What's New

By Kristin S. Agostoni Staff Writer for the Daily Breeze

Posted: 04/07/2010 06:22:29 PM PDT

A decade after El Segundo built and staffed its own facility for fielding 911 calls, city leaders plan to shift their dispatchers to a regional center that they believe is better equipped to handle emergencies.

The move, which Tuesday night won unanimous City Council support, will make El Segundo a client of the South Bay Regional Public Communications Authority, a consortium owned by the cities of Gardena, Hawthorne and Manhattan Beach, and which also serves Hermosa Beach.

El Segundo was formerly part of the authority, which is based in Hawthorne, but struck out on its own in 2000 in response to concerns about the effectiveness and reliability of the SBRPCA's equipment.

With hope that other cities would follow suit - Hermosa Beach was a partner of El Segundo's for a period of time - the small beach town spent $4.7 million in asset forfeiture money to build a dispatch center within its police station.

Now, though, El Segundo is looking for a change.

City leaders see cost-savings benefits to re-joining the regional authority, which will take in El Segundo's 11 full-time employees. But they also maintain city residents could be better served by a center with more dispatchers on duty, a "vastly improved" technical support system and access to more local agencies.

"The (regional authority) was struggling when we left. They were in a leased building. The lease was running out. They had no permanent operational structure.

It was in disarray," said newly retired El Segundo police Chief Dave Cummings.

"It's unfortunate that it cost so much, but since then the (authority) has significantly improved their operations," he added. "So has the city of El Segundo. Coming over ... is the right thing at this point in time."

In a staff report, Cummings said El Segundo would owe $519,000 in start-up costs over two years - to be paid from an equipment replacement fund. He estimates the move would save the city $1.1 million per year for the first two fiscal terms, with slightly greater savings estimated in subsequent years of the 10-year contract.

And with city leaders projecting an $8.6 million deficit for the upcoming budget cycle, cost-cutting strategies are needed.

Still, Cummings characterized the switch as a "major step forward for public safety" and told the council he'd recommend it even if no cost savings were involved.

During emergencies such as the April 2008 shooting of two police officers at the Pacific Theatres complex, El Segundo turns to the authority for assistance, Cummings said.

Only two city dispatchers were on duty the night of the movie theater gunbattle, prompting the regional authority to send in two of its employees to assist in taking calls and relaying information, Cummings said.

"Any incident of magnitude, two people are quickly overwhelmed," he said.

Ralph Mailloux, executive director of the South Bay Regional Public Communications Authority, said the deal with El Segundo will put 12 dispatchers on duty at one time. He estimates the transfer will take roughly six months to complete and go into effect on Oct. 1.

"It's a benefit to them (El Segundo). It's a benefit to us. ... The savings come in because they don't have to staff (or worry about) equipment issues. We have radio frequencies that they don't have.

"They have nice stuff. They built a nice facility," he said. "It's very expensive to run one, though."

Once El Segundo's dispatch operations are relocated, Cummings said the empty space inside the police station could possibly be used for an expanded Emergency Operations Center, but that no decisions have been made.

Because it was constructed with forfeiture money - which comes from assets seized during drug deals and other crimes - it needs to be reserved for police uses, he added.

El Segundo started looking for a contractor to build its own dispatch facility in 1995 and wanted to bring Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach on board. At that point, the community had been a part of the regional authority since 1977.

The center was completed in July 2000, when El Segundo residents and civic leaders were invited in for an open house event. Former police Chief Tim Grimmond told the Daily Breeze that year the center would allow for faster response times and a chance to upgrade more quickly to better equipment.

