City Council approves four resolutions

CHENEY – The City Council approved four resolutions for the Police Department to improve communications, technological equipment and the evidence collection process during a June 11 meeting at City Hall.

“These new resolutions will speed up our process and save the city at least $147,000 a year,” Interim Police Chief Rick Beghtol said.

The first resolution pertains to Spokane Regional Emergency Communications level agreement.

According to Beghtol, switching to this agreement will give the public greater connectivity to emergency activities the area.

This will provide emergency dispatch services in Crime Check in which is serviced by Emergency Management System. Cheney residents will call Crime Check and it will get to the officer quicker than the current system, he said.

“Computer-aided dispatch or CAD will also replace the out-dated AS-400 system which lags and cannot support other services,” Beghtol said. “With an updated system such as the CAD system would take care of the problem.”

He added that as of right now, the current system doesn’t connect with Washington State Patrol or Spokane County.

Dispatch has to make separate calls to each one if needed.

This system will communicate with all three services.

Currently, Cheney dispatch is down to three people running it and it is a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week service to the community.

“You need at least six people running dispatch,” Beghtol said. “Right now, we have five, but two more will be going onto other positions outside of the city and one of them is the supervisor.”

With three dispatchers in the department, the chief has been working on getting these agreements passed.

He added that the city will be paying overtime and pushing the employees to work long hours.

The current dispatchers will become police support specialists, where they will help in collecting evidence and placing it in the evidence room and categorizing them. This will help police officers to be in the public more often.

The chief added that eventually the agency will have a trailer in its possession to use as a mobile evidence facility to on crime sites, thus preventing the evidence tainted.

The specialist will categorize and seal them on site. Then they will take it to the forensic unit.

Finally, the newly formed specialist will be able to testify in court, when need be.