Full Notification

The City of Santa Clara's 9-1-1 Communications Center relies on a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system to initiate calls for service, to dispatch police, fire and medical personnel, and to maintain the status of responding public safety units.

On November 5, 2018, the Communications Center cut over to a new CAD system, supported by Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure. The CAD implementation was a massive project which included countless hours in determining business needs, obtaining funding, interviewing vendors and demonstrating their products, on-site visits, negotiations, reports to Council, configuring the new system, adjusting business practices and performing multiple tests of the systems various components. This project has truly been a collaborative effort and would not have been possible without a full-commitment from the Police, Fire, and IT Departments as well as the City Attorney's Office.

The new CAD system features:
Dynamic map with GPS providing greater resource awareness to Public Safety Dispatchers and responding personnel (e.g. route mapping to include road closures/construction, knowledge of where units are located – officer safety)
Enhanced call-handling
Ability to attach the closest police or fire resource to a call for service, as opposed to the previous beat or station structure, expected to deliver faster response times
Dispatcher and Officer capability to review previous police interactions with an individual or address prior to arrival
Ability to collect all related case details in one location
Enhanced data reporting and analysis for future decision making
Ability for mobile application integration with other current systems and future capabilities (e.g. Crossroads, Cry Wolf, WebRMS)
CAD application on work phones which allows additional resources to be tracked via GPS and allows detectives to do more work in the field, increases work efficiency
Ability to capture more accurate resource status
Fire Department has tablet access to key premise information (e.g. water hook ups, lock combos etc.)
In addition, more efficient business practices have been implemented as a result of the new capabilities of CAD.

On February 5, 2019, the Santa Clara City Council recognized the CAD Implementation Team for their work, commitment, foresight and dedication to the successful completion of the new CAD system.