GALVESTON, Texas (KTRK) — Galveston City leaders are discussing a proposal to potentially merge the city’s police dispatch center with the county sheriff’s dispatch center. The idea has some in the community worried about the impact the change could have on people’s safety and those dispatchers’ jobs.
The police union, the city manager, and the police chief say the idea is in its early stages; it’s simply too hard to tell if response times to 911 calls will be impacted. They all agree that safety has to be the priority.
“For the last four sheriffs, it’s been discussed by the city, the county, the emergency communications district to look at different ways to possibly consolidate dispatch operations,” said Brian Maxwell, Galveston City Manager.
City Manager Brian Maxwell says part of the reason is that employees from both dispatch operations work in the same room and will soon switch to the same software.
He also says both are dealing with staffing shortages and that a consolidation could ease the workload.
“Could there be savings? We both struggle at hiring and retaining dispatchers. Our dispatchers log a tremendous amount of overttime because of being short-handed and our call volume we have here,” said Maxwell.
While the president of the Galveston municipal police association says he isn’t against the idea, he wants to make sure the 11 police dispatch center employees are taken care of if the merger were to happen.
“This is their livelihood. We have people who have been dispatching here for twenty-plus years. This is all they’ve known,” said Anthony Rogers, president of Galveston Municipal Police Association.
“Part of the discussion has to be what is going to happen to our personnel, how are they going to be compensated, and are there going to be lateral transfers, are they able to maintain certain seniority privileges?” said Maxwell.
ABC13 spoke with Dr. Greg Fremin, who is a retired captain with the Houston Police Department. He says he understands the city’s attention, but a transition for dispatchers won’t be easy if they need to move to another department.
“If they’re trying to make it better, you’ve got to be careful, when you start again trying to re-align a dispatch system because everything is in place. One thing that does not stop, is these calls for service coming in,” said Dr. Fremin.
But if the sheriff’s office dispatch center absorbs the police center, should the community be worried about changes in response times? Galveston’s police chief says part of the plan is to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“I think that we would have to ensure that the communications center would be able to keep up with our calls for service, which are incredible,” said Doug Balli, Galveston Police Chief
During a council meeting, council members said they’re open to further discussion of the plan. The city manager says that both the council and the commissioners court need to sign off on it for it to happen. There’s no exact timeline, but the city is hoping for the merger to start at the beginning of the new year if approved.
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