Last year in Jonesboro, more than 240,000 calls were answered, “Hello, 911, what’s your emergency?” But, now, people calling in an emergency will hear two new voices on the other end of the line.

“They’ll be manning the phones for the 911 and non-emergency lines,” said Jeff Presley, director of E-911, about his recent hires.

The City of Jonesboro set aside about $50,000 to hire two new phone operators. The city decided to separate its radio dispatchers from those answering phone calls, an unusual approach for this area.

“Most dispatch centers, they operate as a joint dispatch-radio operator position,” Presley noted. “What we’re doing is taking the radio away from the call taker.”

Radio dispatchers previously took 911 calls while also relaying messages to emergency personnel, but the new phone operators have taken away some of the stressful balancing act.

“It’s going to take a lot of stress off the 911 dispatchers,” said Johnine Polston, a training officer at E-911. “They’re going to be able to free up their time from actually having to take very many calls and to actually being able to speak to officers, to first responders.”

The new employees began a three-month training process a few weeks ago. They first learn the basics of taking an emergency call, and then graduate onto more specific training.

“Their next steps are going to do some FEMA training,” Polston said. “They’re going to do some ACIC training, level one, in February.”

Polston is teaching the new employees how to best handle the unexpected, but Presley says the job will always keep them on their toes.

“The call takers are going to be very busy,” he said. “If we have a caller that needs help where we need to stay on board with them, the call taker is going to be there for them. Radio operators don’t always have that luxury of staying on the line with someone, so a call taker is going to be a very important part of our operation.”

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For the first time ever, the department is offering medical assistance over the phone.

Dispatchers have been trained to evaluate any emergency and give advice to stabilize the patients.

The new protocol includes a lot of extra questions, and dispatchers want people to know these questions are for your benefit. They’re based on each specific situation so they can help you while an ambulance is on the way.

Kiristy Deblock, the assistant supervisor of Emergency Services, says it’s taken a lot of extra work, but it’s worth it.

“It’s kind of exciting in a way, it makes us feel like we are a little more a part of the process,” she said.

With just a click of a mouse she can bring up a list of questions for any type of emergency.

“Pretty much everything, I can’t think of anything that’s not covered,” said Deblock .

“We’re starting the EMS process a little bit earlier, rather than waiting until the paramedics arrive on the scene,” said Melissa Foster, the deputy director of Emergency Services.

The new program is already paying off. This week, dispatchers helped diagnose symptoms of a stroke.

The call went like this:

Dispatcher – “Ask her to smile.”

Caller – “Baby, just smile.”

Dispatcher – “Was the smile equal on both sides of her mouth?”

Caller – “No ma’am.”

Dispatcher – Tell me what was different.”

Caller – “She didn’t smile on the left side of her face.”

The diagnosis allows first responders to immediately begin treatment. In the past, that wouldn’t have happened.

“The most we could do is just to reassure them that the responders were on the way,” said Foster.

But now, they can give instructions. With a little more on the job training, they say they’ll get even better providing help.

“That’s what this is all about, it’s about the citizens receiving the best service and receiving it as early as possible,” said Foster.

It’s not just about asking questions. Dispatchers have also learned to perform CPR and how to do the Heimlich maneuver so they can better instruct callers who are trying to save a life.

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“Call takers now are given specific information dealing with a particular emergency so that they can transfer that information to callers much more quickly,” police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at the formal launch of a new $680 million 911 call center.

The new technology at the Brooklyn center will put more information into the hands of the 911 call takers, allowing officials to feed them information about an emergency and automatically showing them a map of the location of each caller. It also will prevent the system from getting overloaded in the event of a catastrophe, city officials said.

In 2004, the federal commission, which was created to study the terror attacks and make recommendations designed to prevent future attacks, concluded that on Sept. 11, 2001, the phone system’s operators and dispatchers were unaware that fire chiefs were evacuating the doomed twin towers because the city had no way of relaying that information.

As panicked people called 911 seeking guidance on how to escape the burning 110-story buildings, the operators answering the phones were able to offer little help, and some told workers not to evacuate. More than 2,750 people were killed in the attack on the twin towers.

