Police department takes on additional dispatch duties

WASILLA — Three weeks ago Wednesday, things got a little more crowded at the Wasilla Police Department’s dispatch center. In addition to handling Wasilla and Mat-Su Alaska State Trooper (AST) calls, the center brought most of the borough’s emergency services into the fold.

The switch to Mat-Com 911 was made morning of June 28. All calls now come into the new dispatch center. The City of Palmer opted to keep its fire and police department calls “in-house” at the existing center adjacent to the Palmer Trooper post. Mat-Com now dispatches everything else.

Although the switch was made, new equipment and upgrades to existing equipment is ongoing. When everything is complete, Mat-Com will provide E-911 services.

Wasilla Police Chief Gene Belden said the entire project should be completed by mid-September. Once it is, he said a public open house showcasing the new center will be announced. Belden said additional dispatchers have been added to assist with the additional workload.

“We’re still hiring a few,” Belden said, adding the center now employs more than two dozen. “Right now, some of our equipment is still being put together and has to be delivered. Different companies are providing different equipment and there’s some construction going on.”

Belden said for the most part, the changeover from the former offices has gone off without a hitch.

“We’ve had our bumps, but nothing major,” Belden said. “Those will probably continue until our new people are fully trained. As far as I’ve been told, things went smoothly. Better than expected.”

Belden said he’s received feedback from several emergency medical services personnel and some of the area fire department chiefs. Belden said the existing system’s equipment is outdated compared to current technologies on the market. When all the system upgrades are installed and up and running, not only will there be better communication between callers, dispatchers and responders, Belden said, but technological advances as well.

“There will be a tremendous amount of things we can do. One of the things will be E-911 off of cell phones,” he said.

Belden said similar to calls coming in on landlines, where a computer-aided dispatch system provides immediate information on where the call originated based on the phone number, the new equipment will allow dispatchers to more quickly and accurately pinpoint a cell phone user’s location.

Under old technology, a cellphone system does not automatically include location data when calling a 911 dispatch center. After the call comes in, the dispatch computer transmits a digital request to the cell network seeking the phone’s location. Even in large metropolitan areas, according to the FCC, the data exchange can take seconds, or minutes and sometimes doesn’t return a signal at all.

The upgraded technology automates the process, digitally requesting the location every few seconds if it is not automatically provided. If the system can't locate the device, cellphone carriers' systems will use nearby towers to automatically triangulate the information. The upgrade is especially valuable, Belden said, because of the high number of cell phone users across the Mat-Su and the sometimes remote locations of calls coming into the dispatch center.

Belden said the new system will also allow for localized or pinpointed alerts. For example, the chief used flooding concerns.

“If the Butte gets flooding, we can send out an emergency warning (on the cellphone network) to the cell phones only in that location,” Belden explained.

“The new system will be similar to Outside,” Belden said. “I think the new system will be the most advanced in the state.”

Contact reporter Chris Ford at 352-2270 or chris.ford@frontiersman.com