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New Orleans May Add Staff To 911 Call Center

The New Orleans City Council will be hearing amendments today on the next budget. One would beef up the 911 dispatch center.

Council President Jason Williams and Councilmember Susan Guidry are supporting a plan to add more than $1 million to increase staff and coordinate training for 911 dispatchers. The system has been slammed lately for police response times of more than an hour. And officers can respond to a reported attack and not know the victim was transported by ambulance for hospital treatment.

There’s no agreement on where that $1 million will come from. Sheriff Marlin Gusman says he needs millions more to operate a constitutional jail.

Williams says budget amendments could shift money from police equipment requests.

“Because of the consent decree we are required to make certain large financial allocations to the jail," he said. "And if everything goes right in your life, you never wind end up in jail, right? So we’ve got to make sure that we have enough resources -- regardless of this consent decree -- to tend to the needs of the people of this city to make sure they’re safe.”  

Guidry says staff training is critical, as is the plan to add dispatchers.

“We’re setting it up to fail if we don’t start off with the adequate number of personnel," she said.

The council must pass a budget by December 1.

Eileen is a news reporter and producer for WWNO. She researches, reports and produces the local daily news items. Eileen relocated to New Orleans in 2008 after working as a writer and producer with the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. for seven years.

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