City police 911 system needs work

A mechanical failure led to a 35minute halt to 911 calls on May 31 in Peterborough, according to city police Chief Stuart Betts.

Betts released a statement Tuesday explaining the reasons behind, and the steps taken after, the brief outage last week.

“On behalf of Peterborough Police Service, I extend my apologies for the outage,” Betts stated.

Both the primary and secondary communication lines failed on that day, he stated, and no 911 calls were connecting to police.

City police notified the public about the outage at the time through its social media accounts and provided followup notifications after the service was restored.

During a previous renovation at the Water Street police station, a “subpanel had been installed in the station that was to run a number of circuits, including the air-conditioning unit as well as the communications centre.”

On May 31, temperatures rose to a high of 30 C and the demands on the station’s air-conditioning unit caused the subpanel to overload.

“Battery-powered backups should have kicked in with an alarm to notify staff,” however “they had not been connected and set up at the time they had been installed, therefore no one was aware of the power failure until they had been depleted.”

Following the incident, the subpanel has been replaced with a more powerful one, battery-powered backup alarms have been set up and tested and regular testing will occur, according to Betts.

“During planned future renovations another subpanel will be added and one battery-powered backup will be dedicated to each panel for additional redundancy,” Betts stated.

While many might not have noticed the brief outage, the infrastructure at the Peterborough police station is aging and more work will be needed, he stated.

It will take “considerable work required over the coming years to restore it to address long-standing facility concerns to avoid similar issues,” Betts stated.

City police have been studying the need to build a new police station downtown to replace the Water Street police station but no recommendations have been made.