When Did 911 Service Begin In Upstate New York
COUNTY PREPARES FOR 911 Organization
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May 31, 1987
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THE 911 emergency telephone organisation long used by New York City residents is coming to Westchester, co-ordinate to county leaders, and in an improved mode that will let police and civilian dispatchers identify the calling number and address immediately.
''This will enable dispatchers to help somebody in distress, a kid who cannot give his or her address, for case,'' said Eugene Fredericks, a New York Phone Company skilful in the 911 organization, ''and it will also diminish creepo or obscene calls.''
Although County Executive Andrew P. O'Rourke and leaders of the County Lath of Legislators are in favor of instituting the 911 organization in Westchester, they are uncertain about when information technology will come (two years at the earliest, experts say), how it will be financed and how information technology will operate.
The system was approved concluding Nov past a task strength appointed past Mr. O'Rourke. The study had started earlier, in October 1984, when the canton asked New York Telephone to complete a survey of Westchester's communications needs. The chore force then worked for more than a year shaping its own recommendations.
Information technology decided finally that an enhanced 911 system, which soon came to exist known as E911, should be made upward of a countywide network of 52 Public Safety Answering Points - or locations, such as a police department or other emergency-services agency. Information technology would include 38 primary answering points, representing the start point a person reaches, and fourteen secondary answering points, where the call is forwarded, if necessary.
But representatives of many county burn down departments, who would exist heavily represented in the secondary answering-point category, opposed the 52-point arrangement, saying they wanted to retain command over their own officers. They opted for one fundamental dispatching location utilizing noncombatant dispatchers and serving the unabridged canton.
This view was expressed firmly at a contempo seminar on E911 in White Plains when Daniel Drupe, a Harrison burn down inspector and acting chairman of the Westchester Fire Quango, said burn down departments ''fully support E911 but not this cockamamie business organization with 52 dispatching points.'' He said it would ''set the states dorsum twenty years.''
Final twelvemonth, the Canton Legislature approved $500,000 in the 1987 capital upkeep for E911 start-up costs. A few months ago it received Mr. O'Rourke'southward recommended program and sent information technology to the Commission on Budget and Appropriations. More recently Edward J. Brady, the Chairman of the Board of Legislators, assigned John E. Hand, the Republican majority leader, to caput upwardly the Board'southward own task forcefulness.
Mr. Brady said that ''from what I gather, a lot of fire departments in northern Westchester have their calls answered by constabulary and are non happy.'' He said a number of such departments ''got their calls switched to the Fire Grooming Center in Valhalla,'' significant the canton-owned Grasslands Reservation, ''and they don't want to go dorsum to the police.''
''I'chiliad concerned that the volunteers be happy,'' Mr. Brady said, referring to the volunteer firefighters who constitute unabridged fire departments in many small communities. ''They serve the public costless,'' Mr. Brady said, ''and save millions of dollars.''
Mr. Hand, who was a member of Mr. O'Rourke's task force, agreed that a major source of disagreement came from fire volunteers ''who tin't afford to man phones 24 hours a solar day; only the police can practice that.'' Both Mr. Brady, a Thornwood Republican, and Mr. Hand, who is from Yorktown Heights, are from northern Westchester.
Mr. Hand gave some examples of how emergency burn service is handled in the smaller communities. ''In North Salem,'' he said, ''you call the burn down number and it is answered in the fire-control middle in Valhalla. The dispatcher there hits a button that blows the burn whistle in North Salem telling the volunteers there's a fire and 'get going.' So he tells them past radio where the burn is.''
''In the boondocks of Yorktown, that's done by the constabulary department,'' Mr. Hand continued. ''If you phone call the burn down number, the Constabulary Department answers it. They button a button that blows the fire whistle - the police dispatch the firemen.'' Firemen in some communities, he said, ''feel they become better service from Valhalla dispatchers than from the law.''
