City of El Mirage, Arizona: Rural Arizona town implements state of the art Police dispatch system in less than 90 days

The city of El Mirage Police Department decided to separate from their previous dispatch services agreement with the Maricopa County’s Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) and operate their own independent system. The terms of the separation left the El Mirage PD with 90 days to initiate their own dispatch system. By time the city connected with Network Infrastructure Corporation, there were less then 60 days remaining before the city PD would completely disconnected from the MCSO.

Initiating an independent system required hiring new Police officers, acquiring new vehicles, building the IT infrastructure, and training officers on the new system.   The dispatch system had to meet FBI, ACJIS, and DPS security requirements for mobile communications when dealing with personal information.
 
If the situation was not complex enough, it was logistically impossible to install a new 911 system and find qualified dispatch officers in the remaining 60-day timeframe.   If the system had not been fully initiated by the final cut-over date, the citizens of El Mirage would be found without an operational police force leaving the city exposed to an incalculable number of possible lawsuits and violations.
 
Building on previous experience in consulting and implementation of secure Police networks that were compliant with FBI/ACIJIS/DPS requirements for secure remote communications, a customized solution was put into place and implementation begun for the dispatch facility.   However, the 911 and personnel obstacle remained.
 
NIC integrated a complete data communication systems solution bringing together the City of El Mirage and City of Surprise Police Departments. The depth of understanding NIC maintains with our customers and their operations fostered a cooperative effort that allowed the solution to be a success in the limited time available.   The backend IT services required for a successful dispatch system would be owned and maintained be the City of El Mirage, but the individuals managing in-coming emergency calls and dispatching the officers would be handled by the City of Surprise’s existing personnel.
 
The dispatch facility incorporated Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA), Routers, Switches HP Servers, Microsoft Servers, Symantec Ghost, Kerio WinRoute and Kiwi Syslog. The inherent security levels in the Cisco , HP and Microsoft equipment, coupled with the ASA’s function of integrating firewall, voice and video security, SSL and IPsec VPN, intrusion prevention, and content security created the secure IT environment that federal regulations mandate.   NetMotion software provided the City’s mobile force the ability to maintain a secure VPN connection using the wireless IP network
 
In order to provide the remote assistance within Surprise, secure point-to-point wireless communication was required. The implementation also required a redundant communications solution for the long term to ensure services were available in the case of a provider outage. The connection was established using a Redline Wireless secure point-to-point connections using proprietary data encryption. The wireless radios were installed on a privately owned, 3rd party tower after negotiations and a structural engineering study.   

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