Bernalillo County SO
New Center for Albuquerque Sheriff
by Gary Allen, Editor
The Bernalillo County sheriff's center is northeast of the city, in a sparely-populated area of the county--it takes about 30 minutes to drive there from downtown. It's housed in the sheriff's northeast substation, named after Lt.William Sibrava, who died in the line of duty on May 27, 1994. It has a very nice view of the Rio Grande valley, although the comm center itself has no windows. The center occupies one-half of the substation and shares a locker room, kitchen, break room, patio and restrooms with the deputies.
The center opened in Sept. 1997 and features indirect lighting, attractive colors and comfortable workstations. There are 15 positions: 4 call-takers, 10 radio dispatchers (both county fire and sheriff), and one supervisor's position, all arranged into pods. They use SCC/Printrak CAD to handle both police and fire-rescue incidents. The have a training room adjacent to the dispatch floor, a computer room, a training coordinator's office and a CAD manager's office. The dispatch floor is arranged to allow the addition of eight additional workstations. An administrative area is adjacent to the dispatch area and the main entrance.
Dispatchers do not wear uniforms, and there are usually two call-takers, two sheriff's radio dispatchers, and two fire-rescue radio dispatchers on-duty at all times. They receive all 911 calls (Motorola gear) and make law enforcement, fire and EMS dispatches. Fire responds to medical incidents, and a private ambulance responds for transport.
They have Motorola furniture, but it's not the usual gray--it's a nicely wood finished. The call-takers work with two screens and the radio dispatchers work with three. They use Logisys roller balls to move the cursor around their screens. They have the mapping module for CAD, which shows the location of incidents (marked with a patrol car or engine icon), street names and other features. The map is used as a visual aid only and is not linked electronically to any other system.
The computer room sports a power room, four Tandem processors, a telephone equipment room, a bank of servers for external links, computer backup tape drive (4mm DAT, performed daily) and both old and new logging recorders. Their current Dictaphone Prolog recorder writes to three hard drives and eight, 4mm DAT tapes. They say they are keeping about three years worth of audio now, and change tapes only every once or twice a week. They also keep a TEAC VHS-format logging recorder and a reel-to-reel machine to play back older media.
Adjacent to the dispatch floor is a training room where they can simulate incidents. And training may be important, since they have 40 authorized positions, but have only 30 filled. Five new dispatchers are in training now, however.
The sheriff and fire-rescue comm centers were consolidated last September, and the employees were brought to this new center. But now everyone is cross-trained, even now.
The sheriff uses VHF radio frequencies, and the center is linked to the radio system via telephone lines. The sheriff, like the Albuquerque police department, will be converting to 800 MHz trunked within a year.
Conclusion: it's a great looking center that--what else?--is understaffed. They must suffer from the lack of cross-training, and the staffing flexibility that would allow. But it has the advantage that the facility is new and that a new radio system is just around the bend.
copyright 1998, 911 Dispatch Services Inc.