TOWN OF LOCKPORT — Dispatchers at the Niagara County Sheriff’s department now have the latest technology at their fingertips when responding to 911 calls.

A multi-million dollar upgrade to the sheriff’s dispatch center, now located at the county’s Public Safety Training Facility on Niagara Street Extension, is putting state-of-the-art technology to use.

“It’s long overdue,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Tom Beatty, who noted the dispatch center was last updated in 1987. “With changes in wireless technology and the advent of cellular phones, we need to really jump into the 21st century.”

There are four dispatchers on duty at all times, two of them working as fire dispatchers and two as police dispatchers.

Each dispatcher sits at a console with six screens displaying different information. The center screen shows each phone line — six lines dedicated to hard wire phone lines and six for wireless or cellular calls.

The sheriff’s dispatch receives all cellular 911 calls that are made throughout the county, regardless of the caller’s location. Calls can then be transferred to the appropriate agency.

The calls can also be transferred to poison control or suicide hotlines.

“Our new system is virtually unlimited,” Kasprzak said. “For example, if somebody calls and wants to talk to a counselor or hotline, before, we had to physically dial the hotline and send it into them. Now we are able to punch one button. Same thing with poison control. We can send a frantic mother right to poison control.”

The screens also show the status of all emergency vehicles that are in service throughout the county, so dispatchers can easily see who’s available to respond to calls.

The number of calls coming in to the sheriff’s dispatch has risen dramatically in the past decade. In 2006, dispatchers handled 88,771 calls — up from less than 50,000 in 1997.

Cell phones are a contributing factor in the rise of emergency calls, Beilein said.

“If there’s an accident on Transit, we no longer get one or two calls. We get 20, 25 calls,” he said.

The new system will allow dispatchers to see clusters of calls all coming from the same accident scene, perhaps eliminating the time spent answering several calls about the same thing.

Every time a call comes in, a dispatcher is able to immediately pinpoint a caller’s location on a map. Satellite images can also be called up so dispatchers can see the terrain surrounding an area and be able to tell responding personnel what to expect.

“If we’re having trouble locating an address, we can bring it up and see what it looks like,” Kasprzak said.

With the new radio system, sheriff’s dispatchers can communicate with police agencies all over the county.

“Because of Homeland Security issues and things like that, it’s more important now that we be able to communicate with surrounding agencies,” Kasprzak said. “Our dispatchers in here can stay on top of what’s going on, not only in our dispatch, but in their dispatch as well.”

Soon, each car will be equipped with a device that will enable dispatchers to know their locations at all times.

“We didn’t want to throw everything in at one time,” Beatty said. “As technology improves, we’ll do our best to stay on top of it.”

Beatty said this upgrade cost about $3 million — none of which came through county taxes, but from grant money from state and federal sources.

Niagara County Legislator Pete Smolinski, R-North Tonawanda, chairman of the public safety committee, said the money also includes E911 funding from the state — taxes that appear on cell phone bills to fund technology — which the county has taken out a bond on.

Smolinski, who has served as assistant fire chief in North Tonawanda, said the dispatch center is well worth it.

“I know first-hand just how important a communications center is,” he said. “Quite frankly, the easier we can make things for our dispatchers, the law enforcement and fire services, the better it serves the people.”

The old communications center, located in Building 1 at the sheriff’s department, will soon be converted into a conference and training room for road patrol deputies, Beatty said.

The transition from the old center to the new was seamless, he said.

“Not one radio transmission was lost, not one phone call was lost,” Beatty said. “No computer information was lost. At no time was there any break or breach in it.”

Contact April Amadon at 439-9222, Ext. 6251.