided to back the furniture system off the back wall a few feet to allow access to that rear of the cabinets. While the system was designed to work with only front access this did make things easier later. We were short a couple cabinet doors however but made do with what we had.
By Thursday afternoon we had one of the positions working and the furniture bolted back together. We moved the dispatcher back into the room and disassembled the temporary position, reinstalling the APU and other equipment to the secondary position. By lunchtime on Friday the center was completed and back in full operation with both positions fully operational and all the pieces back where they belonged. As usual for these types of projects we ended up with some spare hardware that we never seemed to figure out where it came from but it all worked just fine.
We both took the entire weekend off; we earned it. After totaling up the OT (this was before I was promoted to an exempt position) we realized how many hours we had worked on the project, it made the next paycheck a wondrous sight.
The dispatchers liked working in the Records area as they had a nice view of the outside that the 9-1-1 Center did not afford. They asked if they could stay there but alas it wouldn’t be happening.
In the months that followed we never were able to coax a comment from our AT&T rep. We would see him at meetings or conferences and he would just shake his head and mumble under his breath while he walked away from us. I suppose we should have discussed our plans with him before we did it but we just didn’t have time.
We did accomplish many things during that week. If anything ever went wrong in the 9-1-1 Center we both now had an intimate knowledge of the equipment. We were able to clean up the joint, remove a bunch of unnecessary and redundant wiring and generally just neaten things up a bit. We endeared ourselves to the Deputy Chief and made him look good in spite of his forgetting to tell us until the last minute about his arranging the flooring. We contributed to a record weekly profit for the local pizza place and Coca Cola, Inc. We managed to flap the most unflappable phone company guy around. We saved the taxpayers thousands of dollars that would have been spent to perform the work we did. Most importantly we maintained operational status for the 9-1-1 Center with zero downtime.
If you had been listening to the scanner on our frequencies at the time about the only thing you would have noticed was that the dispatcher was working off a control station instead of a direct connection to the repeater or base station radios located in the basement. The voice quality would have been different. Otherwise it was normal operations. During that week we had no NEED to set off the Outdoor Warning Sirens or the fire tones but we did run a silent test fo the siren system a couple times as well as a special fire tone test just to be sure it was all working properly. We did the same after restoring the center to full operations.
5 or 10 years later we replaced the then 18 year old DOS console system with a newer Windows Moducom system, including their 9-1-1 system. We also replaced the old steel frame furniture with Watson standing desks and several cabinet/desks with a center rack cabinet. It was that system and a similar one that a neighboring department had that inspired my love of rack-mounting my radios that I continue to this day. That center rack included a pair of Motorola CDM1250 radios, one each for UHF and VHF to cover the local channels, an XTL5000 for the statewide StarCom21 system as well as the then-new county P25 system that was both part of and separate from the state system and a scanner, first a BC780XLT, then a BCD996T and eventually a BCD996XT. These were all mounted in JottoDesk faceplates. I made a custom panel to fit the rack space and had a local sheet-metal shop professionally cut the panel to size and cut the holes for the faceplates and the hardware required.
That floor worked really well for us, it made the second rebuild a lot easier. We retained a dozen or so spare floor panels and used them to replace work ones under the normal chair positions as needed. We also had a suction cup panel lifter that one of the guys borrowed to use as a dent-puller on his squad after hitting a pole backing out of a parking spot. Saved him from a day off without pay.
Our town has about 14,000 people and we ran a 24/7 9-1-1 center with 2 positions, usually staffed with a single operator on most shifts. Being a small but progressive community, our people all wore multiple hats. Our town also has a reputation for handling many tasks in-house that most other places hire out for. For example, the Village owns its own electrical plant and distribution network and Ted and I handle most maintenance of the 9-1-1 center and other communications equipment for the village.
I had written the RFP for the 9-1-1 equipment and radio consoles and supervised their installation a few years before these events. Ted was the only other guy on the department that understood technology intimately. Between the two of us we handled just about anything with a wire attached.
Our 9-1-1 Comm Center at the time of this story (late 1990’s) used a two-position DOS-based ModuCom radio console system, a Plant 20-line APU, an admin phone and a pair of Windows computers at each position. The furniture was steel cabinets and desks all bolted together in a large U against the back wall, all placed on industrial carpet over a concrete floor.
After a few years the carpeting had worn and needed to be replaced. The Deputy Chief (my boss) at the time was told by Ted and I that a raised computer floor was the preferred solution. We had tried to have one put in during the major building rehab 5 years previous when the center was built but it was cut due to budgetary constraints. The D.C. had decided to arrange for the raised computer floor to be installed when the carpet was worn out. Great idea but he never told us of his plans. He got busy with multiple projects and that fell thru the cracks.
On a Thursday afternoon the DC came to me and said that the flooring guy would be there Tuesday morning to put in the computer floor and that I should arrange to have the desks and consoles pulled out on Monday evening so he could put the new floor in. Easier said than done!
