spin_the_wheel

"STICK IT, REAL MEN DON"T NEED BUCKETS"

Greetings all, I am from Long Island, Nassau County I have a few Westchester questions I will be posting. First off great site, one of the best I have seen dedicated to an area or county. OK, I posted this question on a scanning message board and got a some answers but thought I would post here as well and get some other points of view. The Ossining PD dispatch the FD with volunteer dispatchers taking over at the HQ building on all alarms...correct? On the other site it was brought up that the PD do a marginal job at best, why doesnt Ossining go to County control? Some of the reasons why they wont were $$$$, in Nassau it is a free service to switch over to county. There may be some start up costs but that would be a 1 time thing. Another was that 60 control dispatchers did not know the area. With a proper CAD system that should not be a concern. Also xmitter towers would not reach Ossining well as they are somewhat in a "hole" or "valley" in geograhphy to the rest of the county. Again great site and I hope to see some feed back on this topic.

Nassau County is somewhat in the same boat as Westchester but we have nowhere near the amount of PSAP's. For the most part ANY fire or ems run where FD is primary is transfered into County Fire, FIRECOM. They determine the correct fire district/area and call the local dispatcher. The new trend now is for Firecom to tone out the call once then give it to the local dispatcher if it is 911 originated and not a department that is done fully by county. Saving time as they are now on the air instead of on the phone giving the call away. One exception is Lynbrook FD. If the call come to the PD first (which it does most of the time, they are PSAP) the PD tones it out then gives it to county for the remainder of the alarm. Any other alarms while they are out on the first call PD will call Firecom for them to put the call out. Some very large and busy (over 2000 alarms a year) departments have given up PD dispatch in favor of Firecom in the last 10-15 years, it takes time but I think as the FD's are getting busier they see that PD cannot handle the workload, as most of the time it's 1 dispatcher on the police side.