911 Center Opens In Rockford

Rockford, Illinois- After six delays and 14 months of construction, the new Winnebago County call center is finally open. The center on North Main Street replaces the old one in Loves Park. "We switched over at six o`clock this morning and things went quite smoothly. We had a few minor bumps in the road, but those are being worked on, " says Lt. Brad Fitz of the Winnebago County Sherriffs Department. At least fifteen people were working at the center this morning, but generally there will be 5 a day, plus a sergeant supervisor. The center is open 24 hours a day. "This is a brand new center for us. These are new employees that we hired and spent a lot of time training so it was something new to them. They had experience in dispatching with other agencies, but this is a first for us," says Fitz. There are more than just new employees at the center. It is also full of new technology. "The system is quicker than what our old system was," says Fitz. Its complete with computer aided dispatching (CAD), which is a mapping program that assists with finding the location of a call, a radio system called Motorola Centra-Com Elite and a cell phone GPS tracking system. "The cell phone providers, they`ll be able to start testing their equipment to make sure that we`re getting the proper information from them. So there may be some cell phone providers in the county that will provide us with the location," says Fitz. Things seem to be running smoothly now, although not everyone was calm at 6 a.m. when the phones first turned on. "Now that they`ve had a couple hours receiving calls dispatching our units to calls, I think that the anxiety is wearing off and they`re getting back to a nice comfort level," says Fitz. The center cost between $10 million and $11 million to complete.