{"id":13184,"date":"2016-02-26T16:35:48","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T16:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=13184"},"modified":"2016-02-26T20:59:34","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T20:59:34","slug":"changes-come-to-911-call-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=13184","title":{"rendered":"Changes come to 911 call center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amarillo put a lot of effort — and money — into modernizing and streamlining its emergency services response center.<\/p>\n

City officials touted it as more efficient and customer-friendly. The city remodeled and outfitted an existing downtown office complex and then launched the center that combines police, fire and medical services calls.<\/p>\n

Then the city’s interim city manager, Terry Childers, placed a call to the center the other day to report a stolen brief case from the hotel where he was staying after returning to Amarillo on a flight from Dallas. The dispatcher responded according to a set protocol that requires her to ask a set of questions. Childers became agitated and told the dispatcher that she didn’t “know who she is dealing with”; he made that assertion even after introducing himself to the dispatcher as the city manager, which the dispatcher seemed to understand clearly.<\/p>\n

The city has initiated some changes in the dispatch center operations. It now\u00a0assigns police officers and firefighters to help oversee phone center operations. It’s no longer a civilian-only operation.<\/p>\n

This is all fine.<\/p>\n

But I’m wondering: Was there a serious concern among the community about response times? Has the problem — if one existed — been festering since the call center opened? Or are these changes the result of a single phone call by one highly placed individual?<\/p>\n

I’ve listened to the audio recording of Childers’ phone call. To my ears, it sounded as though the dispatcher acted with cool professionalism. I understand that the police did arrive in a timely fashion, although I’m not sure that the cops “shut down” the hotel to search for Childers’ missing brief case, as Childers had demanded.<\/em><\/p>\n

I hope for all the world <\/a>that we aren’t witnessing an abuse of authority.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the city should conduct a thorough public airing of the complaints and concerns that allegedly have arisen from the new dispatch center. Is there a record of gripes from citizens? If there is, do those complaints rise to a level that compels a change in the way the city responds to these emergencies?<\/p>\n

Let’s hear it. All of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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Amarillo put a lot of effort — and money — into modernizing and streamlining its emergency services response center. City officials touted it as more efficient and customer-friendly. The city remodeled and outfitted an existing downtown office complex and then launched the center that combines police, fire and medical services calls. Then the city’s interim … Continue reading Changes come to 911 call center<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[95,292,6004,6005,324],"class_list":["post-13184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-95","tag-amarillo-city-manager","tag-amarillo-emergency-call-center","tag-amarillo-fd","tag-amarillo-pd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13184"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13193,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13184\/revisions\/13193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}