The commission concluded that an unknown number of victims might have had a chance of survival if 911 operators had told them not to flee upward, where some found locked roof doors and no hope of escape.

On Thursday, emergency officials said that the new call center is able to support a queue of 1,900 emergency calls — up from 500 in 2001. New switches mean the center can now receive up to 50,000 calls in an hour — an unheard-of number for a system that sees an average of 30,000 calls per day.

Deputy Mayor for Operations Cas Holloway said that since beginning full operations with New York Police Department staffers last month, there already have been improvements.

“It is performing exceptionally, and in fact the number of calls answered in under 10 seconds has gone up by 6 or 7 percent,” he said. “The number of overall calls answered in 30 seconds or less is now at 99.9 percent.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that, under the new system, precious seconds will be saved by requiring most callers to speak to only one operator, instead of repeating information to several. That operator will insert information into the computer system and loop in additional people if necessary, rather than transferring callers to different agencies as was previously done.

The opening of the center was delayed by a few years due to what Holloway said had been problems with the new technology, which had frozen and shut down when handling a large number of calls. Holloway said the problems were fixed by the contractor.

A second phase of the project, now expected to reach completion in 2015 and cost $2.1 billion, up from the $1.4 billion initially projected in 2004, will involve building another call center in the Bronx, to be used as a backup in the case of a catastrophe.

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Love County Sheriff Joe Russell said the new system. which allows emergency services to pinpoint the location of a 911 caller will force all of his dispatchers who work at the jail to move into the new E-911 building three blocks away, since the county doesn’t have the money to hire new employees.

Sheriff Russell said he usually has two jailers working and one dispatcher at the jail at all times, and he fears that inmates will be more likely to try escaping when they find out no dispatchers will be on site to monitor the jail in person. They will only be able to monitor the jail through video surveillance.

“I’d like for them to know what’s going on and the danger we’re looking at. I’m not sure if Love County is the only jail that’s got this problem,” said Sheriff Russell.

But Love County E-911 Coordinator Becky Watkins says the new system should be no reason for concern.

“The protocol will be the same. If something happens in the jail, the dispatchers will be monitoring it, they’ll call for help. They’ll call a deputy in over the radio and tell them to go to the jail or what have you,” Watkins said.

The new E-911 system will begin February 7th for Love County.

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They’re meant to keep people safe, answering calls when people are in need of help.

Vigo County Dispatchers receive thousands of calls a year. Those calls are what help 911 centers accumulate their operating funds for the year.

But recently those funds are starting to dwindle.

Rob McMullen, Director of Vigo County Central Dispatch says, “Every time we lose a land line call or land line call subscriber, that’s 75 cents that’s taken away from our operating budget.”

In 2008 Vigo County Dispatch received thirty-five thousand 911 land line calls.

Every year after that, calls continued to drop significantly.

By 2011 only nineteen-thousand calls were received.

“Over the past four years we’ve lost fifty-thousand 911 landline calls but we’ve gained that many in cell phone calls,” said McMullen.

Vigo Dispatchers say they are seeing an increase in 911 calls from cell phones.

As families look for ways to cut corners in a tough economy, McMullen says land lines are usually first to go.

Cell phone 911 calls give dispatch centers just fifty cents per call but legislation is hoping to raise 911 call prices to help dispatchers out.

“There looking at it, if everything goes through, they’re kind of talking about making it a dollar across the board. A dollar for cell phones and a dollar for land lines,” said McMullen.

Vigo County dispatcher Caleb Manly says that money not only helps them but helps the community.

“The more money we receive, the more new equipment we obviously can get and the newer equipment we can have, the faster we can get people out there and possibly save more lives,” said Manly.

Next time a person dials 911, they might stop and think where that money is actually going and is money well spent.

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The grant from the Health Foundation of Western and Central New York is supporting a range of programs, from wellness classes to home hazard evaluations.

A four-month study of 911 calls conducted earlier this year by the county’s emergency response department yielded a specific profile of people at risk for falling: The most likely person to fall in Tompkins is an 80-year-old woman on more than four medications who sustains relatively minor injuries in a fall in her own living room around 5 p.m., and requires ambulance transportation to the hospital for medical evaluation.

