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Police: Center needed for consolidation of 911 dispatch
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Related Topics: Carroll County
Carroll County (Map, News) - A central communications center must be built before Carroll can consolidate its 911 dispatch, said Maryland’s secretary of state police Monday.
“If a center was being built, we certainly would want to be a part of it, but until that can happen, we are not prepared to go to a mutual dispatch situation,” said Greg Shipley, spokesman for Secretary Col. Thomas Hutchins, who visits Carroll today.
The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, municipal police departments and state police at the Westminster barracks, which handles 911 calls for Sykesville, Manchester, Hampstead and Taneytown, can’t share one radio channel, Shipley said, because the state police uses a different computer system from the county’s emergency communications center, which is operated by Carroll’s Office of Public Safety for the sheriff’s office.
Barracks commander Lt. Dean Richardson said he didn’t expect to see central dispatch — which police call “interoperability” — happening within the two more years he plans on working there.
“There are a lot of logistics that need to be ironed out, and one of those is a building that is capable of handling the volume of work we do here,” he said. “I’m not opposed to combined communication, but at this time, I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Town police chiefs said consolidating communications should happen sooner to best serve residents in a growing county.
Shaving off a few minutes when responding to a robbery, for example, “could mean the difference between catching an individual and the individual escaping,” Manchester Police Chief Charles Lewis said.
Hampstead Chief Kenneth Meekins said Carroll’s separate dispatch is “a different animal” from Baltimore County, where he grew accustomed to working with one radio channel.
While agencies can listen to all calls for police service, officers can hear only one call when multiple crimes occur simultaneously, he said, keeping some law enforcement officers in the dark.
“Why in a county this size wouldn’t anyone want all calls to come into one place?” Meekins asked.
kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com
