New $1.9 Million 911 System Crashes on First Day in N.Y.

June 17, 2011
Technicians were rushing Thursday morning to fix a software glitch in Suffolk police's new 911 system for a limited reboot later in the day.

June 16--Technicians were rushing Thursday morning to fix a software glitch in Suffolk police's new 911 system for a limited reboot later in the day.

The rollout of Suffolk police's high-tech 911 system hit a glitch on Tuesday, sending cops and operators back to technology from the Dark Ages: pen and paper.

Police officials threw the switch on the $1.9-million call center -- with interactive GPS maps and other gizmos -- shortly after 5 a.m. Tuesday. Within an hour, it froze and had to be shut down, said Deputy Chief Christopher Bergold.

With technicians trying to figure out what went wrong, 911 operators and dispatchers at the call center had to activate the backup system: writing caller information on preprinted cards, with red ink signifying the high-priority emergencies.

The cards were handed to couriers, who rushed them to dispatchers, who radioed cops.

"You got a lot of people running back and forth," said a call center worker who asked not to be identified.

The new call center system is now online, but the portion of the 911 system in the police cruiser-mounted laptops remained down Thursday morning.

Bergold addressed the Suffolk legislator's Public Safety Committee on Thursday morning to explain what had gone wrong and what was being done to fix the problem. Early Thursday, more than 25 technicians employed by the system vendor, Intergraph Corp., began to upgrade software in hundreds of vehicles in the three South Shore precincts, planning a limited restart in the late afternoon.

The rest of the fixes may go into next week, said Bergold, who said the problem arose when information coming from the mobile units overloaded the system and caused it to freeze.

Despite the technical problem, Bergold on Wednesday emphasized the new system's vast improvements over the department's decades-old system.

"This is going to be a significant improvement to the service of the people of this county," he said. "Any rollout of a system of this magnitude is going to have some issues ... but we were prepared for them."

The center's phones were not affected, and by early Wednesday afternoon, the system went back online without the link to the mobile units. A new information sharing link to the fire-and-rescue call center also remained down Thursday morning. Calls to 911 requiring an ambulance or fire response were being manually transferred, as they were before the new system was installed, Bergold said.

The new 911 system uses an updated database of each county address and alerts dispatchers what the nearest police units are to minimize response time. It can display satellite images and suggests locations of callers based on their description. The upgrade follows upgraded radios installed in the 911 center in January and new phone systems in 2008.

Third Precinct Officer and PBA representative Joe Link said he started getting messages early Tuesday from cops about the computers being down and delays getting to low-priority calls. Without the computers, he said, cops were forced to write down addresses and other information as it came in over the radio.

With extra staff on hand, there were no significant delays in service, Bergold said. He said the only 911 response problem he was aware of was one incident of officers being sent to the same address twice.

With Rick Brand

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