Hermosa Beach Neighborhood Watch

HERMOSA BEACH MOMS was created out of the adversities of three MOMS who recognized that they were brought to their knees with the human suffering that they had arisen from the terrorist attack on our Nation on September 11, 2001, the Asian Tsunami that killed over 100,000 people from coast to coast and then finally by Hurricane Katrina and the levee break.  Adversities are inevitable. We can quit and lose -- or we can keep trying and win. We decided to learn from the misfortunes of others and resurrected a program in Hermosa Beach that had been dismantled formally for over 30 years.  This program is the Hermosa Beach Neighborhood Watch.  In the past, Neighborhood Watch programs were designed to assist the police department with the prevention of crimes by being aware of ones’ surroundings.  Today, Neighborhood Watch programs have adopted Disaster Preparedness in their education and safety to neighbors. We have developed EDUCATION, COMMUNITY SERVICE and FUNDRAISING FOR OUR HB SCHOOLS with the establishment of Hermosa Beach MOMS and Hermosa Beach Neighborhood Watch.

Potential Threats include:

• Terrorism and bioterrorism events (at the airport, harbor or directly in Hermosa Beach)

• Disruption of basic utilities (water, power, roads, sewage)

• Epidemics (Flu, West Nile, others)

• Crime

• Natural disasters (flooding, tsunami, earthquake, storm)

Preparedness requires:

• Knowledge and education of your family

• Understanding of basic services available

• Water supply and survival kit

• First aid kit

• Updated immunizations

• Participation in Neighborhood watch

VOIP 911 (Voice Over Internet) ALERT!!!

Internet Voice, also known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), is a technology that allows you to make telephone calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (or analog) phone line. Even though there are advantages to this technology, emergency calls to 911 centers using these new Internet telephone services ring in through a nonemergency line and often are not answered immediately as reported in an article in USA Today.

More specifically, as noted on the web site News.com, a Florida family alleges inadequacies in Vonage's 911 Net phone service played a role in the death of their 3-month-old daughter, one of several such claims that have drawn increasing attention to a sensitive regulatory issue. To understand how 911 calls are received at emergency dispatch centers via standard phone service, please see FAQs 9-1-1.

The FCC(Federal Communications Commission) has mandated VOIP providers to provide emergency 911 service to all their customers.  See FCC News Release.

Radio Interoperability System

	New interoperability work station

In early 2005, the Authority began providing the entire South Bay, not just the member cities, with an interoperability system that allows numerous agencies to communicate with one another over a wide range of radio frequency spectrum while utilizing their own communications hardware.  In the past, agencies that utilize UHF band for their communications system could not communicate with another agency in the VHF band.  The Authority’s new system combines the various frequency bands, thereby allowing them to communicate.  The system also combines low-band, 800MHz, cellular, digital and telephone systems.

Wireless 911 (Cellular)

Cellular telephone calls to 9-1-1 in the State of California have traditionally been routed to the California Highway Patrol (CHP).  As a result, delays have occurred in processing the calls to the correct agencies responsible for the emergency response.  In an effort to mitigate these delays, the State has relegated the responsibility of developing infrastructure to receive 9-1-1 calls from local cellular users to local public safety answering points (PSAPs). 

Along these lines, several years ago the Federal Communications Commission required all cellular telephone handset manufacturers to integrate an XY global positioning system (GPS) chip into their cellular telephones to allow dispatch centers to determine the location of the cellular phone user.  To date, very few dispatch centers have developed this infrastructure and implemented this program.  However, the Authority was committed to this effort and, beginning in September 2003, the Authority began receiving wireless 9-1-1 calls.  We were able to do this with the implementation of the Authority’s new computer aided dispatch system, which is also integrated into our mapping system.  The two phases of the Wireless 9-1-1 program include the following: Phase I -  When a cellular telephone user dials 9-1-1,  the 9-1-1 call will be routed to the regional 9-1-1 center that serves the cellular transmission site; and  Phase II -  This phase actually captures the GPS location of the cellular telephone user and pinpoints it to within several hundred yards on a map in our communications center, thereby giving the communications operators a closer location for the reporting party.  Currently, all major cellular phone companies are compliant with the regulations and are all at Phase II of the project.