Sandy Springs, Johns Creek starts joint 911 service Tuesday

By April Hunt

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Call 911 from Sandy Springs or Johns Creek early Tuesday and you will get a new greeting.

“ChatComm 911,” the voice on the other end of the line has been trained to say. “What is your emergency?”

Those will be the first official words uttered by dispatchers at the Chattahoochee River 911 Authority’s new center on Mt. Vernon Highway. The $5.6 million facility, a joint venture of the two cities, goes live at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, after years of planning.

“We are now responsible for our own fate,” Johns Creek city manager John Kachmar said at an open house at the facility Friday morning. “We will be evaluated by the citizens, and in the final analysis, we’d rather be responsible.”

The north Fulton County cities began talking about starting their own 911 network years ago, after frustrations with the county system.

Residents in both cities complained of delays, both in getting help at the scene and in getting dispatchers to the phone.

The problems came to the forefront last year, after a dispatcher sent an ambulance crew to an Atlanta address instead of the Johns Creek home of Darlene Dukes, who had called for help. Dukes later died.

With millions of dollars in specialized software and 46 trained emergency medical dispatchers who can begin to direct response over the phone, the new center is tended to quickly fix those kinds of problems.

“Our goal is to get this center as close to perfect as possible,” said Noah Reiter, the assistant city manager in Sandy Springs who worked on the project.

There are penalties if that doesn’t happen. The cities have a joint contract with iXP Corp., which must meet or exceed national standards on response time, or pay for failures.

Penalties can come out of the $3.5 million contract — split by population, with Sandy Springs paying $2.5 million and Johns Creek $1 million — or out of its own accounts.

“For the first time in a long time, we will be both efficient and effective in our operation,” said Johns Creek Police Chief Ed Densmore.