GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Brown County has decided to start over with a new 911 dispatch system.
The decision comes six months after a brand new $1.5 million system was first used.
The county says it could not fix the errors it encountered with the system it recently purchased. The issues were considered serious safety concerns. It reached a point this past winter where the county switched back to its old system.
Since pulling the plug on its error-filled new dispatch system in February, Brown County has been working on it, hoping to put it back in action.
“It’s really become evident that we were probably not going to get a working product in time to meet our needs,” said Cullen Peltier, Brown County Public Safety Communications Director.
Brown County is currently using the same 911 dispatch system it has had for the past 18 years.
In 2015, the county was told the system was reaching a point where it would no longer be serviced. The county agreed to contract with Securus Technologies for a new system that cost about $1.5 million. It went online in December, but only lasted eight weeks.
“Things that should have been working, weren’t,” said Captain John Rousseau of the Brown County Sheriff’s Department.
Officers cited a variety of safety issues with the Securus system. FOX 11 saw one first hand when officers were showing up as being in Africa instead of somewhere on the streets of Green Bay.
The county has paid Securus $760,000 of the $1.5 million it was supposed to. It has now agreed to pay Motorola $1.3 million for the new dispatch system.
“Outagamie County has recently gone to the same system, so we were able to go look at it actually in production and see how it was being used and talk to the cops on the road and say what do you like, what do you not like,” said Rousseau.
The county is trying to get some of its money back from Securus. County officials say what will likely end up being the bigger loss, rather than the money, is time.
“It’s actually very difficult,” said Peltier. “We’re having a little bit of a lull right now as we roll back to the old system, but knowing we have to go through the whole process of training and implementation again, it’s a little exhausting.”
Implementation is expected to take a year and a half. Dispatchers are expected to receive three days of training. Officers will likely train one day.
“It’s unfortunate we have to train twice on two different systems, but like I said, if the end goal is to get the best possible product then that is something we’re absolutely going to do,” said Rousseau.
The goal is to be live with the new system at the end of 2020.
The county is still finalizing where the money will come from for the new system. Part of the money will come from what wasn’t paid to Securus.
