An unusual triple 911 failure struck Williamson County (Tex.), knocking out the system last Wednesday. An investigation is underway to understand why it all happened, but the main 911 system failed about 8 p.m., and a back-up system also failed to work. And when county officials tried to get 911 calls re-routed to another comm center, the apparently had trouble getting one phone company to help. Read more and watch the a video report here.

Ferndale (Mich.) has hired its fourth-ever female police officer, and she comes from a family of public safety dispatching. In fact, Alison Shank worked as a dispatcher herself while in college, and her mother and older sister are both dispatchers. Read more here.

An ethics question has forced the resignation of Lowndes County (Miss.) E911 board member Bernice Lile from her part-time dispatcher position, prompting a strange response from fellow board member. Beverly Broocks commented on the state’s ethics commission, saying, “They are a bunch of Nazis and I know them well.” Ahh, read more if you want here.

A story in the Washington Times says that comm center errors have led to response delays and incorrect dispatches to incidents. On Friday, Daniel Dugan, president of the D.C. Fireighters Association told a District council meeting that firefighter safety is being jeopardized–and he gave examples. The city’s comm center has been the subject of citizen complaints, investigations and personnel changes over the past two years. Read the story here.

A Markham (Ill.) newspaper has exposed how a political appointee has been using police officers to taxi him around the city on personal errands, and that dispatchers used a special radio code to dispatch the officers to the assignments. Police and fire board commissioner Roland Ray Ashley was followed by a reporter and photographer one day as he made errands in the Chicago suburb, chauffeured by one of two officers who handle the assignment, which apparently is considered a good one. Dispatchers use the code “Watch 3: 1059″ to send an officer to Ashley’s home to pick him up. Read more about the practice here.

The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Penn.) newspaper has posted the logging tapes of 911 calls and radio traffic related to a fire that killed a 3 year-old and injured seven other occupants of a home in that city. Read and listen to the audio here.

Portland (Ore.) police have arrested man who dialed 911 last week to complain that a local nightclub wouldn’t let him into the establishment. Edgar Dieguez-Lopez, 43, spoke only Spanish, so a calltaker conferenced in a translator, who determined that Dieguez-Lopez was complainging, “I cannot get inside.” Police responded to the call and arrested the man for improper use of 911…and police say they also recovered drugs from the man.

The Salt Lake City (Utah) city council honored dispatchers who handled the shoot-out at a shopping mall in that city last week, and newspaper interviews revealed how the dispatchers handled a flood of calls that forced some 911 callers to be re-routed to back-up comm centers. Dispatchers tried to reassure callers that officers were on-scene, while others helped coordinate the huge police response that moved almost immediately into the mall to locate and confront the suspect. Read more here.

FCC chair Kevin Martin today announced he intends to appoint a North Carolina university police chief to head the Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. Derek Poarch is police chief at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and will take over the FCC’s bureau for handling public safety, homeland security, emergency management and disaster preparedness matters. Poarch has been chief there since 1998, and worked 21 years at the Lenoir (NC) Police Department before that. He has a degree in Social Science from Gardner-Webb University, and a masters degree in criminal justice from the University of South Carolina. His resumé does not mention any political affiliation or previous radio background.

A suspect driving a stolen vehicle eluded the Utah Highway Patrol when he sped at 130 mph along I-80 near the town of Clive, and then dumped the car and disappeared into the surrounding desert. James Wallingford wasn’t seen or heard from for two days–until he dialed 911 for help. The weather had turned cold and there was snow on the ground, officials noted, so Wallingford used a cellular phone to dial 911 to say he was lost, hungry and cold. The unnamed wife of a state trooper happened to answer the call at the Tooele County sheriff’s comm center, and remembered the pursuit that her husband had participated in two days before. She alerted deputies, who soon located the man and arrested him.

Two weeks before a Tempe (Ariz.) man shot and killed two female aquaintances and then shot himself, he dialed 911 and told the police dispatcher that he wanted to go to “rehab” for his alcohol problem. Joshua Mendel sounds very calm on the logging tape released by police, but police say he was depressed and had a conflict with one of the woman. Read about the incident and listen to the 911 call here (link expires Feb. 29th).

Pennsylvania officials have launched an investigation into how public safety agencies handled last week’s massive traffic tie-up after a snow and ice storm hit the state. Thousands of motorists and truckers were stranded along Interstate 78 for days when accidents and bad driving conditions combined to block the highways. Initial information indicates that emergency management also played a role in the highway tie-up. Read more here.

Two University of Maryland professors have proposed linking a network of 911.gov Web servers to the nation’s 911 systems to create a social network that would receive and transmit emergency information. The concept was proposed in a one-page article in Science magazine, and is light on specifics and almost devoid of technical solutions. Read about the article here, or download the article for a fee here.

An article in the Fort-Wort Star-Telegram newspaper explains that some law enforcement agencies in the region are dropping their use of radio codes, partly in response to a FEMA requirement related to grant funding. The story quotes local official explaining why they use codes, including because radio channels used to be scarce, and to keep radio communications secure from criminals. Read about the plain English radio traffic here.

The Great Barrington (Mass.) police department and town officials are at odds over a plan to move dispatching operations to the Bershire County sheriff, and install an emergency phone outside police headquarters for after-hours walk-ups. A petition is circulating to put the plan on an April 9th referendum, but 200 signatures are needed. The police union opposes the plan, saying it would jeopardize public safety and complicate arrest procedures. The union paid for a newspaper ad suggesting the plan be put to a public vote. Read more about the debate here.