Valleywide : TRW to Develop 911 Emergency Center

A proposal to build an emergency communications center in the San Fernando Valley moved one step closer to reality when the Los Angeles City Council this week approved a contract for TRW Inc. to develop it and a center at another site.

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved a $4.8-million contract with the Redondo Beach-based aerospace and electronics firm to help begin upgrading the city’s trouble-plagued 911 emergency dispatch communications system.

The design contract is the first step in a more than $10-million project to build an enhanced computer system that would link two planned communications centers to handle 911 calls.

Three sites are under consideration for the Valley communications center, according to Eric Rose, spokesman for Councilwoman Laura Chick, head of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee.

They include a former Hughes Corp. site in West Hills, the Van Nuys Civic Center and the West Valley police station. The non-Valley site will be the Westchester police training facility.

Last December, Fluor Daniel Telecommunications Corp., one of three bidders on the project, wrote a letter to city officials complaining that the bid process for the new system was flawed.

Company officials hinted that they might sue the city if the contract was awarded to TRW, but retracted that threat Tuesday.

Last year, according to Los Angeles police statistics, a record 200,000 emergency calls went unanswered by LAPD 911 operators.