By Sean Fogarty, Courier Staff Writer:
After analyzing
hours of tapes of dispatch calls, Police Chief James DiCarlo and a committee
formed to investigate the issue have determined there to be no inadequacies in
the performance of North Haven’s dispatch
center, as had been alleged in a letter by firefighter’s union President Jeff
Obier.
Obier sent the
three-paragraph letter citing flaws in the dispatchers’ performance to Fire
Chief Vincent Landisio, First Selectman Janet McCarty, and DiCarlo on Sept. 8.
DiCarlo said the
letter was “very strongly worded and included a lot of serious allegations.”
Neither Obier nor
Landisio returned calls for comment.
According to
DiCarlo, after receiving the letter, he formed a committee composed of
Landisio, Police Deputy Chief Thomas McLoughlin, and Deputy Fire Chief Frank
Gersz. The men went through tapes of calls at random to determine if the
allegations in the letter, which included lack of courtesy on the part of
dispatchers, lack of pertinent information being given to firefighters from
dispatchers regarding the conditions on the scene to which they were heading,
and lack of urgency on behalf of the dispatchers.
“It’s our duty to
investigate it, which I feel we did pretty thoroughly,” said DiCarlo.
The committee
reviewed not only the tapes of the incoming calls, but also the radio
communications during the response.
“Say someone calls
and says their nine-year-old fell out of the tree,” said DiCarlo. “We listen to
the entire dispatching, which takes us to a whole different scenario. We listen
to radio transmissions, we send a police car, we listen to every call until the
incident is over. When we listen to one call, we listen to 15 to 20
conversations, some on the phone, some on the radio.”
DiCarlo said that,
in listening to these tapes and communications, he and the committee found
“just the opposite” of the claimed “unprofessional” behavior.
“When we examined
our records,” said DiCarlo, “we didn’t see these glaring flaws as put in the
letter and we will work to fix what isn’t quite right.
“There will always
be some difficulties because of the nature of what we do,” the chief continued.
“When a 911 call comes in for a major incident, it isn’t just one 911 call, you
end up with 15 or 16, all of which have to be answered.”
DiCarlo and North
Haven’s four dispatchers recently had a round-table discussion regarding ways
to improve services. “We’re all working together to make sure it’s working
right,” said DiCarlo