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The Daviess County Council put a hold on a request that would improve communication with first responders due to cost.“I believe the need is large enough to justify this $800,000 expense. The end result will be a county-wide communication system that all first responders can use in all areas. The end result is better response and communications for everyone,” said Daviess County Chief Deputy Sheriff Steve Sturgis. “I don’t think you can ever go wrong with improving public safety. That is why this is beneficial.”The proposal includes an almost $600,000 infrastructure project that would include adding a tower and upgrading the three existing towers. It would also include $267,000 for new radios for volunteer fire departments.
“I am a fan for the safety and security of our citizens, for sure. It would be a good thing, but at what cost? Even if we pay for the infrastructure, someone still has to come up with $267,000 for the radios,” said county council president Tom Schaffer. “I don’t know what the big rush is all of a sudden. We have a good system. What they want to do is expand it by adding a fourth tower. It seems like a lot of money to me, $600,000, to do that.”Sturgis told the council he believed that between the sheriff’s department, prosecutor’s office and the county’s E911 fund, they could cover about $100,000 of the cost.A check of available money in E911 accounts indicated that money may not be available.
“We thought we had found $100,000 that we could put toward it for the fire department radios, but after our discussions with the council, we need to go back and see what money is available,” said Sturgis. “I am going to get together with some of the council members and see where the money can come from.”“Even if they come back and say they can cut out $300,000, I don’t know that we could afford the other $300,000 right now. I think we need to see some of the dust settle on projects we are working on now. We are paying on the annex and the courthouse renovations,” said Schaffer. “There is always something that needs attention. Eventually, something is going to break. Something is going to pop-up.”The council is expected to continue discussion on the proposed improvements at the next meeting.In other business, the council appointed Schaffer, vice-president Marilyn McCullough, and Matt Meredith to serve on the wage committee. The committee will investigate and determine where wages should be set during the next budget session.The council approved a new software for the auditor’s office that will give county departments better access to the auditing system. The cost will be $4,000.The council appropriated $17,290 for benefits for a new employee in the clerk’s office, spent $4,850 on a new copier, allocated $17,806 in grant funding for Adult Protective Services, approved spending on a $10,000 grant for the Daviess County Health Department, and approved a $2,000 internal transfer for Daviess Superior Court to provide uniforms for the court staff.

Deploying paramedics, social workers and others to non-criminal emergency calls could significantly boost a police department’s ability to respond to criminal emergencies while reducing negative interactions with the community, according to new University of Maryland research.
A study based on Baltimore Police Department data published recently in Justice Quarterly showed that up to 57% of 911 calls could be assigned to non-police responders, which would free up at least 59 full-time officers, or about 9% of the department’s patrol personnel.
The study led by Luke Spreen, assistant professor at the School of Public Policy, and Greg Midgette, an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal justice (CCJS), introduces a model to assess the impacts of call diversion programs, offering policymakers a tool for evidence-based decision making.
“Public safety is one of the most significant categories of municipal spending,” Spreen said. “Focusing exclusively on the costs of operating a civilian responder program ignores positive downstream benefits it is likely to generate, such as reductions in arrests.” The study was supported by Arnold Ventures and Abell Foundation grants.
Co-authors also include Distinguished University Professor Peter Reuter in public policy and CCJS and Associate Professor Lauren C. Porter and Assistant Professor Brooklynn K. Hitchens, both of CCJS. 
Their pathway, of sending civilian first responders to calls that don’t require armed officers, can help address questions of how police departments deploy their personnel, following a high-profile series of officer-involved killings of Black people, including Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Recent studies have shown that police are more likely to use force when interacting with Black people, and that Black people are more likely to believe that police act unjustly.

