The Operations Program of the Bureau of Communications is located at 1304 Fairview Street on the 1st floor. The Communications Center is the NERVE CENTER for public safety in the City of Allentown. The Communications Center’s primary function is to save lives and to protect the property of the citizens of Allentown. To accomplish this goal, it is the Center’s responsibility to receive and dispatch citizens’ requests for Police, Fire, EMS, Animal Control, and Parking Authority assistance, as soon as possible. 9-1-1 Dispatchers make every attempt to answer all telephones within three rings and dispatch all emergency calls within one minute from the time of receipt.

The Center utilizes Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD) on all EMS requests. This is accomplished by the Shift Supervisors and certified dispatchers using a pre-formatted guide during the call taking process for all medical emergencies. After obtaining basic information about the incident and dispatching the appropriate assistance, instructions can then be relayed to the caller to provide medical assistance to the patient, until first responders arrive on the scene.

The Communications Center is the primary monitoring location for the City video surveillance network. The Center has the capability to view and control all 86 cameras currently in the system. There are also 8 video feeds from the PennDOT camera network that are able to be viewed. The dispatch personnel utilize the camera system to monitor for criminal activities, verification and information enhancement for citizen reported complaints and for support of public safety personnel.

Other services the Communications Center provides are monitoring the fire alarm systems, both in City Hall and the Public Safety Building, as well as security alarms in City Hall. The Center is also responsible for City bureau and utility call-out notifications, during normal business hours in addition to after hours and weekends. 
 

2011 Workload

The Allentown Communications Center is responsible for providing services for the Allentown Police Department, Emergency Medical Services (EMS), Fire Department, Allentown Parking Authority, and Animal Control. This responsibility includes answering and dispatching calls for service for these City agencies.

Calls Dispatched*

POLICE	127,315
EMS	14,268
FIRE	11,753
ANIMAL CONTROL	639
PARKING AUTHORITY	6,907
PUBLIC WORKS	2,107
TOTAL	162,350

*Dispatched calls are the number of calls actually given out over the air, and assigned a complaint number. This does not reflect the total number of calls received into the Communications Center. The actual number of calls into the Communications Center in 2011 was 223,308.