LIHU‘E — A new computerized emergency-dispatch system that one county official guaranteed will save lives almost never made it to the island before federal funds to purchase and install the system lapsed. Some $850,000 in federal funding earmarked for the
LIHU‘E — A new computerized emergency-dispatch system that one county official guaranteed will save lives almost never made it to the island before federal funds to purchase and install the system lapsed.
Some $850,000 in federal funding earmarked for the Computer-Aided Dispatch and Records Management System (CAD/RMS), awarded in 1999, was nearly lost back to the federal government until Mayor Bryan J. Baptiste kick-started the vendor-selection process in the spring of last year, said Eric Knutzen, county deputy director of finance.
“We had to put this together or lose the funds,” he said in a presentation of the CAD portion of the system in the Emergency Operation Center at Kaua‘i Police Department headquarters yesterday.
Some $350,000 in county funds budgeted to KPD was also used in the project.
“This languished for a long period of time,” said Baptiste the mayor at the ceremony. “I want to thank (emergency-service officials) for resurrecting the phoenix from the fire. Thank you for your history of hard work.”
“This system will save lives,” Knutzen said.
The 911 dispatch system on Kaua‘i got a long-awaited makeover Tuesday, as county officials began using their new CAD system for the first time.
In a ceremony involving Baptiste, police, fire, ambulance and other emergency-service professionals Wednesday, county officials unveiled the new system.
“It’s like going from a typewriter to Windows 2000,” said Ann Descher, project manager for Orbacom, a New Jersey-based company responsible for implementing the new system.
“Our old system was all done by hand,” said Kathleen Langtad, acting supervisor of dispatch. “Instead of writing down everything, we’re typing everything.”
And that information, now stored in a computer instead of a file cabinet, will eventually be used in CAD’s sister system, the Records Management System, to completely change the way Kaua‘i Police Department officers and civilian staff will do their jobs.
“It will be 20 to 30 times better, efficiency-wise, to what we have now,” said interim police chief K.C. Lum. “The whole system will help the entire island of Kaua‘i.”
As records are input into the RMS system, expected to be up and running by October, police and fire dispatchers will be able to locate all information about a given household, such as any outstanding arrest warrants, guns registered to individuals at the house, temporary restraining orders, floor plans, and all sorts of other information.
Also in the next few months, at a click of a button, the RMS system will be able to give police officers specific trends in crimes, such as whether certain areas are targets of crimes at a particular time of day, Lum said.
Now, detectives have to go through all criminal complaints by hand to decipher crime trends, he added.
“This is a giant step for public safety,” said Baptiste. “It’s like when cell phones came forward. First, we said we don’t need them. But now, it’s attached to some people’s ears.”
While the entire system is not online yet, dispatchers are using their typing skills a lot more than their short-hand.
“It’s very different. We’ve had to change our procedures,” said Langtad. “Like anything, getting used to the new procedures will take a while.”
But, she added the system has been bug-free, and dispatchers are picking up their “new” jobs quickly, thanks to a lot of preparation.
While it only took a day to install the CAD system, dispatchers spent days getting acquainted to the changes.
Descher said each dispatcher received 24 hours of training, while supervisors and trainers received about 40 hours.
And Descher traveled from New Jersey to make sure everything went smoothly.
Lum said that the two biggest changes have been that dispatchers have information at their fingertips, such as maps and patrol availability, and that the information from the 911 calls are captured into the computer, instead of onto pieces of paper. CAD will also assist in determining an appropriate number of officers to send to a scene, or how many fire trucks to send to a fire.
Tom Finnegan, staff writer, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or mailto:tfinnegan@pulitzer.net.
