By Brad Rhen, The Lebanon Daily News
Original publication date: July 22, 2011

LEBANON, Pa. — Police calls in Lebanon may soon be handled by the county. Currently, police calls in the city are handled by the Lebanon police department’s own dispatcher.

However, Lebanon Mayor Sherry Capello sent a letter to the Lebanon County commissioners dated July 8 requesting an evaluation of the Lebanon County Emergency Management Agency handling the city’s police dispatching.

In the letter, Capello requested the evaluation be performed in time for the possibility of the county assuming city dispatching services at the start of 2012.

Messages left for Capello were not returned.

County Commissioner Larry Stohler said under state law, the county is required to handle the city’s calls if the city wants it to.

“That’s not a question,” said Stohler, who is the commissioners’ liaison to the EMA. “The question becomes how much staff, if any more, do you need?”

Stohler said it is hard to determine if the switch would require extra manpower because all 911 calls already go through the EMA dispatch center. If the call is for an incident in the city, it is transferred to the city police dispatcher.

“We get the 911 calls now,” he said. “When the man or woman answers the phone, and they find out the caller is looking for city police, they transfer the call to city police. We do fire and ambulance. The only thing the city does is police.

“It wouldn’t increase the number of calls we currently get because we already get them,” Stohler added. “It would increase the number of calls we have to deal with.”

A similar situation occurred in neighboring Dauphin County when county dispatchers began taking over the City of Harrisburg’s emergency calls last month. About a dozen jobs were lost with the move, which is expected to save Harrisburg about $800,000 a year.

Stohler pointed out that the city is not asking the county to take over the calls at this point.

“They’re asking us to evaluate it,” he said. “But the expectation and the belief is that they will want us to take it over the first of the year. We have to evaluate what our manpower needs will be.”

About the Author
Contact Brad Rhen at [email protected]; 272-5611, ext. 145. 

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