CLEVELAND — New technology is on its way to help Cleveland area first responders.AT&T is adding to its FirstNet, first responder network.FirstNet is a high-speed broadband communications platform dedicated to and purpose-built for first responders and the extended public safety community.The network was launched three years ago to alleviate any congestion or communication problems that can arise in an emergency situation.Beginning in April, FirstNet is now adding 5G connectivity. The 5G connectivity will ultimately bring a combination of benefits like ultra-low latency and ultra-high speeds to support a variety of users.AT&T is also adding security features to the network, and Cleveland is one of two cities to have the features first.FirstNet will be the first-ever nationwide network with comprehensive network encryption. That means FirstNet traffic will be automatically secured as it moves throughout the entire network.Commercial networks may encrypt parts of the communications pathway, but only FirstNet will have encryption along the entire route.“We all sat there and witnessed what happened in 9/11,” said President of AT&T Ohio Brad McLean. “We certainly want to make sure those who are on the frontlines, our first responders, are getting the services they need to adequately respond during those times.AT&T says this network works as a dedicated high-speed lane on the highway.Emergency responders will even be able to send real-time data, like from an ambulance carrying a patient to a hospital where that patient is headed.Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here.You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We’re also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here.

Former longtime 911 Central Dispatch Director Gay Murrell has filed a federal lawsuit alleging breach of contract as well as age and sex discrimination over her March 2020 termination.The lawsuit was filed in early March in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Tennessee in Greeneville.Murrell worked for Hawkins Central Dispatch for 27 years and spent the last 19 as the director. The 911 board voted at their March 12, 2020 meeting to terminate Murrell for breach of contract.At that meeting, then Chairman Mike Herrell reported to the board that Murrell had allowed dispatchers who had not yet obtained EMD (Emergency Medical Dispatching) certifications to answer emergency 911 calls.When a person calls 911 with a medical complaint, the dispatcher goes to a complaint guide card and it directs the dispatcher to ask specific questions about that person’s complaint.Depending on how the questions are answered results in how the dispatcher sends an ambulance — emergency or non-emergency.Someone who is not EMD certified is basically a lay person advising an ambulance if they need to respond emergency or non-emergency to a medical complaint, the Review’s source said.Though all staff were back in compliance with EMD certifications in just a few days, the board noted at the time that this process cost Hawkins Co. Emergency Communications Department (HCECD) around $8,800 and could easily have led to legal ramifications.As a result of these actions, the board concluded that Murrell had breached her contract and voted 6-1 to terminate her.Lawsuit alleges board didn’t have “good cause” for terminationThe lawsuit, which was filed by Morristown attorney Braxton Terry, alleges that, “On March 12, 2020, without any warning or prior notice, [the board] abruptly terminated [Murrell’s] employment as Director.”It also alleges that, prior to her termination, Murrell “had not been counseled or issued any written warnings for policy or procedure violations” and “had not violated any of [the board’s] policies as Director.”It further states that the board did not have “good cause” to terminate Murrell, who was awarded unemployment benefits last July by the Appeals Tribunal of the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.The lawsuit quotes from the Appeals Tribunal’s decision, noting that, “At the Appeals Tribunal hearing, little, if any, evidence was presented by the Employer that the Claimant [Murrell] was either insubordinate or failed to follow the Employer’s policies.”Murrell’s employment contract with the 911 board had specified that, in the event of termination without “good cause,” Murrell would be paid a lump sum of severance in the amount of salary she would have received until the end of her contract, which was set to expire on Oct. 1, 2022.The contract did note that, in the event of termination with cause, the Director would not be paid any severance pay.Through the lawsuit, Murrell is seeking pay and benefits she would have received from the severance agreement as well as interest and compensatory damages for the 911 Board’s “indifference to Murrell’s protected rights.”The lawsuit also alleges that Murrell has suffered “lost wages, lost benefits, lost interest on wages and benefits, inconvenience, embarrassment, humiliation, anguish, loss of lifetime earning capacity.”Sex, age discriminationThe lawsuit goes on to note that, after Murrell’s termination, the board “hired a significantly younger male who is known to have been in his late thirties” to replace Murrell.As the Review previously reported, the 911 board voted in April of 2020 to hire Douglas Boone as the new director.The 911 board received a total of seven applications when the position was advertised, but the board’s personnel committee narrowed this list down to three finalists. The board made the final decision after interviewing the three finalists on in a closed-door executive meeting. Boone received the majority, with a 5-2 vote.However, Boone resigned from the position, effective on March 5 of this year. He noted in his letter of resignation that, due to an illness in the family, he desired to find a position closer to home.The board is currently looking for a replacement director. Herrell told the Review that the board is set to interview three potential candidates on April 18.Months of disagreement, conflictMurrell’s termination followed months of disagreements and conflict between Murrell, members of the 911 board, and several Hawkins Co. officials.As the Review previously reported, in September of 2019, Hawkins Co. Mayor Jim Lee refused to sign the Intergovernmental Cooperation Agreement between the county and Hawkins County Central Dispatch until Murrell released bank statements, credit card statements and salaries to Lee.911 Board member and Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper David Good told the board in September of 2019, “I was talking to Mayor Lee before I came here. I’m going to tell you word for word what he wanted me to tell you. He said that, as long as Gay is 911 director and still employed here, he will not sign the contract.”After some back-and-forth, Good added, “Well, like I said, that’s what he said. The fact that she (Gay Murrell) can’t ever get a budget done right and has never passed an audit in the last several years. He’s just not going to sign it …”“Until I’m gone?” Murrell asked.“Yep,” Good replied.However, when the Review spoke with Lee, he explained, “I can’t fire Gay Murrell. That’s not my job — that’s the board’s job if they decide to do that. I’d like to see her records and then we’ll move forward. If we look at it and everything looks good, we’ll move on, we’ll go with the contract (between Murrell and the 911 board that governs her employment). If not, we’ll stop and correct the problem.”When the Review spoke to Murrell at the time, she explained “we (Central Dispatch) has never failed an audit. We had one finding. As with any other audit, it is on the comptroller’s website. It’s all there. It’s public record. Everything is public record. It’s all right here. What is spent. Salaries. Everything.”The records were given to Lee in November of 2019.Lee later told the board in January of 2020 that he had turned in Central Dispatch bank statements for the past three years to the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury on Jan. 8, 2020, regarding unspecified “inconsistencies” which the Mayor claims he noticed in those documents. This investigation has not yet been completed.