I explained that the whole furniture system was basically a single unit, in 3 15-foot long main sections, all bolted together and with miles of cables running thru the sections. It took weeks to install it, it would take weeks to take it apart and reinstall it. In these days this kind of stuff was hardwired, not just a bunch of networked computers like they are now. This was not a one-day job!
I was told Thursday afternoon in no uncertain terms that the room would be ready Tuesday for the floor guy. I could take the time off to do the job and have my lead techy dispatcher (Ted) work with me but it was going to happen. I told him the best thing to do would to relocate our dispatchers to our back-up PSAP, the next town west of us but he didn’t want any part of that. They had hosted us for almost 18 months just a few years back during our building gutting and rehab and he didn’t want to put them thru that again, even if only for a week. It was going to stay here and Ted and I were tasked to make it work.
We worked over the schedules and arranged for Ted and myself to be reassigned to this project and I called Ted at home. I told him to drop his plans for the next week or so, and bring several changes of clothes as well as any tools he could lay his hands on. I went home, kissed the wife goodbye, grabbed all my tools and went back to work. I stopped at the store and bought a case of Coke and a box of donuts on the way.
Ted and I sat down and worked out a plan. We would relocate a position to the adjacent Records office and set up what we needed. It was also behind bullet-protective walls and glass and close enough to run back to access unmovable equipment. Since we could not relocate a complete radio position we set up a couple spare Motorola GM300’s on our VHF and UHF freqs and planted a couple mag-mount antennas on top of the metal ceiling above the ceiling tiles. An Astron 50-amp 12-volt power supply handled these right nicely, so I ran home again and got one. This also meant that we would need to keep at least one of the positions in the soon-to-be-disassembled 9-1-1 Center operational at all times to operate tornado sirens, fire alerting (we were the backup for the regional Fire dispatch coop), garage and cell doors and be able to run into the other room to do so.
We set up a scanner (BC780XLT probably, I can’t recall for sure) for the dispatchers as well, they were by then used to having one available to them so we wanted to make them feel at home in the temporary digs.
For the administrative phones we had a simpler plan, just relocate the phone to the new desk and change a couple jumpers in the basement equipment room. At the time our security camera system used a large CRT TV for a display (this was before flat screens), so we borrowed the Training Room wheel cart-mounted TV and ran an RG-59 coax between the rooms to view the video. We couldn’t switch cameras from the temporary position so we just set up the cameras we HAD to have for the project.
9-1-1 was the big problem. We called our friendly rep from AT&T 9-1-1 Services and he agreed to stop by that Friday afternoon and help devise a plan.
At the time we used a Plant 20-line APU and MAARS-View (a Windows application that displayed ANI/ALI and logged calls) so we would need to put in a computer and associated wiring, including serial cables, between the APU and computer, and other accruements.
The most interesting thing was that these old Plant systems had a pair of 25 pair cables with Centronics-50 connectors that ran to the equipment rack in the basement. There was no way to reroute these. We were lucky to have an industrial electronics shop (Graybar) a half hour away and we ran over and got there 5 minutes before closing. Luck was shining on us when they said they indeed had a pair of 100-foot cables with male and female ends we could use to extend the APU’s reach. We ran these thru the ceiling tiles and dropped them at one of the positions and the other end at the desk we would be using for the temporary position. These cables were left in the ceiling afterwards in case we had to relocate again, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are still there 25 years later.
Using a spare power supply and handset we were able to get one of the APU’s working in fairly short order but the cobbled together picture was too much for our AT&T buddy. He walked in the front door looking at the mess we had made of the system he sold us and put together a couple years before, his mouth agape, and said not a word. He traced with his eyes the wiring we did and every few seconds his expression got more and more concerned. He just about messed his drawers when he heard the 9-1-1 ring and get answered at the temporary position. He then turned around and walked out the door, never having said a word, and never spoke of this again. This is the kind of guy that never got rattled; I am guessing this was just a bit too much, even for him.
Once we got the temporary position going and moved the dispatcher there we set upon the Comm Center like a pair of hungry pack-wolves. We unbolted everything we could and pulled out everything that wasn’t nailed down. All this stuff was brought to the nearby training room and laid out. Much of the stuff that was nailed down was un-nailed and removed. We were hobbled by the fact that some cabling could not be pulled out and ran thru multiple furniture sections. In these days point-to-point wiring was still the norm so this stifled our efforts at removing it without destruction.
When we had pulled out everything we could we were left with a partial skeleton of our furniture with some cabling thru it. We also left one of the radio positions working with the monitor, keyboard and mouse on a wheel cart. This allowed access to critical stuff like siren control and doors but also permitted it to be moved so the flooring guy could work.
