By Glenn Smith, The Post and Courier
Original publication date: June 26, 2011

Folly Beach, S.C. – Paul Chrysostom lives and works right across the street from police headquarters in City Hall. For years, that meant quick access to an officer if he reported noise problems, drunk drivers or an emergency of some sort.

If he needs to hail a cop these days, however, Chrysostom has to call a Charleston County dispatcher some 18 miles away in North Charleston. More often than not, he said, he will then have to answer a long battery of questions from a person who has almost zero familiarity with this island community.

“It’s a real hassle,” Chrysostom said, shaking his head outside his Center Street T-shirt shop. “I called about a drunk driver the other day. By the time they went through all their questions, I said ‘Forget it. The guy already got in his car and drove off.’ ”

Experiences like this are causing island leaders to consider pulling out of the county’s consolidated dispatch system, a critical nerve center designed to streamline and improve emergency communications. Folly was one of the first communities to place its police and fire dispatching with the 911 center last year, but now some islanders say the operation is just too bureaucratic and distant to fit this small city’s needs.

“It was a lot easier when we were dealing with people who knew the island,” said Omar Colon, owner of Bert’s Market, Folly’s only general store. “This is all about communication, and it just doesn’t work.”

Earlier this month, City Council was scheduled to consider a proposed ordinance to sever Folly’s ties with the dispatch center, citing numerous complaints from the public and emergency personnel. The resolution stated that the system had proved ineffective, inefficient and had placed citizens and public safety officers at risk.

City leaders declined to discuss specific incidents that put people at risk, and council ultimately yanked the proposal from its agenda to give county officials more time to address their concerns. But the measure is due back before council on Tuesday, and no one is sure how the issue will shake out.

“People are used to having a personal, personable service, and when you get into a big system things are a little different,” Mayor Tim Goodwin said. “We just have to decide whether its a good fit for us or not.”

A Change of Style
The debate pits modern technology and public safety techniques against a free-

living shoreline community that has its own way of doing things. It’s a city where surfboards outnumber suits, dread is more a hairstyle than a state of mind and beer for breakfast hardly draws a glance. The island has its unique rhythms, and many feel the county’s system is messing with that cadence.

Jim Lake, director of the dispatch center, said the county doesn’t want to lose Folly and is willing to work with locals to improve the situation. The county has even offered to have dispatchers ride along with public safety officers to better familiarize them with the island. But there is little chance that dispatchers serving a county of 350,000 people can know every intimate detail of Folly and its people, he said.

“We just cannot provide that level of customer service to them,” he said. “I understand that they want that small sense of community, but we can’t operate like that. We are covering the entire county.”

Until March of last year, the city had its own dispatchers who knew most of the locals and all of the landmarks. If someone called up and requested some help down by “the hotel,” for instance, the dispatchers knew just where to send them. A non-emergency phone line let people quickly pass on tips about stray dogs, tipsy revelers and other nuisance issues.

That changed when Folly Beach joined the county and other local agencies as an early partner in the consolidated 911 center. The idea is to have all police, fire, EMS and rescue operations routed from the same source to create a quicker, more efficient and professional response. Several agencies are using the system and most others are expected to come on board next year when the county opens its new operations center.

Folly Beach pays $265,000 annually to be part of the system, roughly the same amount it spent to operate its own dispatching center, officials said.

Knowing the Landscape
The problem, residents said, is that county dispatchers don’t seem to know where anything is, and they’re always insisting on getting a specific address for each call. That’s problematic in a small community where people know things by landmarks and don’t pay much attention to street numbers, they said.

Resident Chris Marley said he endured a frustrating conversation with a dispatcher a few months back when he tried to report an unfamiliar car on his street that he thought might be abandoned or stolen. He kept telling the dispatcher that it was on the corner of Lempsis Lane and West Hudson Avenue. She kept asking for a specific address. And around and around they went, he said.

Marley said he finally put down the phone and walked to the police station to file a report in person.

Residents said dispatchers also try to keep them on the line for even the most routine calls, peppering them with questions. Are there weapons present? Are you in a safe place? Do you have descriptions of the people involved?

“It’s too hectic,” said Perry Ferrell, a prep cook who has lived on Folly Beach for seven years. “You feel like saying ‘Just get over here and you’ll learn everything you need to know.’ ”

Lake said dispatchers are simply following their training and internationally recognized 911 protocols designed to ensure the safety of the caller and the personnel responding to the scene. That’s not going to change, he said.

Dispatchers also are taught to get a specific address, if possible, but technology is readily available to help them pinpoint locations by cross-streets and business names if an address isn’t available. He said he’s seen nothing to indicate response times have suffered. In fact, the average dispatch time for police calls on the island is just over a minute, he said.

Still, it is ultimately up to Folly to decide what course it needs to follow. And for this island town, that path is never easy to predict.

“You know what they say,” Marley said. “There is the United States, there is South Carolina and then there is Folly Beach.” 

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