News

Detroit Dispatch System Down for 15 Hours

Eric D. Lawrence

07/06/2013

July 06--Detroit Police Chief James Craig vowed Friday to get to the bottom of a service failure that shut down the city's police and emergency dispatch system for more than 15 hours.

"This shouldn't have happened," said Craig, pledging that it would not happen again. "We will have accountability."

Dispatch services for the city's police, fire and EMS units went down about 5:30 a.m. Friday, forcing the departments to rely on cell phones to route their units to calls for service.

The problems delayed police response to 17 Priority 1 calls and 110 nonpriority calls, officials said. They indicated that none of those situations led to anyone getting hurt, although in one case, the response to a sexual assault reported after the fact was delayed.

Therese Van Ryne, a spokeswoman for Motorola Solutions, said shortly before 9 p.m. Friday that the system was stable and that the company would continue troubleshooting next week.

But Craig, whose first official day was Monday, painted the system's failure as not only a service problem but also an issue of accountability.

Although the Motorola representative said the system undergoes regular maintenance, police officials indicated that it had not been checked in two years.

Van Ryne said the problem was a hardware glitch in the link between dispatch and the individual radios.

Van Ryne, who is based in Schaumburg, Ill., near Chicago, said the system was working fine when the company completed one of its annual tests in September. The company also does monthly antenna site checks, she said.

Van Ryne said nothing like the disruption had happened before.

The contract for the system was finalized in 2003, and it was fully operational by August 2005.

Van Ryne said she could not comment on the cost of the contract with the city. A Detroit police spokeswoman was asked for the contract amount but has not yet responded.