NEWPORT — All 911 calls made in Campbell County will be routed through one call center by July 23, completing a multimillion-dollar consolidation of emergency dispatching in this Northern Kentucky county.

        That means Fort Thomas and Campbell County police will no longer have to staff their headquarters 24 hours a day to answer the phones.

WHOM TO CALL

The emergency number for Campbell County Dispatch is 911.     The non-emergency number for the Campbell County Consolidated Dispatch Center is (859) 292-3622.     Calls being made to the old non-emergency numbers for Fort Thomas and Campbell County police departments will be automatically forwarded to the new center when the system is fully converted.

        “Residents in Fort Thomas are used to having a police officer at the station all the time,” said Fort Thomas Police Chief Steve Schmidt. “They are used to coming to our door and getting a sworn officer. That has all changed.”

        Fort Thomas residents wanting to talk to an officer now need to call the consolidated dispatch center.

        A civilian operator at the center will send an officer to meet the resident. The city has also installed a phone outside the door of the police station that automatically dials the new dispatch center.

        The advantage of consolidated dispatch for Fort Thomas is that it will put more officers on the street, said Chief Schmidt.

        “I don't know of another police agency that had police officers dispatching. Covington quit doing that in the 1970s,” said Chief Schmidt, who retired from Covington police.

        “It is cheaper to hire a civilian to dispatch than getting an officer to do it.”

        The Campbell County dispatch system will be patterned in some ways after the Boone County Public Service Communications Center, which has handled all emergency dispatching for that Northern Kentucky county since 1982.

        Kenton County still dispatches from a patchwork of three centers, Erlanger, Covington and the Kenton County Dispatch Center. All the dispatch centers in Kenton are staffed by trained civilians.

        The single Campbell County emergency dispatch system is a consolidation of county, Newport and Fort Thomas centers.

        It is being financed by a $2 per month 911 surcharge on each telephone line in the county that amounts to about $1.5 million annually. Campbell County also kicked in $750,000 in start-up money.

        The center is hiring 23 full-time dispatchers and three part-time dispatchers, said Tim Scott, who recently took the job as director of the new dispatch center.

        He is retired from the Air Force and a native of Oakley. He graduated from Withrow High School.

        The center will be responsible for dispatching 11 police departments, 13 fire departments and other agencies such as water rescue.

        The joint operation is expected to save taxpayer money and promote better communication among the departments, said Newport Police Chief Tom Fromme, chairman of the the board overseeing the center. Fire dispatching has for years been plagued by calls on various channels interrupting or “bleeding into” other channels.

        Instead of buying expensive new equipment for three separate dispatching services, the one central center for Campbell County can invest in the state-of-the-art equipment.

        “I think the consolidation is going better than we expected,” said Chief Fromme. “There haven't been that many glitches.”
       

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