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As the Chittenden County Public Safety Authority thrusts ahead on its nearly $2.3 million effort to regionalize emergency dispatch, the voices on the other end of the phone worry how consolidation will distort their jobs.“You lose that institutional knowledge when you take someone out of their community and put them into a new environment,” said Deb Kruger, who has dispatched in South Burlington for 40 years.She dispatched for her father, a retired South Burlington firefighter, and for her late husband, a police lieutenant who she met over the phone.

“I refer to the cops as my cops, as my firefighters, because that’s how I feel; they’re part of my family,” said Kruger.She’s heard this song before: In the 1990s officials took steps to consolidate the strained infrastructure, eventually petering out, but she does not think regionalization is the best option for revitalizing dispatch, nor will it provide relief to overburdened dispatchers.South Burlington city manager Kevin Dorn, who heads the public safety authority, sees the regionalization as a much-needed efficiency booster, adding a safety net of mutual aid and updated technology to streamline the process.The revamp efforts, which began in 2018, plan to cover five communities via one dispatch center, housed in a space above the South Burlington Police Department, Dorn said. By cutting some extra steps currently in place, and with updated technology, he thinks the efficiencies will dramatically reduce response times and increase use of emergency apparatus.“Time is a valuable asset in an emergency,” said South Burlington fire chief Terry Francis. Long before joining the South Burlington fire department, he worked as a young dispatcher in Burlington and remembers the stress of being alone in a booth answering calls.On Feb. 1, when an 18-year-old fired gun shots in University Mall, one dispatcher was coordinating South Burlington police, fire and rescue and at least six other agencies, on top of emergency and nonemergency phone calls, Francis said.“There were well over 100 phone calls, people saying, ‘I’m in a closet at Spencer’s because I heard gun shots,’” he said. The dispatcher did a great job, but she was overtasked, he added. “That’s a tough job. You’re juggling a lot of plates when it’s busy. If it’s chaotic enough, it’s easy to have a plate drop.”After forty years dispatching in South Burlington, Kruger knows the balancing act better than most. Some calls still haunt her, leaving her wondering what might’ve happened if she’d done something different.But other shifts, like when she dispatched for the ice storm of 1997 — alone in the booth — or when she’s been able to help older residents through Project Good Morning, are what keep her going.Since she began dispatching in the 1980s, Kruger said demand and call volume has grown but the way dispatch is structured has largely remained rigid. Currently, full-time dispatchers each work a 10-hour shift, one person answering phones at a time, with a few hours of overlap in the morning and at night.

