911 call centre under review
Posted Jun 8, 2010 8:22 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The lives of police officers and the public are being put at risk.
That’s the feeling of the boss of Calgary’s police union, as a review gets underway of the city’s 911 dispatch system.
John Dooks of the Calgary Police Association says he wants trained officers to once again take over all police-related emergency calls.
He’s pushing for the change following an incident last week when an RCMP officer was stabbed at the downtown office of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team.
One of the operators made a mistake with the address, so it took paramedics 13 minutes to arrive at the scene.
Dooks says mix-ups happen daily and some of these calls are for homicides.
This is why the head of the Calgary Police Association wants action to be taken now.
“We were very fortunate last week that the officer didn’t die. Before we have a member of the public involved in a situation that could have been prevented, let’s step up to the plate and fix the problem. Why wait until we have another fatality?” Dooks tells 660News.
He says operators do the best job they can but trained officers have the knowledge and instinct to deal with emergency calls properly.
Dooks has sent a strongly worded letter to the mayor, the police chief and all officers, and it seems to be getting results.
Mayor Dave Bronconnnier tells the Calgary Herald he has ordered an immediate review of the call centre’s operations.
An audit of the dispatch system was conducted just last year, but Dooks says the changes that came from that are obviously not enough.
All emergency calls to Calgary Fire, EMS and Police were moved to one dispatch system back in 2006.