''The ambulance people feel they get the worst treatment,'' he said. ''In most communities y'all can't telephone call the ambulance service directly because they don't have people answering the phones all the time, so you call the constabulary, who usually won't acceleration an ambulance until they send one of their own people to make sure information technology's needed - and then the volunteer ambulance people come.''
The organisation is further complicated in northern Westchester, Mr. Hand said, because some of the smaller communties ''don't fifty-fifty have their ain police departments.'' They accept ''part-fourth dimension, commonly daytime, constabulary forces too equally contracts with county law or state police force.'' In those areas, ''someone is going to have to answer calls under E911.''
None of this confusion will be credible to residents of Westchester under E911 because their but chore will exist to dial that number for police, fire or emergency service. It will exist up to the county to determine how the calls are to be answered and by whom.
Mr. O'Rourke'due south task strength said that because ''85 percent of all emergency calls are placed to local police departments,'' information technology recommended that primary answering points be put in those departments. On receiving a primary telephone call, the constabulary dispatcher would ''summon the secondary answering point,'' such every bit the local fire department, ''and stay on the line until the telephone call was completed.''
Costs and how they will be met also are expected to cause controversy. A 52-indicate system would cost $517,000 to install and $2 million a year to staff and maintain. Some legislators would have those costs added to the county tax bill, others would divide the costs amongst communities and some would seek to take them added as a surcharge on the telephone bill.
Mr. Fredericks, the statewide 911 coordinating manager for New York Telphone, said that ''basic 911, which New York City has, does not afford the adequacy of selective routing, which is a critical need for a county with many municipalities.''
In other words, all the 911 calls made in New York City get to the same location, where dispatchers send fire, constabulary or ambulance units equally needed. That would be more complicated in Westchester, with its more 40 cities, towns and villages.
Under selective routing, a 911 phone call made from Scarsdale, for example, would go to that village's police and fire departments at Post and Fenimore Roads. But a call from some next neighborhoods that take the same exchange number just are in different communities, would go to the constabulary departments of those communities.
''Telephone boundaries and municipal boundaries are not coterminus, more often than not speaking,'' Mr. Fredericks said, ''but with enhanced 911 nosotros tin selectively route them to where they vest.'' And, he said, ''that's simply one facet; the other is providing the originating telephone number and where that phone is located - town, village, street, apartment.''
Simply how is this possible, since most television set and movie viewers are familiar with dramatic, time-consuming and usually unsuccessful efforts by constabulary government to trace calls? ''With enhanced 911 there is a 911 computer center that has data only for 911; the entire information base of this centralized bespeak is solely for the do good of 911, and that'due south why we can get the information and so fast,'' Mr. Fredericks said. At the recent White Plains seminar for county and emergency personnel, Mr. Fredericks provided a televised documentary - with conversations taken from police force audio tapes - of a child whose mother was experiencing a seizure in their backyard pool. He had dialed operator and was switched to the police force, only so was unable to tell the officeholder his accost.
Taking a take a chance, the police officeholder asked the child to hang upwardly and punch 911, which he did - although but subsequently running back to his mother to attempt to drag her to the side of the pool. When the child finally dialed 911, his address appeared on the police force dispatcher's computer screen, and the rescue was made.
Mr. Fredericks said that enhanced 911 also cut down on improper calls, such as false alarms. ''In Orlando, Florida, where they installed E911 in the early 1980'due south, they said that within a year they decreased false alarms by lx pct.'' He added: ''Fire people say it costs $150 to coil out a single piece of equipment, and usually there are 2 or three.''
''And beyond that there are the liability costs that are saved,'' Mr Fredericks said. ''Responding to a false alarm, you lot go into an accident; remember of the costs there. That'due south part of a municipality's evaluation process.''
Much remains the same for some counties going to enhanced 911. Buffalo, in Erie County, already has bones 911, and then the same dispatchers volition exist taking all calls. The departure is that ''first-tier communities,'' such every bit Lackawana, which are exterior the city limits, will now be getting enhanced 911 calls for the outset fourth dimension.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/31/nyregion/county-prepares-for-911-system.html
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