Sources Say Invalid Address Delayed Ambulance To Officer's Aid
Dallas PD, Fire Rescue To Review Dispatch System On Monday
CBS 11 News has learned the Dallas Police Department and Dallas Fire Rescue are conducting an internal review after a mix-up in the dispatching of emergency crews to the scene where Sr. Cpl. Victor Lozada died in a motorcycle crash on Friday.
Sources say the city's computerized dispatch system did not have the Houston Street Viaduct as a valid address in its database.
Lozada died Friday while working the motorcade for Sen. Hillary Clinton during her North Texas stops.
The first ambulance dispatched to the crash scene was not from the closest fire station, sources add.
According to these same sources, it took paramedics 11 minutes to reach Lozada. Department protocol states a Priority 1 call is supposed to be answered within 8 minutes.
Police were able to flag down another ambulance that was in the area and said Lozada died seconds after impact.
A Monday meeting is scheduled to complement the internal review.
The city's 9-1-1 computer system, called Computer Aided Dispatch -- or CAD -- has been criticized since it went online last year for several problems that resulted in delays and misdirected calls.
Wow you got officers on scene at an officer down scenario,calling for a ambulance on police radios,and they don't have the location in their database,what is an ordinary citizen on a phone supose to do in an emergency.I'm really sorry the Officer was fatally injured in the crash.
It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end-to-end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them
dukalmighty wrote:Wow you got officers on scene at an officer down scenario,calling for a ambulance on police radios,and they don't have the location in their database,what is an ordinary citizen on a phone supose to do in an emergency.I'm really sorry the Officer was fatally injured in the crash.
That's what happens when you apply the WalMart inventory system to critical services. It's bad enough when you can't get them to reorder an item because "the computer says we're not out of it." When people die because "the computer says the address doesn't exist" they need to retrain dispatchers in doing things the old-fashioned way: a normal street map with the fire stations highlighted would have shaved a good bit of time off of this response.
Besides, isn't one of the normal procedures in personal protection knowing exactly where the nearest emergency facilities are at any point on the route?
Well, it really is not the officer or the dispatcher's fault. They may very well know where they are and where the station is. But they may not know where the nearest ambulance is, since they do not always dispatch from the closest location. This is what the computer system is SUPPOSED to be able to do.
Consider that I always know where I am, but that each street may have several different names. For example, in Luling, a very small town, US HWY 90, US HWY 183, and E. Pierce St. are all the same piece of roadway for about 4 miles. Even worse, since HWY 90 and HWY 183 each make turns in town, even in Luling there are two intersections that are properly named HWY 183 and HWY 90. Consider larger cities with two I-35 and I-410 (San Antonio) or Houston with two I-10 and I-610? It really can be bad.
So, if I call the dispatcher and tell her I am at I-10 and 410, she will know most of the time which side of the city I am on by the radio channel I use, but the computer has no way of knowing. If it says the official name is Loop 410 instead of I-410 (or vice versa), it may not allow the entry. Then the dispatcher has to try to force it in, and she may know where a fire station is for the ambulance, but not know if it is the closest (actually shortest response time which can be different from distance). In this case, she forced it and got a unit running, but guessed wrong on which one.
And the cops on the scene already showed it did not make a difference in this specific case. So, it becomes an argument about the CAD system.
CAD systems are great, but they have to be programmed right and allow for multiple names for every street. Then the data has to be entered by someone who really knows the city and can verify it properly. Most of the time, the data is entered by the company selling the system, using Census Bureau Tiger files. These do not give all of the names and are sometimes several years out of date. And keeping the streets updated can be a fulltime job for several people in a large city like Dallas. I would bet that no one looked strongly enough at the problem of data verification before this, and there will be some changes made soon. Unless they hire one or a few people to drive the city on a regular basis and verify the internal maps, it will always have some errors though.
srothstein wrote:Well, it really is not the officer or the dispatcher's fault. They may very well know where they are and where the station is. But they may not know where the nearest ambulance is, since they do not always dispatch from the closest location. This is what the computer system is SUPPOSED to be able to do.
Consider that I always know where I am, but that each street may have several different names. For example, in Luling, a very small town, US HWY 90, US HWY 183, and E. Pierce St. are all the same piece of roadway for about 4 miles. Even worse, since HWY 90 and HWY 183 each make turns in town, even in Luling there are two intersections that are properly named HWY 183 and HWY 90. Consider larger cities with two I-35 and I-410 (San Antonio) or Houston with two I-10 and I-610? It really can be bad.
So, if I call the dispatcher and tell her I am at I-10 and 410, she will know most of the time which side of the city I am on by the radio channel I use, but the computer has no way of knowing. If it says the official name is Loop 410 instead of I-410 (or vice versa), it may not allow the entry. Then the dispatcher has to try to force it in, and she may know where a fire station is for the ambulance, but not know if it is the closest (actually shortest response time which can be different from distance). In this case, she forced it and got a unit running, but guessed wrong on which one.
And the cops on the scene already showed it did not make a difference in this specific case. So, it becomes an argument about the CAD system.
CAD systems are great, but they have to be programmed right and allow for multiple names for every street. Then the data has to be entered by someone who really knows the city and can verify it properly. Most of the time, the data is entered by the company selling the system, using Census Bureau Tiger files. These do not give all of the names and are sometimes several years out of date. And keeping the streets updated can be a fulltime job for several people in a large city like Dallas. I would bet that no one looked strongly enough at the problem of data verification before this, and there will be some changes made soon. Unless they hire one or a few people to drive the city on a regular basis and verify the internal maps, it will always have some errors though.
I can see the problem,I have a GPS for my car and if you put in a street name It wants to know if it's a street or an avenue or a circle.If you pick the wrong one,guess what
It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end-to-end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them