“They’ve added and added and added to call volume but not necessarily added to staff,” Kruger said. She thinks hiring more dispatchers and more people to cover 9-1-1 centers would be a much simpler solution than regionalization.Kruger also worries that community connection and knowledge, which can save valuable time in an emergency, might be lost if dispatchers are working for multiple unfamiliar communities.“We get to know our police, firefighters and EMS very well. Even from the intonation of a voice on a radio when they call in, we know if they’re under stress,” she said. “If you’re working with different officers all the time, you’ll lose that.”South Burlington police chief Shawn Burke agreed that the regionalization efforts have “led to a degree of uncertainty” within the dispatch team. But since the authority made clear all current dispatchers will have a position in the new center, if they want it, Burke said apprehension has calmed somewhat.“The synergy between police officers and dispatchers is great and I think that the thought of all of us being regionalized troubles them in that sense,” said Burke. Still, the growth of fire and EMS demand in South Burlington alone has overwhelmed what’s designed to be a police dispatch center, he said.While the idea has been ruminating for decades, many dispatchers felt they’d been left in the dark on the current county-wide regionalization efforts, added Burke.“Culturally it is a big change,” he said, but “we haven’t really made the requisite personnel investments to keep up” with demand.Should renovation above the South Burlington police department move forward, Burke said the consolidated dispatch center would be “terrific to have here as a tenant.”At a meeting last month, the public safety authority discussed plans to break ground on the new dispatch space this summer, after Burlington — which will sponsor a large chunk of funding — ratifies its city budget in June. But the authority cannot take concrete renovation steps until all funding is in place.“Funding is still the key issue,” said Dorn. The total capital cost for regionalizing dispatch clocks in at around $2.2 to $2.3 million. Not a small chunk of change.While the participating communities have already committed to a slice of funding each, Dorn hopes that additional grant money and COVID-19 relief will ease the pressure on municipal pockets.Francis admitted the current efforts are an expensive solution to “a big question,” but he believes the long-needed effort will improve public safety service to communities, reduce delays and provide some relief to dispatchers.“A lot of people don’t appreciate how hard of a job it is,” said Francis. “Ultimately, it’s about serving the public and making sure we’re getting resources to the community. If COVID moneys are available for that — improving public safety after a pandemic? I can’t think of a better way to spend it.”

ST. GEORGE — The St. George Communications Center was in full operation Monday during an open house to showcase the new facility, which is equipped with cutting-edge technology for the hundreds of calls answered by emergency dispatchers during any given shift....

Ward 7 Councilwoman Virgi Lindsay said people are calling 911 without response in Jackson at the city council work session on March 29. Photo courtesy City of Jackson

The problem of people experiencing emergencies not getting a response when they call 911 in the capital city needs urgent resolution, Ward 7 Councilwoman Virgi Lindsay said at the Jackson City Council work session on March 29.

“I’m getting phone calls, and I think we all are, about people not getting (response) when they’re in a real emergency, and they don’t get a response from 911,” she said.

Lindsay was commenting on an agenda item relating to a fund transfer to provide “New World Public Safety System Fire Marshal software and hardware offered by Tyler Technologies” per a 2018 “Enterprise Resource Planning System” agreement with the City of Jackson.

After confirming that Tyler Technologies supplies the technology for the 911 system in the city, Lindsay asked about efforts to ensure that it is working well. “So, where are we on repairing or making sure that the 911 system is working as efficiently as possible using Tyler Technologies?” she asked.

Jackson Police Department Deputy Chief Tyrone Buckley, who is in charge of the 911 Public Safety Communications section, said there is a shortage of dispatchers in the city. “As relates to the vacant positions, we currently have 31 employees. We have 13 (prospective) employees (undergoing) background (checks). Currently, we are budgeted for 47. So, we are well on our way to filling those vacancies,” he said.

911 Dispatcher Needed

Buckley explained that there are six to nine 911 dispatchers on each of the three shifts, and he is confident that the situation will improve after the new employees start in April..

“Hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, we’ll have those backgrounds completed and have those individuals in, but it’s the process; we still have a high turnover, so we have to take that into consideration. We received a couple of resignations as of last week,” he added.

“The shift is dispersed equally, as of now (on) average, we have anywhere from six to nine dispatchers, but that’s depending on if someone called in sick or something of that nature, unpredictable things that may arise in the course of their duties.”

Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba said the dispatchers’ work had been made more difficult because of the increase in paperwork based on U.S. Department of Justice requirements, which affects the speed of getting to various calls.

“And so what has happened is that there are more fields to fill out for our 911 call takers,” he said. “And that has led to the delay in many of them being able to get to the calls as quickly as they were previously.”

The mayor explained that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated staff shortage combined with the federal government’s demand for a new system.

“The challenge that we had with the 911 system is that we were under a deadline by the federal government to change to a new system; what that deadline may not have considered is we were in the midst of a pandemic working with short staff,” Lumumba said. He did not provide more specifics to the council about the timing of the deadline.

“And so that made it complicated to make sure everybody was sufficiently trained based on the training timelines that were put out; but we had to convert, or we would have lost an ability to get DOJ funding.”

Email story tips to city/county reporter Kayode Crown at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @kayodecrown.

