‘Busy 911 center’
Emergency services director briefs board on calls for service, ongoing programs
Delaware County 911 operators take 800,000 emergency calls each year, making the center in Middletown Township one of the busiest in Pennsylvania.
“We are a busy 911 center,” Delaware County Emergency Services Director Timothy Boyce said. “We’re one of the leading centers in the commonwealth. We’re very proud of that, answering almost 2,000 calls of service every day.”
He said over 580,000 unique events are generated annually from these calls. At the center, there are 100 uniformed team members.
Boyce said one of the accomplishments achieved this year was moving to 12-hour shifts. He said many 911 center employees are members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
“That’s yielded a dramatic reduction in overtime but, more importantly, the number of times we compel or mandate our members to stay over,” he said. “Council’s leadership in that and working with the union has saved the taxpayers money and made for more efficient operations.”
He also highlighted the progress of the new radio system.
“The design phase has been completed,” Boyce said. “We’re working with our police, fire and EMS to look at what looks right in the future. We have the capability to continue to serve them but with the technology, we want to hear from our customers to make sure that we’re serving them wisely and the way they want.”
In August 2022, county council approved the purchase of a $38 million Atlas P25 radio system from JVCKenwood that will provide 3,700 radios to the county’s first responders and will move the system to a 700 MHz-based operation.
Boyce highlighted some other changes that have reaped benefits for the emergency services community.
During COVID, council commissioned emergency services units initially designed to support COVID responses and law enforcement. The law enforcement partners have water rescue and active shooter training.
“These units are embedded in local police departments, staffed by those teams and there to support it,” Boyce said.
For fire departments such as Upper Darby, the county emergency services department provides them with small boats for flooding events.
The Department of Emergency Services includes two departments: civil defense and emergency services. Boyce said the training center and community services were also incorporated into the department’s budget last year.
“That overall combination has yielded a lot of good returns as we continue to serve and combine some efforts … to focus people on more projects,” Boyce said.
On a mission
The department itself is also divided into divisions, with the largest being communications that encompasses the 911 center. Nationally recognized, the center is up for consideration as a Center of Excellence as it incorporates artificial intelligence into its service.
Boyce explained that the AI will pick up on certain words from 911 calls such as “gun” or “fire” to highlight them, so it’s not missed but sent right to a supervisor. In addition, he said there’s the capability to text and take video.
“A lot of that technology allows our core people to focus on helping people,” he said. “We’re really showing leadership.”
In September, Boyce announced that the 911 center had been designated as nationally certified by the Association of Public Safety Communications International’s Agency Training Program certification.
Another division, funded mostly through U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant program, includes special operations with the focus of providing resources for first responders. Boyce explained that this includes providing homeland security and disaster response equipment. The Medical Reserve Corps is part of this division.
“The county’s mission really is to empower our local first responders in that they provide the labor and we provide the resource, training and oversight,” he said.
Emergency management is part of civil defense and its responsibilities are planning, response and recovery, Boyce explained, noting that every local municipality has been trained and that does include disaster training.
“We work with our local municipal managers to make sure that we’re supporting them and we do a lot of training and exercises to make sure that they’re always ready,” he said.
The fourth division encompasses the homeland security and grants section.
Some grants coming include a $5 million fiber ring to link the 911 centers of Delaware, Bucks, Chester, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties and have them share protocols so they will all address calls in the same manner.
Statewide call delivery will be available in January, the director added
“We’ll see another reduction in cost and increase in service as we all go onto one system,” Boyce said.