With the expansion of the Capitol Complex Improvement District, Capitol Police expect the number of calls it receives for service in a year will more than triple.
“Last year, we received 16,000 calls for service,” said Capt. Michael Maldonado of Capitol Police.
“We’re anticipating receiving 50,000 to 60,000 calls this year due to the expanded boundaries and the fact that people have gotten acclimated to calling Capitol Police.”
The district’s boundaries, which were expanded in July to take in more of northeast Jackson, now extend as far north as Westbrook Road to the Pearl River.
Maywood Mart, LeFleur’s Gallery shopping center and Kroger on I-55 as well as Canton Mart Square fall within the expanded boundaries. So does Parham Bridges Park, Spann Elementary, Jackson Academy and McLeod Elementary.
The neighborhoods of Maywood Circle, Acadia Circle, Fontaine Place, the Sheffield Drive area, Winchester, Wilhurst and Highland Terrace, Riverwood, Rollingwood and McLeod are also included.
Capitol Police has primary jurisdiction in the district but works with the Jackson Police Department and the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department.
In 2022, the district consisted of about eight square miles in downtown Jackson with mostly state office buildings and businesses. The number of calls for service in that area dropped after 5 p.m. when offices and businesses closed at the end of the day, Maldonado said.
“Now that we’ve taken in more residential areas, the calls have picked up,” Maldonado said. “The call volume is not just in the day but at night.”
There are two ways to call Capitol Police for service.
One way is to call Capitol Police at 601-359-3125, which will go directly to its dispatch center.
The other way is to call 911, the go-to number that is easily remembered during an emergency such as after a car wreck or in a medical crisis.
The difference is that dialing Capitol Police directly does not automatically alert a dispatcher to the emergency nature of the call. “Capitol Police wouldn’t know it was an emergency,” said Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, of which Capitol Police is part of.
Currently, Capitol Police directly receives about half the calls to 911 that it should be due to a glitch. The 911 calls not directly received go to the Jackson Police Department, which then transfers them to Capitol Police.
“Right now, we’re receiving 50 percent to 60 percent of the calls made to 911,” said Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey. “We’re working out the glitches. We’re trying to avoid that extra step of the calls having to be transferred. We want them to come directly to us.”
Many of the calls made to 911 are from cell phones, he said. A cell phone operates off a cell tower, and the technology doesn’t always precisely pinpoint the correct 911 call center, he said. Calls made using Voice Over Internet Protocol may not route to the correct 911 service, Luckey said.
Calls to 911 from landlines are getting through to Capitol Police without going to JPD and then being transferred, he said.
Motorola Solutions and Intrado, which develop and deploy emergency 911 response solutions, are working to iron out the glitch, but there’s no definite date for when the improvements will be made, Luckey said.
“All we can say is they’re working on it very diligently,” he said. “They know it’s a problem. We’re at the mercy of the corporation working on it. I do believe these issues will be resolved, but it will take time.
Other law enforcement agencies are also experiencing the same problem with 911.
We’re not the only one having problems,” Luckey said. “The difference with us is we’re in the process of having a 911 system that we’ve never had before. We’ve had dispatchers and a communications center that answered calls 24/7, but we’ve never had a 911 system.”
Part of getting the 911 system functioning as it should involves making sure the “geofence” correctly identifies the boundaries of the district.
Capitol Police currently has 14 dispatchers and would like to hire additional ones to help with the expanded call volume, Maldonado said. Each dispatcher works 12-hour shifts, either from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. or 6 p.m. until 6 a.m.
The dispatch center is located in the lower level of Capitol Police headquarters, which since October 2024 has been located on High Street. The building, which was renovated, was once Wright & Ferguson Funeral Home.
To become a dispatcher in Mississippi, one must complete specific training for the job. In general, the job requires good communication skills, patience, a pleasing personality and the ability to multi-task, Maldonado said.
“Certainly, the younger generation has an upper hand with technology and multitasking,” Maldonado said, “but we have a lot of dispatchers who are older, who are good at de-escalating situations over the phone.”
A dispatcher sits at a console with eight computer monitors, each of which has a different function and is required to get the job done.
One monitor keeps track of calls received and the locations of officers who are working various calls and another is for checking databases when an officer calls in a license plate number or asks for a criminal history, and that’s just a sample of the tasks a dispatcher must juggle.
While on the phone with a caller and keeping track of officers, a dispatcher has to input notes about what’s occurring.
Dispatching is a stressful job, unfortunately, it’s a job for which the pay does not match the stress.
A dispatcher with no experience receives a starting pay in the low- to mid-$30,000 range. “We’re looking to improve that,” Luckey said.
A dispatcher is one of the most important jobs in law enforcement, Luckey said.
“Without them, first responders wouldn’t know where to go,” he said.
