The Kansas City Council held a business session on May 2, 2024, beginning with approval of the minutes from April 18, 2024, and then receiving a detailed 911 system update from the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) and the Kansas City Missouri Police Department (KCPD). The discussion focused on new technologies, call answer times, staffing shortages, and regional coordination. A floor introduction was also made regarding additional elements for a detention plan.
Welcome to business session. Our first item is approval of minutes for business session of April 18, 2024. Sir, motion. So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor of approval of minutes say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed. Motion passes. We have from the Mid-America Regional Council and our public safety agencies who work with them on 911, a 911 update. And we will hear from you all. This update was provided to the Board of Police Commissioners as well. So look forward. Sir. Good afternoon. My name is Greg Williams. I'm with the Kansas Missouri Police Department. I'm the division commander for the logistical support division within KCPD. I manage fleet operations communication support, which encompasses the city's radio system, and also the communications unit, which is 911 and dispatch. With me today is Hassan Al Rube with the Mid America Regional Council, who will begin this presentation to provide a quick update with regard to some new technologies that we have implemented and some which are now available if we choose to do so. Thank you, sir. As the major said, I'm Hassan O'Rube, I'm the technical services director for the public safety program at Mark. We uh run the regional 911 system for the surrounding 11 counties. I'm just gonna give some uh updates on a few new features that are available in the 911 system. Uh I'm just here to talk about the technical aspects, any policy uh discussions will be handled by the major. Uh so the first solution is automated abandoned callback. And sir, I might say if you want to sit down and not have to hold that, it's your choice. Uh it's it's fine. Thank you though. Uh the first is automated abandoned callback. Uh so this feature would call back a caller that is hung up. So they were in queue, they hung up before a call taker was able to get to them. This feature calls them back, say, do you still need assistance? If so, press one. If no, press three. So that solution's been uh active since April 7th, and since then, well through the month of April, it made 9,437 calls. Uh so that's 9,437 calls that a human did not have to make. Uh so as we're able to get more data on that, we'll be able to have a better idea of what impact that's having on operations. But uh that's like I said, it's only been active now for about three and a half weeks. Uh the next couple items, uh queue and system selector. Uh last summer, at the request of the Board of Police Commissioners, the Mid-America Regional Council began researching uh an auto-attended solution as it was called by many to put a prompt on 911 to say press one if you need police two if you need fire EMS. So Mark began working with Motorola, who is our 911 service provider on it on that solution. Uh we met with Motorola in March. We'll work with Motorola since last summer on implementing the solution, but they were here in town on in March to go over all the configurations for that system. So Mark is in a position now to implement that solution if and when we're directed to do so by the Kansas City Police Department, Kansas City Missouri Police Department. Uh but we it has not been activated yet, uh, as we have not received that directive. Additionally, uh there's another feature called system selector. Uh for those who aren't aware, our 911 system is a system of systems.