Agenda - Council Work Session - 04/27/2010

Home

~£;.= ~ ' .r .. ~~ Y j~ ~~.~.~`- ~~~::: April 20, 2010 Chandra Kreyer Ramsey City Police Department 7550 Sunwood Dr. NW Ramsey, MN 55303 COUNTY OF ANOKA CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS - 911 Anoka County Courthouse 325 East Main Street • Anoka, MN 55303 (763) 323-5820 • Fax (763) 422-7504 Dear Chandra: Anoka County Central Communications serves as the 911 Police and Fire Dispatch center for the City of Ramsey, as well as the other 20 communities in Anoka County. In this role, we support the services of the officers and firefighters of the community, as well as the citizens, businesses and those that commute through the city. Ramsey City participates in a program where they gather business owner information, as well as contacts for the businesses. We refer to this as "keyholder information". Gathering this data is a method for the city to take precaution to prevent harm or bring about good. It seems obvious to state that when businesses are open, it is easy to determine who is working. However, the protective services of the city are working 24 hours a day and knowing who owns a business and how to get a hold of them in the middle of the night is a valuable resource. An example of this would be for break in to businesses. When an officer finds a business that has been burglarized, with broken windows or a broken door, we can make contact with the business owner to secure their business and prevent further loss. Another example is for critical events, at the direction of the police or fire departments', we can access the business listings to alert people to hostile events, hazardous situations, hostage situations or fire concerns. For the safety of the officers and firefighters, the hazardous material information that your city gathers is added to the address in our Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system so that they have this pertinent information while responding to an event. Finally, as the dispatch center for the entire county, it is challenging to maintain current business listings for every community. Ramsey City provides their business information to us at dispatch so that we can cross reference the data in our CAD to be certain that we have the most up to date information for better response to calls within your city. You may know that Jacob's is no longer in business and that it is now the Penalty Box, but the entire staff at Anoka County 911 may not know it if we do not continue to receive business updates from your department. In summary, Anoka County Central Communications is supportive of the continued annual gathering of business information. Contact me if I can be of further assistance. Respectfully, Linda K. Hanson PSAP (911) Coordinator 763-323-5826 "Emergency dispatching for Sheriff, Police and Fire departments in Anoka County" Affirmative Action /Equal Opportunity Employer