Administration Finance & Focus

PUBLIC SAFETY

Police dispatch center receives an upgrade

By Cindy Granier

With technology improving daily, the University of Houston Police Department is ecstatic with the recent improvements of its dispatch center. Recent mandates for upgrades from the Texas Wide Area Radio Network and a growing department encouraged the department to address the updated needs for dispatch for the department and the University.

David Sarkozi, under the supervision of Assistant Vice President Malcolm Davis and Chief of Police Ceaser Moore, coordinated the radio upgrade needs for the department and designed the updates. Reconfiguring the call center with new furniture and a new layout allowed more than 100 square feet of wasted space to be used. Adding new 95 percent noise reduction ceiling tiles improved the dispatchers’ ability to be understood by field officers over the radio.

The call center was expanded from two radio workstations to three, plus a new supervisor’s work station. Previously the call center had only one workstation for connection to the Texas Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (TLETS) and a single workstation for monitoring campus security alarms. Now each workstation has the following capabilities:

• Radio communications with all campus police officers, security personnel, fire marshals, Emergency Management personnel and Parking and Transportation Services.
• Radio communications with all Houston Police Department units
• Radio communications with METRO PD, HISD PD, UHDT Police, UHCL Police, TSU PD, and Harris County Constables in Precinct 6 and 7 and Harris County Emergency Management
• New TLETS workstations for all three positions
• Expanded licensing to allow burglar and panic alarm monitoring at all three positions
• Access to all electronic locks and doors on campus
• Access to instant playback of all incoming phone lines and radio communications.
• Access to all campus video cameras plus integration of campus video cameras to the burglar and panic alarm system.

A mini video wall was also installed to include campus fire alarms, IP TV for local news monitoring, and campus video monitoring.

The radio system controls allows access to direct radio communications from El Paso to Miami in an emergency situation. In addition, approximately 50 of the current fleet of 135 radios were upgraded to TDMA 2 radios, with funding designated to replace the remainder of the departmental radios in Fiscal Year 2017.

All services and phone numbers remain the same within the dispatch center.