The Delta Police Department will be piloting their own service to respond to non-emergency calls.
Chief Neil Dubord at the Nov. 23 virtual City of Delta town hall meeting with Mayor George Harvie said the department has both its emergency service dispatch and non-emergency dispatch service working out of E-Comm, while E-Comm also provides other call services to the city.
The non-emergency call service could be better, however, Dubord said.
“In the Delta Police, we have found that in the ‘no call too small’ strategy that we are receiving complaints from the community that the E-Comm delay on the non-emergency call side is way too long, some people waiting up to half-an-hour to be able to get their call answered,” said Dubord. “We understand that is not feasible for people to wait on the line for half-an-hour for them to be able to speak to an evaluator who can then dispatch a Delta Police car out to that particular call.”
Dubord said what the department will try during the next three months is a pilot project in which non-emergency calls between 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. will be taken by the police department to see if the average speed of answer can be improved.
“We want to make sure we’re meeting some of our targets in regards to the average speed of answer. Those targets are around three minutes is what we think is acceptable for someone to be able to call in to the non-emergency line and hopefully, on average, get someone to answer within three minutes, and we’ll dispatch a car,” he said.
Saying it’s a low-cost pilot project, Dubord said they will evaluate the project after a 90-day period to see if it’s successful and, if so, what modifications may be needed.
The Delta Police non-emergency line can be reached at 604-946-4411.