By this time it was Monday morning and we had been at this for 3 days straight. We were eating pizza and drinking pop all weekend and catching catnaps when we couldn’t stand or work anymore. We had a training room full of 9-1-1 Center stuff, a dozen coffee cups full of nuts, bolts, washers and other hardware, and 2 dog-tired, smelly and dirty dudes. Due to the cobbled together nature of the system we decided to have one of us stay on while the other went home for a much-needed sleep. 8 hours later we swapped.
Tuesday morning the floor guy showed up at 7:00, He was surprised that there was still some stuff left in the room but he was pretty flexible with it. We had thought ahead and had Public Works drop off a couple dozen cinder blocks that morning. We would set the furniture up on the blocks to allow the floor guy to set up the floor supports underneath. These were metal brackets that had threaded elements that allowed the elevation to be adjusted to level out the floor.
Once the new floor panels were ready to be placed, we would grab some cops off the street or firefighters from the firehouse next door and lift the furniture pieces and remove the cinder blocks. Once the panels were in place we would lower the furniture on to them.
The floor guy was a true professional and was able to do what was thought to be a 4-day job in two. We helped out by doing the take up of the old carpet before he arrived and scraped out all the old carpet glue. We also found a dollar or two of lost change and half a dozen pens along with several pieces of old candy and other food items that found their way into the bowels of the furniture. I had brought in my heavy-duty shop vac and gave it a good workout.
By Wednesday night the new floor was in and leveled. We took the night off and got some rest after realizing the temporary position was working great. Thursday morning, bright and early, well rested and cleansed of the caffeine highs were had been working under we started putting things back together.
We decided to back the furniture system off the back wall a few feet to allow access to that rear of the cabinets. While the system was designed to work with only front access this did make things easier later. We were short a couple cabinet doors however but made do with what we had.
By Thursday afternoon we had one of the positions working and the furniture bolted back together. We moved the dispatcher back into the room and disassembled the temporary position, reinstalling the APU and other equipment to the secondary position. By lunchtime on Friday the center was completed and back in full operation with both positions fully operational and all the pieces back where they belonged. As usual for these types of projects we ended up with some spare hardware that we never seemed to figure out where it came from but it all worked just fine.
We both took the entire weekend off; we earned it. After totaling up the OT (this was before I was promoted to an exempt position) we realized how many hours we had worked on the project, it made the next paycheck a wondrous sight.
The dispatchers liked working in the Records area as they had a nice view of the outside that the 9-1-1 Center did not afford. They asked if they could stay there but alas it wouldn’t be happening.
In the months that followed we never were able to coax a comment from our AT&T rep. We would see him at meetings or conferences and he would just shake his head and mumble under his breath while he walked away from us. I suppose we should have discussed our plans with him before we did it but we just didn’t have time.
We did accomplish many things during that week. If anything ever went wrong in the 9-1-1 Center we both now had an intimate knowledge of the equipment. We were able to clean up the joint, remove a bunch of unnecessary and redundant wiring and generally just neaten things up a bit. We endeared ourselves to the Deputy Chief and made him look good in spite of his forgetting to tell us until the last minute about his arranging the flooring. We contributed to a record weekly profit for the local pizza place and Coca Cola, Inc. We managed to flap the most unflappable phone company guy around. We saved the taxpayers thousands of dollars that would have been spent to perform the work we did. Most importantly we maintained operational status for the 9-1-1 Center with zero downtime.
If you had been listening to the scanner on our frequencies at the time about the only thing you would have noticed was that the dispatcher was working off a control station instead of a direct connection to the repeater or base station radios located in the basement. The voice quality would have been different. Otherwise it was normal operations. During that week we had no NEED to set off the Outdoor Warning Sirens or the fire tones but we did run a silent test fo the siren system a couple times as well as a special fire tone test just to be sure it was all working properly. We did the same after restoring the center to full operations.
5 or 10 years later we replaced the then 18 year old DOS console system with a newer Windows Moducom system, including their 9-1-1 system. We also replaced the old steel frame furniture with Watson standing desks and several cabinet/desks with a center rack cabinet. It was that system and a similar one that a neighboring department had that inspired my love of rack-mounting my radios that I continue to this day. That center rack included a pair of Motorola CDM1250 radios, one each for UHF and VHF to cover the local channels, an XTL5000 for the statewide StarCom21 system as well as the then-new county P25 system that was both part of and separate from the state system and a scanner, first a BC780XLT, then a BCD996T and eventually a BCD996XT. These were all mounted in JottoDesk faceplates. I made a custom panel to fit the rack space and had a local sheet-metal shop professionally cut the panel to size and cut the holes for the faceplates and the hardware required.
That floor worked really well for us, it made the second rebuild a lot easier. We retained a dozen or so spare floor panels and used them to replace work ones under the normal chair positions as needed. We also had a suction cup panel lifter that one of the guys borrowed to use as a dent-puller on his squad after hitting a pole backing out of a parking spot. Saved him from a day off without pay.
