New system to coordinate police depts.

Police officials from Penn and Temple University revealed at a press conference Monday the new half-million-dollar Computer Aided Dispatch system that will link the two forces to the Philadelphia Police via a high speed Internet connection. The CAD system will allow dispatchers to determine which of the forces is closest to the crime scene and can best respond. It turns the emergency centers of the three departments into one streamlined dispatch center capable of handling a larger volume of calls much more efficiently. The system links the three police departments by a T1 line, and allows the 911 dispatchers to coordinate calls among the three departments. Prior to the installation of the new system, calls in the vicinities of both Penn and Temple would often get responses from multiple units after emergency calls, unnecessarily draining police resources. "We never knew what the city's police department was doing or vice-versa," said Carl Bittenbender, the managing director for Temple's Campus Safety Services. "The only way we knew that the city's police department was responding to a call was if we had a police scanner on, or saw a Philadelphia Police car on campus." The CAD system was activated on June 22, and little or no communication existed among the different police departments before that. Penn had a police scanner sitting in its dispatch room, while Temple had no communication with the Philadelphia Police at all. With the CAD system, during a robbery the 911 call would be phoned into the Philadelphia Police dispatch center. There, on one of a bank of computer monitors, an operator would enter the call as a robbery, the location of the incident and any other information relevant to the officers on duty. The information would then be sent over the CAD network to the dispatch centers of the three departments, where dispatchers would locate units from each department and send the nearest one to deal with the problem. Often, one department has units closer than the other, and the dispatcher can direct the closest one to the location of the crime. "What you have is an improved response time," Bittenbender said. "It also allows us to use our resources more efficiently." The new system fixes the response time for police units anywhere between 30 seconds and three minutes. Recently, when a large fire broke out near Penn's campus, police dispatchers were able to coordinate Penn and Philadelphia units to the scene using the CAD system. University Police Chief Maureen Rush said that often the Penn Police officers are less busy than the Philadelphia officers, and that they can respond to calls near campus without draining the Philadelphia Police's resources. Philadelphia, Penn and Temple are setting an example for other universities in large cities. "The model in place here is unique," said Skip Funk of Litten/PRC, Inc., the vendor that built and operates the CAD system. "We hope to see it become a standard for police departments across the country." Funk added that Boston is also considering implementing a CAD system because of the large number of colleges within the city.

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