CANTON Consultants are reaffirming a 2008 recommendation that Stark County use one dispatch center to all but eliminate the transfer of 911 calls that can delay emergency response.The county has seven such centers: the Stark County sheriff’s office; Canton Police; the Regional Emergency Dispatch Center, which serves 14 communities including Jackson Township, Perry Township and Massillon; CenCom, which serves several village and township fire departments; North Canton Police; Alliance Police; and Minerva Police.Paul Linnee and Rey Freeman of Rey Freeman Communications Consulting presented their draft report to the Stark County commissioners on Monday.“In an ideal world, there would be one 911 dispatching center for all of Stark County,” Linnee told the commissioners. “That ideal world does not happen everywhere. It does happen in an increasing number of places in the United states nowadays. … I understand that there’s not a universally shared political will to get down to one …”Linnee and Freeman are former employees of the consulting firm Geocomm, who worked on the 2008 report of Stark County’s 911 and dispatch situation.Prior to 2014, all cellphone 911 calls and most landline 911 calls went to the county’s 911 center where a call taker, who could not dispatch police officers, firefighters or paramedics, had to transfer the emergency call to one of nine dispatch centers. That added crucial seconds of delay to each call.The Stark County Sheriff’s Office dispatchers in 2014 took over answering 911 calls, significantly reducing but not eliminating the transfers if the caller was calling from a jurisdiction served directly by the sheriff’s office, such as Plain Township. Consultant: Stark has made some dispatching progressSince the 2008 study, Perry Township has closed its dispatch center and joined the RED Center, Louisville Police assigned its dispatching to Canton Police and Plain Township Fire Department disbanded its separate dispatching center and now uses the sheriff’s office.”Fortunately, much progress has been made,” said Linnee, who acknowledged the installation of new computer-assisted dispatch equipment at several dispatch centers, the elimination of the 911 call-taker center and the installation of the countywide radio system, which allows police departments and fire departments to communicate directly with each other on their radios.Linnee estimated the county and jurisdictions’ consolidation has saved more than 14% of costs in 2019 compared to 2006, or about $850,000 adjusted for inflation. He also estimated that the number of emergency calls received by dispatch centers in Stark County with fewer transfers has resulted in roughly 30% fewer emergency calls received between 2006 and 2019.However, Linnee pointed out that the sheriff’s office, which handle all cellphone 911 calls and landline 911 calls outside Canton and Canton police, which handles all landline 911 calls in Canton, still have to transfer emergency calls to agencies not directly dispatched by either. Canton is working on getting nearly all cellphone 911 calls originating within Canton connected directly to the Canton Police’s dispatch center, rather than going to the sheriff.”Clearly, any reduction … would be a step forward, but not without a significant amount of organizational pain, and one is tempted to wonder whether or not now might be the time to ‘rip the Band-Aid off’ and do it all, and get it over with, once and forever,” the draft report says.Linnee said, “I don’t know it’s worth moneywise to the powers that be in North Canton to have its own operation.”The update did not include an assessment of improvements or changes in emergency response time.Tim Warstler, director of the Stark Emergency Management Agency said such an assessment would be difficult because every incident is different and occurs at different locations. It would be very challenging to compare response times in 2019 versus 2006.Warstler said the study update cost the county less than $31,000.Reaction from Stark communitiesOfficials of communities with their own dispatchers who were reached Tuesday were not receptive to closing their dispatch centers.Canton Police Chief Jack Angelo said the county needs at least two dispatch centers to directly answer 911 calls in case something happens to one. Or if one center is flooded with emergency calls.”I think we we need a backup center. You can’t have one dispatch center and if things go down expect another county to back you up,” said Angelo. North Canton Mayor Stephan Wilder, who was the city’s police chief, said his city having seven full-time dispatchers and two part-time dispatchers works well for North Canton’s residents.”We’ve had a really good dispatching system and it’s been very responsive to our residents, our citizens, our visitors who call in. That’s why we still maintain that,” Wilder said. ”It allows us to maintain our control over what we’re able to provide for our citizens.”Alliance Police Chief Scott Griffith said officials considered closing the city’s dispatch center. But they concluded it’s better for the dispatchers sending Alliance police officers to calls to work in the same building as police.”We believe keeping our own dispatch center is the best move for the city of Alliance and our residents, our community. …. our dispatchers have a great understanding of the city as far as both geography, some of the residents, some of the needs. We just think the familiarity and the cohesiveness of having our own dispatch center is almost irreplaceable,” Griffith said.He said Alliance has eight full-time dispatchers and one part-time dispatcher.Stark County Commissioner Richard Regula on being asked if there should be fewer dispatch centers said, “There’s going to have to be a whole lot of discussions about that. There’s more work to do. I don’t really want to comment on any changes to dispatch systems. By us all working together, obviously the MARCs radio system was a step in the right direction and the (computer-assisted dispatch system) … the various agencies will have to make some decisions on their own.”Reach Robert at (330) 580-8327 or robert.wang@cantonrep.com. Twitter: @rwangREP.