FY2012 Arlington Fire Department Annual Report FY 2012 | Page 50

Newsletter Title Page 50 The 911 Dispatch Center serves as the entry point for all calls for emergency services, including Fire, Police, and ambulance. Dispatch Services is committed to providing cost-effective, prompt, and accurate processing of emergency and nonemergency calls for service. Call takers are trained to handle emergency calls for service for Police and Fire, then receive additional training in CPR and Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD) to process medical calls for service. This additional training enables call takers to provide life saving pre-arrival instructions while emergency responders are en route. Bilingual employees fluent in Spanish and Vietnamese are available for interpretation. Arlington 911 also subscribes to the AT&T Language Line, which can translate over 140 languages. Each call take station is equipped with Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) equipment and employees are trained to take calls from hearing impaired callers. At the end of 2011, Intergraph was selected as our new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) and mobile software system. Over this past year, the CAD core team, along with a core mobile team, worked diligently to configure our new system. CAD is scheduled to be operational in March 2013. In fiscal 2012, the Dispatch Center processed 432,806 incoming calls; dispatched 373,890 Police calls; 37,386 Fire calls; and 41,923 ambulance calls. In addition to the calls for service, Dispatch responded to 3,168 open records requests by citizens and the District Attorney‘s Office. Dispatch Services was awarded its initial accreditation in July 2004 from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). There are 218 mandatory and other-than-mandatory standards. Agencies must comply with all mandatory standards and 80% of the otherthan-mandatory standards and must reaccredit every three years. During the re-accreditation process in 2010, Arlington received the Tri-Arc Award, which is presented to agencies that have concurrent CALEA Accreditation for their law enforcement, public safety training, and public safety communications agencies. In 2013, the CALEA Commission will be scheduling the next on-site review of standards for July or August with the award conference occurring in November. Patty Worley was selected as the Advisory Commission on State Emergency Communications (ACSEC) Silent Hero for Arlington in 2012 DUTY / HONOR Working Together to Make Arlington Better. / COMPASSION 50 / EXCELLENCE