Security upgrades coming to Cole Co. 911 center

Safety and security upgrades are moving ahead at the 911 center in Jefferson City.

In a unanimous vote Tuesday morning, the Cole County Commission agreed to pay for a portion of the $300,000 project.

Cole County is going to contribute $74,000 for the project, and the rest is coming from the city’s half cent sales tax that went into effect in 2012.

JCPD wants these upgrades as soon as possible.

“We have known for a while that we were gonna have to devote some money for upgrades and the time has arrived to upgrade our phone system,” said Jefferson City Police Chief Roger Schroeder.

The phone system is 12 years old and collects and transfers phone call data from the lines to computer screens.

“You can imagine, 12-year-old technology. That’s a long time in current technology terms. So, what we’ve done is we wanted to upgrade. We want to stay state-of-the-art and at this time, the upgrade would get us back into that arena,” said JCPD Support Services Division Director Eric Wilde.

Even though the current set-up is serving the department’s purposes, Captain Wilde said it’s important to anticipate future needs.

“Comparatively speaking, if you can think about the cell phones we were using twelve years ago, they’ve changed considerably. Communications technology is always changing,” said Wilde.

The upgrade is especially time sensitive because the company, Rescue Star, that made the machine is out of business.

“They no longer make parts for our system, so we want to do this as soon as possible,” said Schroeder.

Schroeder said they hope to have the system fully upgraded by the end of the summer.

One new feature they’re wanting to implement with the new system is the ability for people to text the 911 center for emergency response.