Dispatch Center Will Move to Valley : Police: With the passage of Prop. M, the entire system will be overhauled. Officials predict faster 911 service.

When the Los Angeles Police Department overhauls its emergency communications system thanks to the passage of Proposition M, it plans to move its communications headquarters to the San Fernando Valley, police officials said Thursday.

Valley residents can expect better, faster service because the Police Department plans to hire 911 operators from the local employment pool, said Linda Bunker, the civilian commanding officer of the department’s Emergency Command Control Communications System.

“That’s an advantage,” Bunker said. “You’d have people who know the area taking calls about the area.”

Currently, emergency calls for help from police, the city Fire Department and paramedics are handled by 911 operators in a downtown bunker four floors below City Hall East. The center also handles communications between police officers in the field, in squad cars and at police stations.

The Valley used to have its own facility in the Van Nuys police center, but that was closed in 1983 when the city began consolidating all communications operations in the downtown bunker, known as the Central Dispatch Center.

Passage of Proposition M means that as much as $235 million in new taxes will be spent to improve the Police Department’s ability to handle emergency calls, to dispatch patrol units and to communicate with officers in the field.

It also means Valley residents will once again get more attention from the Police Department.

“It will be a help, certainly,” said Capt. Greg Berg, commanding officer of the department’s communications division. Berg oversees emergency communications personnel, and Bunker is in charge of the technical aspects of the system.

According to tentative plans, a second emergency communications center will be built somewhere downtown to serve as a backup to the Valley headquarters, and to handle calls from southern and eastern parts of the city. That way, police said, the Valley operations center can concentrate on calls coming in from the Valley and the Westside. The existing bunker facility eventually will be closed.

Most of the details regarding the planned communications headquarters--including where it will be--are still in the conceptual stages, top Police Department officials said. It will probably be at least five years before the Valley facility is built, and seven years before the new downtown system is in place.

Nevertheless, local officials are ecstatic.

“It’s the greatest news since the water came down over the aqueduct for the people who live here,” said Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker, who commands all Valley police divisions. “It will produce a major enhancement to the rapid response to their safety.”

So inadequate is the current emergency communications system that more than a million calls never got through to police last year, including ones from 200,000 people seeking emergency assistance, Berg said. Countless other people are put on hold for as long as three minutes when they call 911.

“It’s horrendous,” Kroeker said. “That strikes terror in the mind of someone who is about to get assaulted, when we don’t even answer the phone.”

Kroeker said having two centers will eliminate that problem and will make it easier for his officers to communicate with each other and their stations.

A task force of city officials and private consultants will be established as early as next week to begin determining how to spend the $235 million, with the location of the two new facilities a top priority, Bunker and Berg said. The Police Department also plans to buy new two-way radios for officers and squad cars, and to upgrade its telecommunications and computer equipment.

Although plans could change, the department hopes the Valley facility will have 30,000 square feet of space, so it can house as many as 60 telephone operators and the administrative and support staff for the entire communications operation, Bunker said.

Each of the two facilities is expected to cost more than $29 million. Department officials hope to build the Valley facility next to a police station so it can have around-the-clock security.

An overhaul of the system has been in the works for at least three years, but efforts to win voter approval for financing improvements failed twice, in November, 1990, and April, 1991.

“Passage of Prop M was a pleasant surprise. No one in the Police Department was counting on this money,” Berg said. “Now we have to brainstorm and figure out where to go. It will be a major task . . . similar to our planning for the 1984 Olympics.”