Metro area 911 leaders are boosting their communication and buying additional equipment in hopes of avoiding problems that hampered their response during riots last year.
Minneapolis officials said Thursday that they have been holding weekly meetings with regional 911 leaders, bought two additional sets of backup equipment, and are creating a dedicated line of communication should more unrest happen during the murder trial of former officer Derek Chauvin.
"This is a plan that we're working on not just within Minneapolis, but how will this work if something happens in another city," Minneapolis interim 911 director Joni Hodne said during a news conference Thursday morning.
During the riots after George Floyd's death last year, many residents complained that they couldn't get through to 911 or responses were slow.
When cell towers flooded with traffic, some calls got automatically transferred to other counties, which lacked the technology to share information as phone lines jammed and emergency radios crowded with traffic.
"If the cell towers become overloaded and we have calls routing into partner agencies, we've developed a dedicated radio channel that can be used to communicate between the [911 centers] so they're not having to call into our already overloaded telephone lines," Hodne said.
"Should our 911 calls roll to another dispatch center, they can communicate to us on that 911 radio line as well or transfer medical emergency calls directly to our medical partners."
The metro area has 25 911 centers. Each has a computer-aided dispatch system, which allows workers to send call information to officers in the field, often by pinging it to computers in their cars.
