BY VINCENT TODARO
Staff Writer
EAST BRUNSWICK – A state grant will allow the township to upgrade its 911 system so that emergency responders will automatically know where a caller is located.
Mayor William Neary announced that the township has been awarded approximately $370,000 from the state, and will use it to upgrade and modernize the 911 system used to handle emergency calls. The township applied in the spring and was told recently that the grant has been approved.
Austin Kosik, the town’s 911 coordinator, said the money will be used for upgrades that provide a faster response time from emergency responders.
He said the grant is actually in two parts, with the first part in the amount of about $330,000.
“It will replace our 911 system and bring it up to current technology [standards],” he said.
One feature of the new system will provide responders with what Kosik described as a “better snapshot” of where calls are coming from. Currently, when a 911 call comes in from a cell phone, it does not go directly to East Brunswick. Instead, it goes to New Jersey State Police, who then relay the information to East Brunswick.
“Now a Route 18 call will come to East Brunswick rather than Totowa,” he said. “It will give us a more precise location of cell calls.”
The township will automatically know the latitude and longitude from which the call is coming, he said, which will help responders get to the place of the call more quickly.
When 911 calls from land lines come in, they already are accompanied by such information, Kosik said. In fact, the information comes up on a screen.
He said the grant will be used to replace the entire infrastructure now used to handle 911 calls. The township will have new phone devices and rack-mounted servers, and the phone lines from Verizon to police headquarters will be replaced
“This will be a computer-based phone system,” he said.
The second portion of the grant is for about $46,000 and will be used for a number of things, he said, including replacing headsets, training dispatchers, and purchasing ancillary equipment such as monitors.
Kosik said the new system will also produce a street map that quickly shows responders where the call is coming from and how to get there.
Currently, a dispatcher has to manually map it out, he said.
“This will assist in sending responders to a more precise location,” he said.
Delivery should take about 10 weeks, he said, and the township is targeting November for the new system going online. The dispatchers and police officers will have to be trained to use the system.
The grant came from the New Jersey State Office of Telecommunications, Kosik said.