But even relatively minor injuries can be a problem.

“It’s one of those triggers of decline,” said Lisa Holmes, director of the County Office for the Aging. “A fall can certainly lead to a loss of independence, loss of quality of life. When you look at the health care costs of someone who falls, one fall can account for all of the funding of this grant.”

Harris said the grant is in line with her agency’s goal of keeping people in their own homes as long as possible.

Beth Harrington, EMS coordinator and assistant director of Tompkins County emergency response, said that out of 8,379 calls the county emergency dispatch center took in 2010, 1,180, or 14 percent, were because of falls. That’s the largest type of emergency calls out of 34 categories the center tabulates, she said.

Though the calls range from minor spills in which the victim simply needs help getting back on his or her feet, to serious incidents requiring immediate medical help, Harrington said falls are a serious health issue — one that is expected to worsen as the over-65 population grows.

But Harrington said she hopes those numbers will go down in the county, thanks to the $110,000 grant to Tompkins County Health Planning Council to support programs geared toward preventing falls.

Most important is building a set of programs that will outlast the grant, Harris said.

“From the very beginning … we thought of the sustainability of this,” she said. “It’s not going to be a flash-in-the-pan type thing.”

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The program was introduced at Buck Island and Simmonsville Neighborhood meetings, with a news release being published on Nov. 1. A Community Meeting was held on Nov. 5 at the Rotary Community Center building located at Oscar J. Frazier Park. The addressing plan called for correcting improper numbering, eliminating duplicate addresses and naming seven new streets and a total of 92 addresses were affected by this change.

The address post are 4 inches-by-4 inches-by-3 feet slanted posts painted Charleston green with 4-inch reflective numbers and were installed near each homeowner’s driveway making it visible for first responders to locate residents.

The town of Bluffton addressing technician sent notices out to all utility companies (electric, gas, water and sewer and the local telephone company) and the United States Post Office. Also notified were Beaufort County Assessor’s Office, Voters Registration and town of Bluffton staff.

The Beaufort County Enhanced E-911 system is operational, so it is important that each resident notify their local phone company of the corrected address as soon as possible. The next phase of the project will include addresses in the Simmonsville Road area. For additional information, please contact Theresa Thorsen at 706-4577.

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In the days that followed, Fran Rollins and Courtney Mitchell acted as communications middlemen, or middlewomen rather. Using their 800-megahertz radios, Rollins and Mitchell helped the various public safety agencies, volunteer organizations and the county Emergency Management Agency communicate with one another.

When volunteers showed up, the two 911 dispatchers were the ones to radio to other public safety workers about the offered services. When donations came in, the 911 dispatchers communicated to the other agencies what was available.

When tornado victims arrived, the 911 dispatchers notified the correct first responders and police agencies.

“We talked to everyone … It put us on the other side of things,” Rollins said. “We were actually out in the field helping people.”

911 Board Director Jerry Jackson, observing how well the impromptu field team of dispatchers worked in April, decided to create something more permanent.

Called the Telecommunicator Emergency Response Team — TERT — the group is the 911 Board’s first official field collaboration.

“Now, and in the future, should the need arise, a team of individuals trained in the area of public-safety communications can be deployed to areas affected,” Jackson said. “(They) work in concert with other agency dispatchers …”

911 officials organized the TERT team — composed of Rollins, Mitchell and another dispatcher, Gail Stephens — in August.

Since then, Rollins, Mitchell and Stephens have been busy taking training courses — some online and others sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency — about mobile communications support and incident management.

Mitchell said she and her fellow team members have brushed up on their skills for setting up telephone lines, patching radios and on protocol for supporting public safety dispatchers during emergencies.

Now, the three operators said they are ready to assist any agency in the county that has any sort of communications need or emergency — whether that emergency is weather-related or caused by a serious crime or related to some other sort of threat.

“We’ve not been deployed as of yet,” Rollins said from the 911 Board’s Jacksonville office Wednesday. “That’s good and bad, I guess.”

All three of the TERT members are full-time employees at the 911 Board as operators, said Lynn Wright, the 911 manager of operations.

