All non-emergency calls to the Troy University Police Department are now being answered by the county’s 911 operations center.

The center handled calls after hours in the past but Beaudry says moving them entirely over to the center will streamline communications overall.

“We made this change primarily because we were having a little problem after hours with the rollover system,” says Beaudry. “The phone was having to ring here four, five, six, sometimes seven times and people would call back and complain later that they just weren’t able to get through to anybody and that doesn’t work for us. We want to make sure that all the time 24/7 that we’re reachable. We made this transition so that now it’s seamless when they call the non-emergency phone number they’re going to get the same people all the time and those people are going to be able to send who needs to be sent in a timely manner.”

Those calls will now be answered in the county’s 911 center.

Operators in the center will then determine where the non-emergency calls need to be directed.

911 Center Director David Morgan says that sometimes those non-emergency calls can end up being emergency situations.

“We keep everything separate between emergency and non-emergency,” says Morgan. “So the emergency was an obvious thing. We already answered 911 so if you call 911 that already comes to us so that’s already included in what we considered our call volume. The university makes up a small percentage of those 911 calls and then for us since we’re already answering those we went ahead and picked up what we call the non-emergency or the administrative calls as well. What we wanted to avoid was somebody calling with an emergency on that non-emergency line and so that allows us to go ahead and capture that call and dispatch the appropriate resources.”

Morgan adds that the center will be able to help best determine which agency might need to assist a caller.

“The other big benefit there too is because the university has property all over the city you never know necessarily or you might not know if you’re on university property or not,” says Morgan. “If that’s the jurisdiction of the University Police Department or the City of Troy or even the sheriff’s office, we’re able to sort that out and we figure out where you’re at and we have all of those maps and resources and lists and and everything to know who is appropriate to send.”

For the full story watch Cailey’s report.