I don't believe this has been brought up in this forum
yet, Hennepin County Sheriff Communications offered to
take over 911 & Public Safety Dispatching at no-cost
to any interested city within the county.
[snip]
A huge, more subtle factor in favor of localised dispatching is that the telecommunicators (911 operators) and especially the dispatchers have years of experience taking calls in Minneapolis and therefore have developed their own internal knowledge bank of cross streets, landmarks, and other "hints" that only someone intimitely familiar with the city would know - and be critical in interpreting a hysterical 911 caller. Simple things like knowing the importance of "North" and "South" in an address, or "Grand Ave" vs "Grant St", or recognizing immediately where "Old Colony" or "that big gas station on Washington by the freeway" is.
Another factor that would favor local dispatch is the possibility that a large amount of retraining would need to be done to learn new communication protocols. I would have to guess the public safety departments (police, fire, etc.) involved are aware of this, as are citizens who spend any time listening to dispatch calls on radio scanners.
It was obvious while recently listening to St. Paul police dispatch versus for example West St. Paul or Eagan, that the verbal protocol used was distinctly different. Some departments use the so-called "10" codes. Others do not. Due to the nature of the radio calls, a clearly-defined shorthand must be used. It was also clear that the dispatcher at St. Paul knew most of the officers in the field by name, if not personally, which aided her dispatch efforts.
It is not hard to imagine the Minneapolis police having one set of well-known, long-used protocols that are divergently different from Hennepin County's. If the county were to take on the dispatch job, it seems all Minneapolis officers would need to re-learn some of their communication protocol.
Chris Johnson Fulton
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