Officials with the city’s Office of Emergency and Management Communications confirmed that its state-of-the-art computer aided dispatch system, which routes emergency calls to police officers in the field unexpectedly crashed late Monday night.
Technicians were at the OEMC’s Near West Side facility this morning trying to repair the system, but city officials still hadn’t determined what caused the system crash, nor provided a time frame for when it would be repaired.
“The exact cause remains to be determined,” said Delores Robinson, a spokesman for the OEMC.
In the meanwhile, dispatchers were manually directing officers to emergency calls through their radios, Robinson said.
Despite the abruptness of the system failure, service for emergency calls haven’t been impacted, she said.
“The problem has not had an impact on response times at all. We’re getting all calls to the officers, assisting them through radio for now,” Robinson said.
Recently, Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said he plans to move ahead with a plan to work with the OEMC cut the number of calls cops answer by midsummer so that his officers can focus on their beats rather than chasing frivolous 911 calls.
The alternate plan includes a system that allow police sergeants to prioritize calls before they go to an officer. Eliminating some calls from that stack of duties would be the next step.
