SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. — It’s the latest upgrade in a system plagued with problems, but Snohomish County says this upgrade will improve response times. The county will use GPS tracking devices on every emergency vehicle to allow dispatchers to send the closest one to you when you call 911.
People we talked to in Everett say it's badly needed. David Fish says he does his civic duty, but he says the police don't always do theirs.
"I was just watching spray can by spray can, little lines,” he remembered. “They were taking their time.”
He says he was on the phone with 911 while a group of people sprayed graffiti on his Everett apartment building; police came an hour later -- too late to catch the vandals.
"They could have caught them,” he told us, pointing to where a fresh coat of paint now covers the vandalism.
Everett police and all of Snohomish County emergency responders want to change that. They're implementing a new countywide dispatch system called New World, which includes GPS tracking devices on patrol cars, ambulances and fire trucks. The idea is so dispatch will know where every vehicle is at all times, but New World has been plagued with problems.
"We had many different users logging in at the same time,” Snohomish County’s Shari Ireton told us back in May. “There's a lot of lag or delay in getting information."
The county's vehicles already have the trackers and the county has been testing the entire New World system for years, but Ireton told us it's still so slow the launch has been delayed a half dozen times and is now set for late October.
People like David are hopeful -- but skeptical.
"It could help in many ways but I've asked the cops a few times how -- why not quicker?” David’s neighbor, Jessica Santos, explained. She was the victim of a car prowl. “’Oh, we're just short-handed’ or ‘We're doing a shift change.’"
The Washington State Patrol already uses GPS tracking on its vehicles -- not all the time, but when a trooper pings the device during an emergency.