The Dakota Communications Center has provided a review of the first half of the year showing the activity, response times and performance that indicate how efficient the center is in serving emergency communications in Dakota County. Activities are defined as call pickup, call processing and emergency medical dispatch, which are relayed to the necessary departments of police and fire EMT’s depending on where services are needed. According to the report, there were 27,753 calls that were received by the center from January 1st to June 30th. There were 30,555 CAD or computer aided dispatch with 85% of call pick up times answered within 7 seconds, 94% by 10 seconds and 100% of the calls answered within 20 seconds.
The number of 911 calls has risen with 82,950 calls handled by the center so far this year. Fire and EMS calls are also up from 12,067 to nearly 13, 300. Total law enforcement computer aided dispatch instances total 156,367, or on average 26,000 calls every month. The report also tracks how the calls come into the center, with cell phones far outnumbering land line phones with 86% of calls generated that way. We’ll feature more information provided from the report in our upcoming newscasts.
