Portland Courant

In the fall of 2022, the City of Portland’s Community Safety Division started working with Mission Critical Partners (MCP) – a consulting firm specializing in public safety and justice – to perform a public safety provider call allocation and staffing examination.

The project involves two initiatives:

1. A call allocation study to investigate how emergency and non-emergency calls are prioritized and dispatched; and
2. A staffing study to determine whether there are enough Portland public safety responders to adequately respond to these calls.

The call allocation study is now final and includes ten recommendations for Portland City Council to consider. The recommendations broadly include:

• Strengthening the Community Safety Division’s role in coordinating existing public safety services.
• Improving existing call allocation policies.
• Developing a community services and response network for resources that can be dispatched to non-traditional 911 (fire, medical, or police) or 311 (city governmental) calls.
• Raising awareness with public safety responders and the community about alternative response options.
• Adopting better ways to measure how public safety responders provide successful service to the community.
• Considering ways to leverage new and existing technologies.
• Develop a robust employee and community education campaign including increased presence and transparency on social media

For the full report and recommendations, visit:

• Public Safety Call Allocation Study – Executive Summary; and
• Public Safety Call Allocation Study – Full Report.

Mission Critical Partners developed the recommendations after completing a review of the technology used to answer and dispatch calls; analyzing data on call processing and trends; conducting interviews to understand expectations; considering alternative-response models; reviewing implementation challenges; and using their expertise in other jurisdictions.

Original source can be found here