CARROLLTON -- If you live in four North Texas cities, you’re currently footing the bill for not one, but two separate 911 emergency call centers.
A News 8 Investigation found a joint project between Addison, Carrollton, Coppell, and Farmers Branch is overdue and over budget to the tune of $1 million.
About three years ago, the cities created the North Texas Emergency Communication Center (NTECC). The $19-million project is designed to upgrade the cities' communication systems and combines individual dispatch operations into a single, state-of-the-art facility.
“We're going to be able to dispatch faster, be able to do it cheaper and be able to do it better," said Carrollton City Manager Leonard Martin, who sits on the NTECC’s board and has headed up the project for the cities. "It will be safer for our public safety people -- police and fire.
“It will benefit residents because they'll have the potential of getting a response quicker than the old-fashioned way of each city operating independently,” he continued.
How?
Carrollton, Addison, and Farmers Branch share a border -- the three cities meet at the corner of Marsh Lane and Belt Line Road. Currently, if someone calls 911 from the Addison side of Marsh Lane, the call is assigned to an Addison officer, even if Farmers Branch or Carrollton officers are closer.
The unified system under NTECC eliminates those city boundaries, and sends the closest officer to the caller, regardless of what department that officer represents. This, city officials say, shaves minutes off response times, meaning police and firefighters get to emergency calls faster.
The plan is for each city's individual 911 dispatch centers to go away, replaced by a single facility inside the CyrusOne center on West Frankford Road in Carrollton.
News 8 got an exclusive first look inside the new center. There’s a secretary at the front door. Inside, the TV monitors and computers are up and running.
But the dispatchers are nowhere to be found. Every chair is empty. Why?
The cities were supposed to move in here last October, but the radio equipment for the new facility has been plagued with technical issues. As a result, the cities have been paying for a dispatch center that no one has been using for four months, costing taxpayers nearly $1 million so far in rent, equipment, licenses, and salaries for about 10 executives already on the payroll.
What’s the hold up? Garbled audio. Lost radio transmissions. Those are just some of the problems coming from the new radio system that the cities purchased.
The radios, designed to work with the new consolidated dispatch center, are made by Harris Corporation, which is also supplying the technology for the center. For years, the cities used competitor, Motorola, but switched in anticipation of moving to the new center.
Harris, based in Florida, bills itself as a global leader in communication networks, with clients including state and federal law enforcement, the U.S. military and the intelligence community.
Police officers in three of the four NTECC cities have been using Harris’ products for about six months, and officials say they are completely unreliable.
“We want a radio that we know when we talk on it, someone is going to hear us, our backup officer is going to be there, our dispatcher is going to know where we are and what we are doing, and that we are going to be able to go home at the end of the night and be with our families,” said Detective Michael Wall, a former patrol officer and current president of the Carrollton Police Officers Association.
“Our police officers are totally frustrated," said Martin, who was a police officer himself before he was hired as Carrollton city manager. "They're developing a level of fear, because the lifeline of a police officer is a radio, and if they can't trust it, then that lifeline is not secure."
Last Tuesday night, a dangerous situation unfolded when the entire system failed for 30 minutes, leaving all police officers in Carrollton, Addison, and Farmers Branch stranded with no way to call for help.
“That’s extremely dangerous,” Wall said.
Martin said he was "furious" when he heard of the outage. He sent an email to Harris’ President of Communication Systems, Christopher D. Young, saying (emphasis his) "...someone is going to die or get badly hurt. NO ONE IS TAKING REAL PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR GETTING THIS MESS STRAIGHTENED OUT."
Harris told News 8 the outage was not its fault.
"The cause of the service interruption was an error made by the Air Force in uploading software to GPS satellites," said Victoria Dillon, a Harris spokeswoman.
“It has just been promise after promise that this will fix it that will fix it," Martin said. "They’d fix one problem, but that would break something else in the system."
The cities have temporarily moved back to their old Motorola radio system, costing an additional $30,000, while they wait for Harris to fix the problems.
Published reports indicate this isn't the first time local officials have been unsatisfied with Harris' systems.
About a year before the cities hired Harris, the Clark County Sheriff in Las Vegas dumped Harris because they couldn't get their radios to work. Local media reports labeled it a "multi-million dollar mistake," and quoted a cop who called it "a failure, a joke."
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sued Harris. A federal judge in Nevada dismissed the lawsuit in November 2015.
When asked if the Las Vegas situation was a red flag, Martin said he did not know if those issues were known by the selection team.
Harris did not answer News 8’s request to talk about the problems at NTECC, except to say in an email that the company has successfully implemented systems like the one at NTECC at more than 100 locations across the U.S.
Martin said he hopes the new dispatch center is operational soon.
“I'm pretty confident we are going to make it, but if in six months from now we're still dabbling ...then, I think the board will sit down and talk about taking another direction completely -- just as happened in Las Vegas,” Martin said.
Regardless of the time it takes Harris to fix their system, Martin is confident that the four cities won't pay a penny extra. He said he plans to deduct the nearly $1 million taxpayers have spent waiting on Harris from the cities' final payment to the company.
“We are holding the final check of about $2.4 million hostage," Martin said.
But Martin acknowledged that Harris has not formally agreed to reimburse the city.
News 8 asked Harris if the company will agree to accept a final payment, less the cost incurred for the delays, in order to make North Texas taxpayers whole.
Harris’ response?
“I’m sorry, but Harris has no further comment," a spokeswoman said in an email to us.
“Okay, then, that’s what courts are for,” Martin said.
Rockwall County has hired Harris to supply all the first responders in that county with radios. The county judge told News 8 Thursday they have not experienced any problems, but are in the early stages of implementation of their new system.
Producer Ryan Wood contributed to this report.
