Ground Broken for Valley 911 Center

Donning hard hats, Los Angeles city and law enforcement officials symbolically broke ground Monday for the new 911 emergency dispatch center being built at 23001 Roscoe Blvd.

“Today we come one step closer in making Los Angeles the safest city in America,” Mayor Richard Riordan said at the ceremony on the construction site.

With a tentative completion date of November 2002, the three-story, 58,000-square-foot building will house the LAPD’s emergency dispatch personnel and state-of-the-art communications equipment.

Emergency communications are the “heart of LAPD,” and the new center will “provide better services to this community,” said Los Angeles Police Department Chief Bernard C. Parks, as construction workers noisily drilled, hammered and bulldozed dirt behind him.

The new Valley building, which cost 18.5 million, will be identical to another facility being built next to Parker Center downtown, according to officials. Each center will be able to handle the entire city’s emergency needs in case one becomes disabled.

“In the event of a natural disaster affecting any of the centers, the city is covered,” said Glenn Cabrera, management analyst for the project.

The center’s site, formerly owned by Hughes Missile Systems, was chosen for several reasons, said Roger Ham, the LAPD’s chief information officer. The location is near fiber optic lines and in a direct “line of sight” with Mt. Lee, facilitating transmissions to a communications site there. Because the West Hills center is nearly 30 miles from the downtown center, it is more likely that one of the two will survive in case a major earthquake strikes, Ham said.

Both centers are expected to be able to withstand an 8.3-magnitude earthquake, Ham said.

The new center should boost productivity and vastly improve work conditions for 911 operators, as well as improve morale. Currently, emergency dispatch personnel are working “four floors underground,” said Capt. Tammy Tatreau, commanding officer for the LAPD’s Communications Division. “We’re not sure if the sun is shining or if it’s rainy outside.”

The voter-approved Proposition M bond measure, passed in 1992, is providing the funding for the new centers, part of an ongoing effort to upgrade the LAPD’s antiquated emergency communications system.