New NYC 911 Facility?

New York City’s mayor Michael Bloomberg is pushing a plan to reconfigure how police and fire calls are handled, and would create a back-up center in the Bronx. Now, police dispatchers field 911 calls, but transfer calls to separate comm centers if the incident requires a fire or EMS response. Under the proposed plan, by 2009 a single corps of calltakers would answer calls, enter the information into a consolidated CAD system, and the information would then be electronically transferred to separate centers for dispatch. The calltakers and dispatchers would be housed at two identical centers, each handling one-half the 11 million annual load of 911 calls, similar to how Los Angeles handles its 911 calls. Read more about the plan here.