The Dane County Executive Committee saw updates Thursday regarding the implementation of the new 911 Center automated attendant system and a proposal to assemble a task force to address racial disparities in the county’s criminal justice system.
The automated attendant system, which went into effect last Saturday, has been surrounded by controversy after the city of Madison, objecting to the cost of routing parking enforcement calls to its offices, was able to delay that component of the system before a judge last Friday.
The technology allows for non-emergency calls to be handled by an automated system that directs callers to appropriate departments so 911 dispatchers, who previously addressed the calls, could be freed up to handle emergency calls.
Dane County 911 Director John Dejung said as of the system’s implementation on Saturday, the goal of cutting 10 percent of the calls received daily may be achievable if not bypassed.
“The technology is working great,” Dejung said. “It’s not a static technology, we will continue to grow and improve upon it.”
Board of Supervisors Chair Scott McDonell, District 1, said he would have liked to have seen more information provided to the public as to how the technology works and would be implemented.
McDonell added he was frustrated that despite the relative success of the system so far, complications with respect to parking issues had overshadowed the system’s implementation.
“It seems to me the only reason we’re in court is because of the parking issue,” McDonell said. “It annoys me that we’re in that position.”
The county committee also discussed a report issued in September 2009 by the Dane County Task Force on Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System, which compiled 80 recommendations to help address the issues that have placed Dane County in the top five communities in the nation in terms of racial disparities in the justice system.
Task force co-chair Celia Jackson and Office of Equal Opportunity Director Isadore Knox came before the committee requesting the assembly of an implementation team to address the variety of issues discussed in the report and begin carrying out the report’s recommendations.
“If we wait until we’ve got everything we need, I don’t think that’s advisable,” Jackson said. “We’ve got things that we could work on that don’t cost anything.”
The report contains 10 priority recommendations the county could implement at little to no cost. Some of the recommendations include reviewing possible discriminatory policies in hiring processes, reducing driver’s license suspensions for failing to pay child support or parking fines and issuing enforceable warnings rather than arrests for low-level offenses.
Supervisor John Hendrick, District 6, said the implementation, though absolutely necessary, should be done carefully and correctly.
“The big thing that I have been saying since we published this is that we have some of the worst statistics in the country,” Jackson said. “That’s a blemish on a city that prides itself on being one of the best places to live or raise a family.”
The decision to put together an implementation team was referred to a future meeting pending further public outreach and planning by the task force.
