Support Services Division

Major Eddie White
Support Services Division Commander

Emergency Communications Center

Responsibilities of this unit include being the E-911 telephone system answering point for police, fire & medical emergency calls within Independence. The unit is lead by a newly created civilian director position who supervises a staff of 28 telecommunicators. Last year, 130,751 separate 911 calls were answered for an average of 358 calls per 24-hour day. In the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system, telecommunicators managed 78,864 individual dispatched calls for police services, 34,496 officer-initiated calls, and 14,563 calls for fire department services. 7,236 of the fire calls were for emergency medical responses, requiring coordinated communications with EMS providers.

Other telecommunicator responsibilities include:

• locating responsible persons by telephone for any type of call when police or fire personnel at an incident scene determine such a response is needed,
• wants & warrants computer inquiries in local, regional, state, and national criminal data bases,
• TDD emergency call telephone system for hearing-impaired persons,
• preparation and mailing of billings for false alarms (in 2002, of the 6,428 business and residential alarms, 6,280, or 98%, were false alarms),
• creating and responding to law enforcement network teletype requests,
• establishing and maintaining mutual aid communications with surrounding jurisdictions,
• participation in Citizens’ Police Academy instruction.

Detention Unit

The Detention Unit is a short-term holding facility that receives and processes adult prisoners arrested by officers in Independence, and in other jurisdictions on Independence municipal warrants. Prisoners are kept in a secure environment until their lawful release. Juveniles that are arrested are not taken into the jail facility, but their paperwork is processed by Detention Unit staff. In 2002, staff:

• processed 12,158 adult bookings and 1,110 juvenile bookings;
• served 9,785 prisoner meals;
• took 1,812 sets of fingerprints from prisoners.
• If municipal offenders are sentenced to serve time, they are sent to a privately operated jail in the area. In 2002 1,492 detainees were sentenced in municipal court to serve a total of 11,794 days in jail.
• The meal delivery system for short-term detainees was improved. Prisoners still receive a nutritious meal, but at a cost savings of over $6,000 per quarter.

Police Records Unit

The 23 Records Unit staff, and three supervisors, provide internal and external customer service at the main lobby service desk and in the Records Unit office. They index, disseminate, and archive various police reports for officers and for the general public. They participate in internal and external data bases concerning criminal records and warrant information. Records Unit staff also operates the Paperless Automated Case Entry (PACE) process in the police department computer system. PACE is a process by which officers phone in many types of police reports live to a records or service desk clerk, who then enters the information directly into the computer data base. The PACE process, first implemented in mid-1996, reduces the amount of time an officer spends in the actual reporting process by two-thirds, and significantly improves the accuracy of report data. Records Unit staff spent 5,381 hours “PACEing” police reports from officers in 2002. Other accomplishments for the year:

• created and staffed a second warrant service technician in order to more efficiently manage entering and removing arrest warrant information from internal, local, regional, state, and national law enforcement computer data bases;
• entered 21,964 arrest warrants into these systems;
• removed 17, 539 arrest warrants from these systems;
• entered 37, 527 traffic tickets into the municipal court computer data base;
• entered 5,050 general ordinance summons (GOS) into the municipal court computer data base;
• processed 16,332 original case offense reports;
• processed 11,052 original non-offense case reports;
• processed 3,375 traffic accident reports;
• sold 17,093 police records to the public;
• processed 10,841 additional information supplement reports to existing case reports;
• service desk staff wrote 1,027 “walk in” traffic accident reports, or about 30% of the total number of traffic accident reports filed in 2002;
• service desk staff wrote 10,562 general case reports;
• handled 165,090 telephone inquiries;
• handled 11,124 mail inquiries;
• prepared 11,937 prisoner release bonds at the service desk;
• made 90,512 entries into various law enforcement computer data bases.