Wright said the training for the TERT team was paid for out of the board’s annual training budget.

911 officials originally hoped the TERT team would be a county-wide effort, with dispatchers from every public safety agency participating in the advanced training. But so far, that idea has not generated much interest, Wright said.

For now, 911 officials simply want to get the word out about the team’s creation so agencies across the county know the service is available to them.

“They’re not replacing dispatchers at other agencies,” Wright said. “They’re there merely to enhance communication.”

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The new process is expected to work like this: 9-1-1 dispatchers would do a quick screen to make sure the caller isn’t an immediate threat to themselves or others, and then transfer the caller to Multnomah County’s Mental Health Call Center, a crisis line staffed by 13 mental health professionals.

“We’re definitely breaking some new ground here,” said Heeseung Kang,the call center’s supervisor. “This is why we’re here. Our mission is to try to catch these people.”

Recognizing that sending police officers to deal with people having a psychotic episode can sometimes end tragically and has on multiple occasions in Portland, representatives of the mental health community, Portland police and Multnomah County officials started to brainstorm solutions over the past year.

Portland’s group, called SaferPdx, studied why people in mental health crisis often end up in police custody. They learned that crucial information wasn’t being shared between law enforcement, mental health and emergency dispatch systems. A patient often isn’t able to reach a doctor or counselor at the time of the crisis, and the police are being used by default as transportation to crisis care.

“We work in silos, and it’s not an efficient thing to do,” said Dr. Maggie Bennington-Davis, Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare’s chief operations and medical officer.

In 2010, Portland officers took 1,100 people into protective custody, Chief Mike Reese said. He envisions callers in mental health crisis who have no weapons and are not a threat being transferred to the county call center, without a police response.

“Sometimes just showing up in uniform can exacerbate things,” Reese said.

Police, dispatchers and county crisis line call takers are developing protocol on the call transfers. They’re not sure yet how many calls will be transferred from 911 to the call center, but the center will increase staff at first to handle an expected rise.

“It’s going to increase work for the crisis line” Reese said, “but again I think those are the folks more appropriate to deal with some of these issues…Everybody agrees this is a better model for us, and it’s the right thing to do.”

“Multnomah County Crisis Line, this is Mark,” answers Mark Cameron, a county call taker.

The voice on the other end of the line is frantic.

“I don’t know. These voices! These voices have control of me. I might have to go to the hospital,” the caller yells. “No, I can’t deal with this!”

“OK, well I’m glad you called,” Cameron tells the caller, addressing her by her first name. “Are you currently in services anywhere?”

“Can I get your last name to see if we have any information that will help us help you?”

As Cameron types the woman’s name into the call center’s database, he keeps talking, trying to calm her, suggesting she take a few deep breaths.

“Julia, Julia, I can hear a lot of anxiety and stress. Find yourself. Focus on your breath. It gets your mind off catastrophic thinking, and it helps calm you.”

“When it’s been difficult, what has been helpful to you?” he asks.

“I need help. I need help. Maybe Project Respond. I need to talk to someone,” the caller says.

Cameron learns that the caller has a phone appointment at 4 p.m. with her therapist. He gets her talking, now more calmly, out of her anxious state.

“That’s good,” Cameron said. “What are you going to do between now and then? He encourages her to connect with somebody close to her. She says she’ll visit a friend.

“I might be calling you guys back,” the caller says.

“Good,” Cameron answers. “We’re here.”

Cameron was a cartographer for the Bureau of Land Management, left to become a Jesuit priest, but instead lived in a community with developmentally-disabled people and went back to school for a master’s degree in social work. He started as a crisis call taker in February 2006.

“It’s an important job,” he said. “You got to be quick to think, have empathy, develop rapport with people in challenging situations.”

The call center stands out from other crisis lines in the state in that the call takers are not volunteers, but full-time staff who all hold master’s degrees with clinical experience.

“We’re dealing with the most vulnerable,” Kang said.

During a 12-month period between October 2010 and October 2011, the county call center answered 57,000 calls. At their fingertips is an immense database that includes records from Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare and Project Respond so they can determine if the caller has a case worker, has been treated in the past and to recommend the most appropriate care.

