Back to the barracks
Connecticut just can’t seem to do regionalism.
Three years ago, Connecticut undertook what seemed like a reasonable and manageable effort to make emergency services more efficient. The number of centers dispatching Connecticut State Police troopers to emergencies would be trimmed from 12 to 5. With fewer centers, civilian dispatchers could handle the load, freeing state troopers who had assisted the operations to get back on patrol.
This newspaper backed the plan. How hard could it be? Well, it was apparently too hard for Connecticut. This week Commissioner Dora B. Schriro of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection announced that state police were abandoning the effort. Emergency call services will revert to all 12 barracks and some troopers will return to the computer screens.
From the start, the department failed under a prior commissioner to win the support of the troopers and their persistent opposition to the consolidation did not help matters. And the department poorly executed the plan. There were incidents of dispatchers, unfamiliar with the expanded territories, either sending police to the wrong location or failing to dispatch the closest troopers.
With less staffing at barracks without dispatch centers, troopers at times had to transport prisoners to properly staffed barracks farther away, taking them out of commission longer.
It is hard to fathom that Connecticut could not figure out a way to do this properly. Other states have single dispatch centers handling geographical areas bigger than this entire state. Granted, making the job more difficult was the fact Connecticut is Balkanized into 169 towns and cities, with no county government, redundant road names, and local idiosyncrasies. However, such challenges should not have proved impossible to meet.
It is said where there is a will there is a way. In Connecticut, there appears to be no will to change. Do it the way it has always been done, not figure out how to do it more efficiently, remains the driving sentiment.
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