E-Comm will once again answer the New Westminster Police Department’s non-emergency calls.
The police department announced April 10 that it will be transitioning all of its non-emergency call-taking back to E-Comm as of April 15. E-Comm already provides dispatch and emergency call-taking for New Westminster and has been providing non-emergency service for the department after-hours and on weekends.
In 2023, NWPD staff took over answering non-emergency calls on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
According to an NWPD news release, E-Comm has made several improvements to its non-emergency service, including the creation of a dedicated non-emergency call-taking team and the introduction of new technology to improve the caller experience.
As a result, the police department said E-Comm’s non-emergency service levels have strengthened significantly.
“I’d like to thank the NWPD staff in our communications operations centre for the service they provided the citizens of New Westminster in our time of need,” Chief Const. Paul Hyland said in a news release. “Now that our public safety partners at E-Comm have transformed their service delivery, the time is right to return to E-Comm 9-1-1. We’re confident residents will benefit from their improved system.”
Stephen Thatcher, E-Comm’s vice-president of operations, said E-Comm is pleased to build on its strong partnership with the New Westminster Police Department as its transitions non-emergency call-taking back to E-Comm full-time. He said this service will now operate alongside the 24/7 emergency call-taking and dispatch services E-Comm continues to provide to the city and its police.
“Our non-emergency service is stronger than it’s been in years, thanks to major improvements — such as a dedicated call-taking team and our new interactive software, which gives callers more options between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., including wait time estimates, callback requests, and SMS text updates for police file numbers,” he said in the release.
How we got here
After decades of operating its own dispatch system, the New Westminster Police Department announced in June 2013 that all of its emergency call-taking and dispatch services had successfully been integrated into the E-Comm regional emergency communications centre. At that time, the NWPD became the 13th police agency dispatched by E-Comm, which also dispatched for many B.C. fire departments, including New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services.
“The size and scope of the E-Comm centre means that when there is a major event in one of the communities dispatched by the organization, E-Comm can draw from its large contingent of highly-trained staff and quickly re-deploy resources to help manage the increase in 9-1-1 calls,” said an E-Comm news release. “This provides an increased level of service an individual agency would be hard-pressed to achieve on its own.”
Nearly a decade later, in January 2022, the New Westminster police board discussed concerns about the level of service that E-Comm (Emergency Communications for British Columbia) was providing to New West residents and businesses.
At the Jan. 18, 2022 meeting, then NWPD Chief Const. Dave Jansen said the number of abandoned calls in the fourth quarter of 2021 had increased from 44 per cent to 58 per cent.
“Last year, we had 27,000 non-emergency calls, of which 12,000 were abandoned, or 44 per cent,” Jansen told the board. “I won’t even begin to tell you the wait-time averages — they have gone from not great to horrible.”
In response to growing concerns, the New Westminster Police Department announced in July 2022 that the police board had directed the department to work with E-Comm to transition a portion of non-emergency call-taking to NWPD staff. In the news release, the NWPD said it’s “extremely important” to the department to have a call-taker available to people who need to file a non-emergency police report.
