Police Dispatch System Being Upgraded

The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) Computer Aided Dispatch System is being upgraded as part of efforts to improve the efficiency of police service delivery.

Senior Director in the Ministry of National Security’s Major Technology Transformation Branch, Arvel Grant, told JIS News that the upgrade aims to reduce call handling and incident response time, and increase efficiency when responding to emergencies.

He said it will lead to less manual data recording, more automation of the processes, and allow the JCF to deploy resources more efficiently islandwide.

“This is the system they use to record incidents, when you call 119, to monitor where vehicles are located and to ensure that they assign the response [request] to the nearest [unit]. So, if an incident comes in, they can see where the vehicles are and ensure that they are in contact with the nearest vehicle to respond to the incident,” he said.

Additionally, Mr. Grant said the JCF communication network is being expanded to boost connectivity at police facilities.

“We completed an upgrade last year that tripled the amount of bandwidth/data that can be carried on the network. That was the first step, and now we are in the planning stages to expand the network to more police facilities,” he shared.

Mr. Grant said with approximately 220 police facilities islandwide, the network expansion is being undertaken to bolster connectivity at each point.

“We are doing, [among other things], some more preliminary work and feasibility studies before the next phase of expansion,” he said, adding that “the results of the upgrade have been positive, so far.”