Macon, Georgia to Switch to Upgraded 911 System

Macon 911 officials plan next week to switch to a more advanced dispatching system that can pinpoint the location of incoming cellular calls to within 100 feet.

The new system also comes with advanced mapping capabilities that will allow dispatchers to pinpoint addresses on a computer-generated map and pull up call histories on those addresses.

The history feature won't include calls from previous years. Starting Wednesday, however, if there have been five burglaries at a location and a sixth is reported that information will pop up on a dispatch screen, according to Macon Police Lt. Dominick Andrews, who manages the 911 center on First Street. All Bibb 911 calls come to the center first before being dispatched to police, fire and the sheriff's departments as well as ambulance services.

Eventually, the historical data will also be downloaded to patrol car laptops, but that may take a few more weeks, said Erica Jackson, the police department's director of management services.

"We're going to baby-step this," Jackson said of the changes.

Currently, the system can give addresses for calls coming in from land lines only.

The new upgrades will cost the 911 center an estimated $1.4 million, which includes new hardware and software, a "messaging switch" that will eventually allow data transfers to police cars and new, more ergonomically designed desks for dispatchers, Andrews and Jackson said.

The Bibb County Sheriff's Office, which operates its own radio room, has made similar upgrades. The sheriff's office spent about $306,000 on new equipment last year in addition to the radio room's annual budget of $639,000, sheriff's office spokesman Capt. David Davis has said previously. The 911 center takes all 911 calls, but only dispatches for the Macon-Bibb County Fire Department and the city police. Sheriff's and ambulance calls are farmed out to the sheriff's radio room or the county's two ambulance services.

County commissioners, particularly Chairman Charles Bishop, have discussed combining the city-run 911 center and the sheriff's radio room to save money, but so far they remain separate.

Ben Hinson, who owns Middle Georgia Ambulance Service, expressed some concern over the switch, but in general he said he expects a successful transition. There will probably be some glitches but it will not impede response, he said.

"If the real fancy stuff breaks, we can get out the old dial telephones," he said.

Call center employees will each receive about eight hours of training on the new system, said Michael Logan, who was handling the training this week for Larimore Associates, which provided the new, customized software. During the process Logan said 911 employees discovered a handful of bugs, which were corrected. Next week, as the system goes live, Larimore will have about five technicians at the center to help employees operate the system, which is "very different" from the current one, Logan said.

Logan also plans to make a "cheat sheet" to help operators negotiate the numerous computer menus, he said.

"You'll get a little hectic at first, but eventually you'll catch it," Logan told 911 operators this week during a training session.