Mahoning Township dispatch system will save police time

A new computer aided dispatch system for Carbon County could mean a reduction in Mahoning Township Police Department’s report filing time.

Police Chief Audie Mertz told the Mahoning supervisors Wednesday that the new dispatch system, set to go into effect on Saturday, could save his officers between 40 and 50 hours of work time each month.

“The way it’s going to work is, any time they give us an assignment or call, anything involving our department, they will generate a computerized report that at the close of the incident or assignment, it will automatically email our agency all the details,” Mertz said.

“For instance, if you had a car accident in front of McDonald’s, you’d have an email generated at the end of the accident with all the information relating to it — the date, the time, and they actually even send you a Google Map pin so you can click on it and show you exactly where the call was placed.”

Currently, Mertz told the board members that information must be acquired by calling the dispatch center directly.

The new dispatch system would allow officers to login through their car’s computer to check on any active emergency calls in the county as well.

Mertz also made a request to the board to implement a three-month trial period where the township’s officers could do away with the old reporting system.

“What I would like to do on a trial basis for a couple of months is to eliminate our paper log reporting, and go to a system where I monitor those emails that come in, and verify that all of the reporting for each of those cases is completed,” he said.

Vice chairman John Wieczorek expressed concern over how effective the new system could be, and how that would be judged. Mertz said it would be proven effective if the monthly police reports showed a rise in arrests and traffic tickets, meaning an increased community presence.

“I’m all for getting them out of the office and on the road,” chairman Franklin Ruch said.

Mertz offered to continue paper reporting during the trial period without entering the data into the department’s computers as a negotiation.

The board voted in favor of the trial period, after which time the data will be evaluated.

“I guess we’ll take the trial at face value. If arrests don’t go up, if mileage doesn’t go up, it’s a waste of time and we go back to the old way,” supervisor Robert Slaw said.