By Astrid Galvan, Albuquerque Journal
Original publication date: June 4, 2011

When the emergency dispatch system that connects Albuquerque police to the public crashes, it has many ramifications.

Lately, the system has been crashing quite a bit – four times this year alone, according to APD.

The instability not only makes life more difficult, officers say, it makes it more dangerous. For example, officers in the field can’t run license plates or warrant checks when stopping an person. And if an officer needs backup, the dispatcher must look through hand-written cards to find the nearest officers and then dispatch them with minimal information.

The department has requested $276,311 to upgrade the software system that runs the Computer-Aided Dispatch System. The City Council has received but not voted on the request.

Officials say the upgrades are overdue.

“The current issues with CADS stem from the fact that the system is still running on the original hardware pur- chased from 2005-2007, which is at the end or past the end of its life-cycle,” APD technology manager Clint Hubbard said in an email to the Journal.

Hubbard said two of the four system breakdowns this year were caused by electrical problems. He said the failures are not alarming but do concern him.

System crashes can last several hours, during which emergency dispatchers and police cannot access or enter information through computers. Instead, 911 operators hand-write information on cards and hand them to dispatchers, who then pass the information to officers in the field by radio.

Hubbard says this can slow down police response, but not significantly.

But for officers out on the street, a CADS crash can pose serious dangers, police union Vice President Felipe Garcia said.

Garcia said that when CADS is down, officers cannot run license plate or warrants checks, a basic function officers use almost every time they encounter a person to make sure they are not dealing with someone dangerous. It also makes updating officers and dispatchers more difficult.

“Let’s say you’re sending me to a domestic violence call, and you have to tell me what’s going on and continually updating me on my call. Well, I need to either try to write down or try to have photographic memory and remember everything,” Garcia said.

“It also creates an officer safety issue if I’m dealing with an individual who’s being combative.”

For example, if an officer encounters a dangerous person and needs backup, it could take longer to get information out to officers because the only information available is on a small card, which has to be pulled from a stack of other cards and then read to each officer individually. With CAD, one dispatcher can send out that information to multiple officers at the same time. What should be instant communication becomes a drawn out process reminiscent of life before computers.

“You can imagine how that would hamper a patrol officer’s ability to do his job out on the field,” Garcia said. “It’s just a disaster.”

Still, Hubbard said everyone who deals with the system, from the technology staff to dispatchers, works hard to resolve problems as quickly as possible.

“Our 911 operators and dispatchers never missed a beat when we experienced failures this past year. We don’t want failure to happen, but we are prepared when it does,” Hubbard said.

If the department is granted funding for the upgrade, the system will be significantly more efficient, Hubbard said.

The upgrade will give officers voice-to-text capabilities, meaning officers will be able to tell their computer information and it will type it for them, eliminating the need to type while driving, which officers often do.

The upgrade will also basically revamp the system’s architecture, making it faster and more reliable. It will also provide enhanced vehicle mapping capabilities and faster police report processing, Hubbard said.

For now, workers have begun replacing some network equipment and upgrading the database server memory, which Hubbard hopes will alleviate network problems.

Garcia said he welcomes the system upgrade if it will fix problems.

“We want our officers out there to be able to have access to as much information as they can, to make their shifts safer not just for them but for the citizens of Albuquerque,” Garcia said. 

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