Spreen acknowledged that shifting resources has a political dimension but said the landscape has shifted in the wake of incidents of police misconduct, along with growing evidence that diversion programs work.
Successful programs to divert low-risk 911 calls from police officers to civilian responders often start small, gradually scaling up to demonstrate effectiveness and build community trust. “We believe this is the correct approach,” said Spreen, “though our analysis suggests that most existing diversion programs may still be too small.”Case studies of call diversion programs in cities like Albuquerque, Atlanta, Denver and Houston help underscore the importance of investing in training for emergency call takers and dispatchers to identify suitable calls for civilian response.
“It is very challenging to parse exactly what event is unfolding from a 911 call, or how much danger it poses to the first responder,” Spreen said.
The researchers also called for the use of performance metrics to evaluate program effectiveness and guide future development.

BROOKVILLE — In an effort to provide better safety for the public as well as police officers and other first responders, the Jefferson County Commissioners have entered an intergovernmental agreement for Talkgroups with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, acting through the Pennsylvania State Police.Tracy Zents, director of emergency services, said, “This agreement will allow multiple agencies that we dispatch to have interoperable communications on one common radio channel without putting officer safety in jeopardy.“With this agreement the 911 center will be able to monitor the daily traffic of the state police, particularly the Punxsutawney, DuBois, Marienville and Ridgway stations, as these stations provide police coverage in our dispatch jurisdiction. We will have situation awareness if they require backup.”

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Power supporting Houston Emergency Center’s communications system was disrupted on Monday night, causing the system to at least partially fail.Approximately 6,000 calls occur daily to Houston’s fire, emergency medical services, and police, with law enforcement routinely routed through the center.Inside the center, call-takers accept 911 calls on consoles, inputting the information into a computer-aided dispatch, or CAD system. That information is then forwarded to dispatchers for various departments.During planned electrical upgrades on Monday, Houston Emergency Center Director Robert Mock said parts of the CAD system unexpectedly crashed.”This was a loss of power,” he explained.With parts of the CAD system down and others malfunctioning, call-takers had to write down information coming in on homicides, heart attacks, and house fires by hand.Mock explained that departments were impacted differently because the CAD system has different terminals.The Houston Police Department was reportedly directly impacted for about an hour. In contrast, the Houston Fire Department reported being directly impacted for approximately 4.5 hours.”It’s a big octopus,” Mock said of the CAD system and its different terminals.Issues didn’t subside after information was manually relayed to dispatchers. Houston police dispatch consoles were knocked out, too.On Wednesday, the city said it was still working to determine how many consoles were knocked out. Dispatchers on impacted consoles shifted to radio.”We’ve experienced things like this in the past. We have equipment. We have computers. Things fail. Things go down, but these are our contingencies,” Mock said.Initial reports from officials stated the failure lasted just a few minutes. Mock said he believed it lasted an hour but acknowledged the fire department might have been directly impacted 4.5 times longer.The fire department reported the issues lasted from approximately 11:20 p.m. Monday to 3:50 a.m. Tuesday.Mock said the dispatch outages lasted from approximately 11:30 p.m. Monday to 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.During that time, he said dispatchers received 260 calls, 82% of which were answered in 15 seconds or less. The target is 90%.ABC13 is still working to learn how first responders’ response times were impacted. The fire department only acknowledged that calls were delayed but said: “They were all responded to.”Houston police were referred to the “catastrophic loss of communication policy.” The policy states:”In the event of a catastrophic radio and computer (MCD) failure, all on-duty patrol personnel, including supervisors, are to report to their assigned Houston Police Station. Once there, a supervisor shall provide information, equipment, and assignments consistent with the particular emergency and the orders of the Chief of Police. Communications, assignments, and specific duties shall be developed by the Chief of Police for each emergency and distributed via the chain of command.”As of Wednesday evening, it remains unclear if officers – and if so, which ones – were ordered to report back to their stations.For more updates on this story, follow Shannon Ryan on Facebook, X and Instagram.SEE ALSO: 13 Investigates: 911 call takers ‘overworked’ while responding to crisis calls13 Investigates found last year, 44 emergency call takers left Houston. Half of those employees who left were there for less than six months.’He was snoring’: 911 call-taker heard sleeping under investigationThe Houston Emergency Center are investigating an incident where a 911 call taker seems to have fallen asleep while answering a call for help. In the video above, you’ll hear the audio from the call in question.Copyright © 2024 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.