MENTOR, Ohio — Ohio is requiring all counties to transition to Next Gen 911, a system designed to eliminate the transfer of emergency calls between dispatch centers.
Currently, all cellular 911 calls in Lake County are routed to the Lake County Sheriff's Office Central Communications Center, about 90,000 emergency calls every year. That center dispatches for 20 police and fire departments in the county. For other cities with their own dispatch centers, calls are transferred. There are 8 dispatch centers in Lake County, including one in Wickliffe.
The new technology routes cell phone 911 calls directly to the city where the caller is located.
"The whole idea is to eliminate transfers. Whoever you talk to is who you’re going to give the information to, that’s whose going to send the police, fire or EMS to the call, " said Captain Dan Bachnicki, Lake County Sheriff’s Office Central Communications Center.
There are 8 dispatch centers in Lake County, including one in Wickliffe.
Wickliffe handles more than 20,000 emergency calls every year. The city's police chief is committed to maintaining local control of its dispatch operations.
"I’ll do whatever it takes to keep our dispatch center. As long as I'm the chief here, we will have a dispatch center here because it is vitally important, I think, to the citizens of Wickliffe to have their own dispatch center," said Chief John Bush.
The transition will come with added costs for cities like Wickliffe. State law requires any dispatch center to have one dispatcher plus a rollover system for backup with another agency. Under the new system, Lake County is going a step further, requiring each dispatch center to have two dispatchers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
"The other 87 counties did not make that rule, so Lake County is the only county in the entire state that made that rule," said Joe Thompson, Wickliffe Police Department.
Lake County Commissioner Morgan McIntosh serves on the county's committee overseeing the 911 transition. McIntosh said safety and consistency are the top priorities. The new system allows callers to text and send pictures to 911 centers.
"My opinion, it's only a matter of time before that technology can overwhelm manpower," McIntosh said.
"The consensus on the committee was that we wanted the same service from one end of Lake County to the other," McIntosh said.
State law requires every county to transition to the Next Gen 911 system. Currently, 10 counties are using the new system. Lake County does not have a date for the transition to the new system.
