Dispatch moves, Troop B still in North Canaan

NORTH CANAAN — The senior command staff of the Connecticut State Police held a meeting Wednesday, April 4, at Troop L in Litchfield to announce that consolidation of dispatch services for troops A, B and L has begun.The head of the state police, Col. Danny Stebbins, reiterated there are no plans to shut down Troop B or reduce its staff.The meeting was attended by Stebbins, Lt. David Rice, who is the commander of the Troop B barracks in North Canaan, and other senior police officials. Three selectmen, none from the Region One towns, attended as did many representatives of state and local newspapers and television stations.There has been widespread concern that the state police actually are planning to shut down operations at Troop B. Stebbins repeated several times and in several ways that Troop B will maintain its current staff and that the plan to consolidate dispatch operations for the three troops is just that: a plan to consolidate dispatch operations for the three troops.He handed out a four-page document that explains how the plan is being put into effect and what the advantages will be. He stressed that right now each of the three troops is required to have a uniformed officer at the desk at all times in addition to the troop’s dispatcher. Under the new plan, no state troopers will be “tied to the desk.”“Troopers are a very valuable commodity and we want to have as many of them on patrol as possible,” Stebbins said. Instead of having two people on dispatch at the three troops at all times, there will now be six dispatch consoles at Troop L that will handle all calls for the three troops. They will be monitored by civilian dispatchers, as opposed to “sworn personnel” who earn higher salaries because they are hazardous duty officers (who also earn hazardous duty pensions). Rather than reducing the amount of public safety staff, he said, it will increase it. The troopers who had formerly been required to remain at the desk at all times will now be free to go out on patrol or offer support to other troopers.“Troopers at the troop can now be dispatched and sent out,” Stebbins said. “Whereas before, if they were assigned to the desk, they couldn’t leave. “All the troopers who work at Troop B will remain there,” he said. “Troops A and B will no longer have desk operations. This gives us the option of having an additional trooper to respond to calls or act as backup. So this should improve trooper response. One person who had been tied to the desk is no longer tied to the desk. It gives us more flexibility and one additional person.”The new dispatch configuration also offers opportunities for career advancement to the dispatchers, he said. Formerly, there was no room for promotion for dispatchers. Now, he said, each six-person shift will have a senior dispatcher. Some Northwest Corner residents and police officers had worried that troopers would have to go down to Troop L to process people after an arrest. Stebbins said that short stays and processing of prisoners will remain at Troops A and B. “We do not process prisoners well,” he said. There are holding cells at each troop but the police barracks are not designed for keeping prisoners. “The prisoners eat food [ordered in] from local restaurants. They can’t leave their cells, there is no opportunity for them to go outside or get any exercise.”Under the new plan, prisoners will be picked up and transferred within 45 minutes of being processed. One of the selectmen at the meeting asked about the troops being locked at night and on weekends, so they can no longer provide a safe haven for people from the area.Stebbins said there will be a phone at each troop that people can use to call for aid. There are two lines; one is for routine calls, the other is for 911 emergency calls. However, he said that in his career in law enforcement people rarely use the troops as safe havens.“The safe haven routine isn’t something we see. Most people pick up the phone from where they are and dial 911,” he said.Lt. Rice will remain the commander of Troop B, Stebbins said, and he will have discretion as to how his troopers will be used. Troopers will still come to Troop B for their shift change roll calls — they will not have to go to Troop L.Stebbins also discussed the financial advantages of the consolidation of dispatch. The main costs, he said, are in the purchase of the four new dispatch consoles and IT costs such as new phone lines. The savings will come from not having a sworn officer who is earning hazardous duty pay sitting at a desk or by the phone. He said there will also be greater efficiency in terms of handling calls. At any given moment, one troop might be receiving an overwhelming number of calls while another troop might be quiet. Under the old system, there was no sharing of the workload. With the six dispatchers all in one place and answering all the calls together, there won’t be any times when, for example, two dispatchers might be doing nothing while four others have more work than they can handle.At Troop B, he said, there were two people on dispatch at all times but there weren’t enough calls to justify even one full-time equivalent employee. In 2011, according to the fact sheet handed out at the meeting, Troop B answered 6,041 calls, Troop L answered 8,386 calls and Troop A answered 83,874 calls.“We want to meet the federal standards for how fast we answer those phones,”Stebbins said. “We can have more people answering the phones now.”For residents in the southern portion of the Troop B coverage area, he said, there is an added benefit. If a call comes in for aid from, for example, Goshen, a trooper can be sent from Troop L, which is closer to the town than the barracks in North Canaan and can theoretically answer the call more quickly.Stebbins said all the troops across the state will be consolidating their dispatch services. Troops A, B and L were chosen as the first to be merged because they are not as busy as the troops in some of the other districts. The State Police Western District There are 12 state police troops in Connecticut, each of which covers multiple towns. Troop B, which has its barracks in North Canaan, covers the towns of Salisbury, Sharon, North Canaan, Canaan (Falls Village), Cornwall, Norfolk, Goshen, Colebrook, Winchester (which includes Winsted), Torrington (which also has its own municipal police), Hartford, Barkhamsted and New Hartford.Troop L, which has its barracks in Litchfield, covers the towns of Kent, Warren, Washington, Litchfield, Morris, Bethlehem, Woodbury, Thomaston, Watertown, Harwinton, Plymouth, Burlington, Bristol and Canton. Troop A, which has its headquarters in Southbury, covers the towns of New Milford, Sherman, New Fairfield, Danbury, Ridgefield, Bridgewater, Brookfield, Bethel, Redding, Newtown, Southbury, Roxbury, Oxford, Middlebury, Waterbury and Wolcott. These three troops together are known as the State Police Western District.