“I think it’s very appropriate as long as the people who are transferred to the crisis line are then able to get immediate help before it does escalate,” said Terri Walker, president of the Multnomah County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Kang is working with Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Communications and Portland police to develop rules governing how the transfer of calls should occur. They’re creating protocol for what dispatch calls a “warm transfer” –requiring the 9-1-1 dispatcher to stay on the line until the caller is connected to a mental health call taker and conversation proceeds before dispatch disconnects.

As long as there’s no immediate threat of danger, crisis line call takers are recommending dispatch share certain details right away when transferring a call, such as the caller’s name, demographic, location, and their primary concern or request.

“If someone is in crisis, we want to be very careful we don’t lose them. We’re trying to make sure we do it rapidly and appropriately, and get correct training for folks,” said Laura Wolfe, a spokeswoman for Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Communications that runs the 9-1-1 dispatch for the county.

The call center can share information about a caller with police or dispatch, only in situations where it’s necessary “to avert a health or safety risk.” Right now, the crisis line transfers one to two calls a week to 911, if they deem there’s an emergency.

Crisis line call takers may recommend callers visit the county’s urgent walk-in clinic, or they may call Project Respond to send out a crisis worker after hours, make contact with a case worker to do follow-up care, or arrange transportation – whether it’s a cab or a special service – to take the caller to a clinic or a provider.

Kang expects the new system of transferring more mental health-related calls to her staff will help reduce negative outcomes: whether its psychological trauma, physical injury or death from unnecessary contact with police, or wrongful incarcerations of people with mental illness who often need help not punishment. She expects it will also allow 911 dispatch and police to focus on “actual crimes” and dangers.

“It just seemed to make sense,” Kang said.

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Sponsored by the Governmental Services and Administration Committee, the Domestic Animal Registry Law would create an online registry that identifies individuals residing in Ulster County convicted of domestic animal abuse crimes and prevents them from adopting, purchasing or “otherwise obtaining domestic animals from any domestic animal shelter, pet seller, or other person or entity involved in the exchange of domestic animals by adoption, sale, or other means.”

Under the proposed law, a crime would include the violation of any provision of Article 26 of the NYS Agriculture Markets Law, sexual misconduct with an animal, harming a service domestic animal, killing or injuring a police animal, or harming an animal trained to aid a person with a disability.

Under the proposed law, perpetrators would be placed on the registry for life after their second conviction and imposed penalties would include an annual $100 fee, payable to the Ulster County Sheriff, whose department is charged with the law’s enforcement. In addition, any animal abuse offender who fails to register will be charged with a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year’s incarceration and a $1,000 fine for each day he/she fails to register.

Also, any pet seller that violates the law by selling a pet to a registered abuser will face a $2,500 fine.

Town of Rochester Supervisor Carl Chipman, who worked with the committee to help draft the proposed legislation, spoke passionately in favor of the law, noting that people who abuse animals are often domestic abusers, as well. Indicating a strong correlation between animal cruelty and domestic violence, Chipman cited a New Jersey study that places that connection at 83 percent.

In September, Albany County became the third county in the United States to pass a similar registry law for perpetrators of animal abuse. Chipman said there is a “tremendous need” for the “self-sustaining” law, citing a nearly 100 percent rate of recidivism in animal abuse cases.

Legislator Brian Shapiro, D-Woodstock, executive director of the county’s SPCA, recused himself from Tuesday’s vote, and later claimed that the law, as written, is flawed. Shapiro said he doesn’t support the law because it fails to assign degree of abuse, and noted the difference between people who hoard or neglect pets and those who purposely injure pets. He also said that the SPCA, which receives no funding from the county, is unable to properly enforce such a law, and worried that it focuses on punishment “after the fact,” but not on prevention.

During the session, Legislator Terry Bernardo, R-Accord, offered an amendment to the resolution that includes the $100 annual fine be split three ways, between the Ulster County Sheriff’s Department, the SPCA and the District Attorney’s Office.

A public hearing on the proposed law is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 29, at 7 p.m. at the Ulster County office building.

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