By Bobby Kerlik, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
A communication error between an Allegheny County 9-1-1 dispatcher and the Sheriff’s Office on Thursday prompted county officials to promise to implement a new pager-based system to ensure emergency messages are delivered.

The incident unfolded about 10:45 a.m. when a person made a 9-1-1 call and claimed a witness was being threatened on the fifth floor of the county courthouse, Downtown, county officials and sheriff’s deputies said.

The dispatcher should then have called the sheriff’s 24-hour number, but mistakenly dialed the 9-1-1 caller and failed to get an answer, county manager Jim Flynn said.

Sheriff’s deputies handle courthouse security, but were unaware of the 9-1-1 call until Pittsburgh police arrived at the courthouse.

“I know that (dispatch) wasn’t able to get a hold of them, so we went up,” said Pittsburgh police Sgt. Robert Miller. Four Pittsburgh police officers from Zone 2, which covers Downtown, responded to the call.

It turned out to be a false alarm, but county officials said had the call been real, the error could have been dangerous.

Flynn said the county will implement a new pager system that will act as a backup to emergency calls made to the sheriff’s office at the courthouse. A pager at the sheriff’s office will receive an automatic message anytime police or firefighters are dispatched to the courthouse.

“It just seems archaic to rely on picking up the phone,” Flynn said. “This way, they’ll be notified of any dispatch immediately.”

Sheriff Bill Mullen said emergency phone lines at the sheriff’s office are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“But if the (paging) system is a system of checks and balances, that’s OK with me,” Mullen said.

Flynn said the dispatcher who mistakenly redialed the caller will be retrained.

The county’s new $10 million computer-aided dispatch system known as CAD, which went live in August, has had problems, although Flynn said yesterday’s misstep had nothing to do with them. The CAD system is capable of sending automatic messages, he said.

“This is not a systematic issue,” Flynn said.

The system upgrade failed to include thousands of landmarks and places with no address, a problem county officials said has since been corrected.

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