Officials say Warren moving closer to joining county 911 center

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Warren’s police chief says he thinks the chances are greater than 50 percent that the city will turn over police-dispatching duties to the Trumbull County 911 center.

Ernie Cook, Trumbull County 911 director and chief deputy of the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office, agrees.

“It appears we are close to coming to an agreement with the city of Warren,” Cook said. The switch would save the city about $500,000 per year.

Cook said switching would be a “win-win” for the city because the money that could be saved would be enough to generate the match money needed to hire three additional police officers through a federal grant.

Warren was recently awarded a federal $375,000-per-year Community Oriented Policing Services grant that would pay for three police officers for three years.

But the city would need to pay $283,727 each of those three years and pay the entire bill in year four if it accepted the grant, Chief Eric Merkel said.

Cook said the savings from switching to county dispatching would free up the money to pay the city’s share of the cost for more officers.

Cook said he believes Warren needs more police officers and added, “That’s our core business — officers on the street.”

Merkel said the switch to county dispatching isn’t necessarily tied to the addition of three police officers, and the decision regarding whether to accept the grant will be made by the mayor’s office.

Cook said he added two seats at the county 911 center in Howland in the past six months anticipating possible growth and now has 10. The two additional seats could be used for Warren dispatching.

Warren has two dispatchers working at all times, so the staffing for Warren would not change much under the county system, Cook said.

In fact, all of the city’s dispatchers would be offered a full-time position with the county 911 if the merger goes forward, Cook said. The county pays “a couple bucks” per hour less than the city, Merkel said.

Meanwhile, Cook also has had discussions in the past couple of years with Niles officials about taking over that city’s dispatching.

Niles Chief Rob Hinton said he believes the cuts he already has made should be sufficient to avoid a merger with the county 911.

The department reduced its dispatchers from four full-timers to three full-time and one part-time, and no longer has two dispatchers working at all times. The department also employs five fewer police officers now than it did five years ago.

Hinton said he and Mayor Ralph Infante believe the city would lose the “personal service” experienced Niles dispatchers provide if the dispatching was done by the county.

For example, if the dispatching went to the county, there would be times when no one would be at the police station because officers would be in their cruisers.

“If someone is being chased, sometimes people seek safe haven at the police station. That would be lost,” he said.

Furthermore, dispatchers who know 911 callers, as the Niles dispatchers do, may be better able to “talk down” someone who is contemplating violence, Hinton said.

Cook said Niles could continue to operate its own dispatching center and upgrade its equipment to become a backup to the county system. Warren is currently the primary backup to the county.

Warren’s five dispatching stations also could be left intact as a county backup, or the Ashtabula County 911 could become the backup, Cook said.

Cook said technology and state regulations will continue to drive consolidation of dispatching operations across Ohio.

Aside from Niles and Warren, the other independent dispatching operations in Trumbull County are in Girard and Lordstown.