When Crystal City residents call police for help with emergencies, Jefferson County 911 Dispatch now answers their phone calls.
Previously, Crystal City Police dispatchers took those calls, but that changed on April 28 when the Crystal City Council voted 6-0 to transfer the police dispatching to the Jefferson County 911 Dispatch agency. Ward 2 Councilman Rick Fischer and Ward 3 Councilwoman Taylor Massa both were absent from the meeting.
Crystal City residents have been helping to fund Jefferson County 911 Dispatch with their tax dollars for many years without fully using the services it offers, City Administrator Jason Eisenbeis said.
In 1990, Crystal City residents voted to join Jefferson County 911, but the city was not able to use all its services, particularly its police dispatching services, because the city sometimes had prisoners on site in its jail and the 911 agency did not want dispatchers to feel they were responsible for overseeing the prisoners, city officials said.
In 2009, voters approved a half-cent sales tax to help fund Jefferson County 911, and it has been collected ever since, Eisenbeis added.
While Crystal City had not been able to take advantage of all of Jefferson County 911’s dispatching services until this year, he said, the agency has upgraded some of the city’s emergency equipment, such as radios, car computers and some infrastructure.
“There has been value in Jefferson County 911 from the aspect of equipment and infrastructure, but as far as them dispatching for us, no, there hadn’t been.”
Eisenbeis said 911 started dispatching for the Crystal City Fire Department approximately five years ago, and the city wanted to come to an agreement for the agency to also take over police dispatching as well. The Crystal City Council discussed the topic again during this year’s budget discussions and worked out an agreement earlier this year for the agency to dispatch from its main headquarters in House Springs, instead of from the Crystal City facilities. That change allowed the city to continue housing prisoners, if needed.
“The city will still house prisoners as necessary. However, we’re currently reviewing our mode of operations and trying to determine if there is a better way to deal with people who must be detained for extended periods of time,” Eisenbeis said.
He said the city’s Municipal Court will close later this year, so it may make sense to house people awaiting trial elsewhere.
Lots of changes
“We made a lot of operational changes this year in a short amount of time. We’re moving our Municipal Court to the 23rd Circuit Court of
Jefferson County in Hillsboro, and we transferred our dispatch to Jefferson County 911, so we’re still feeling our way through things as we progress,” he said. “We’re exploring all our options to ensure we’re operating within the law and in the most efficient manner possible.”
Eisenbeis said the transition in police dispatching has been smooth, and he does not believe residents notice any difference in service or response times.
“Jefferson County 911 is very professional. They run a very smooth operation,” he said. “They’re better equipped to do it than we are. Our people do a good job, but for Jefferson County 911, this is what they do.”
Eisenbeis said the city used to have six dispatchers on staff but over the past 10 years, it had 22 dispatchers working for the city who had come and gone.
“It just was not sustainable. We reached a critical point this year where we had someone leaving and we knew we really needed to figure it out and do something different,” he said.
Now that Jefferson County 911 is handling all the city’s dispatching, Crystal City has retained three of the longtime dispatchers and transitioned them into communications technicians, and they work in shifts around the clock from Monday through Friday answering the non-emergency line, helping residents who come in during the day, running reports, entering and removing warrants, monitoring city prisoners and performing other duties as needed, Eisenbeis said.
The funds that had been used to pay the other three dispatchers will now be used to hire two new police officers and to increase compensation to retain existing officers, he said.
“We can pull that money into the Police Department and increase their pay to a more appropriate level so they won’t leave,” he said.
Eisenbeis said retaining officers is a benefit to the city because hiring new officers is expensive due to training, testing and outfitting them with badges, uniforms, guns and properly fitting vests.
“It gets very expensive when we lose police officers. The changes we’ve made to the Police Department over the last couple of years have really stopped people from leaving,” he said.
Eisenbeis said hiring the two additional police officers has long been needed, adding that the size of the police force has been the same for many years despite growth in the area.
“Mercy Hospital Jefferson is (one of) the largest employers in Jefferson County. Festus has doubled in size in the last eight to 10 years or so. The Twin City Walmart is the second busiest Walmart in the state of Missouri,” he said. “We have (the James Hardie manufacturing plant) coming, which is going to bring in 300 to 500 employees on a daily basis, and prior to that all the construction workers.
“So while the town itself isn’t growing, the people are coming here. There’s more people, there’s more traffic, there’s more incidents. There are more things that happen than most people are aware of. Just because we’re a small town outside of St. Louis doesn’t mean crime doesn’t happen here.”