10:00 PM PDT on Tuesday, July 20, 2010

By PAUL LAROCCO
The Press-Enterprise

Three years ago, San Bernardino police sought to improve response times to emergency calls, which then averaged more than six minutes.

They appeared to be successful. By the end of 2008, department statistics showed that officers were being sent to such incidents in just over four minutes, or 34 percent faster.

But the drop was partly the result of an uncommon dispatch practice known as “cloning,” in which a less-critical call is duplicated and recreated at the moment circumstances give it more urgency, creating the impression — on paper — of a more immediate officer response.

While police administrators said this week that they were unaware of the practice until a reporter brought it to their attention, they emphasized that they did not believe it is improper, and is not done enough to truly skew statistics.

Last month, for example, dispatchers took 154 emergency calls, with only three “cloned” from lower-priority incidents, said Lt. Jarrod Burguan, a department spokesman. Those three calls accounted for a 7 percent drop in response time, from 4.9 to 4.55 minutes.

“There’s a difference, but there’s nothing nefarious going on here,” Burguan said.

He added that a much larger impact to response times came as a result of a second policy change enacted in late 2007. Dispatchers were directed to only take basic call information, such as description and location, before sending an officer, and then provide supporting details.

Regardless of the practical impact, dispatch supervisors with other agencies said “cloning” does not appear to be used regularly.

“I don’t know anybody who makes a practice of that,” said Chris Hinshaw, a retired San Diego County sheriff’s communications coordinator. “Politically speaking, I don’t think it would be a wise decision.”

Hinshaw said one of the only legitimate uses for cloning calls within a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system would be to duplicate the record for a shift change between dispatchers.

Cyndee Freeman, the communications manager for the San Bernardino County sheriff’s Valley dispatch center, said her employees sometimes clone calls to create a record to be transferred to another jurisdiction.

“That’s the only reason,” she said.

San Bernardino police’s use of the practice came following public criticism of their response times.

In a February 2009 internal memo, Communications Manager Paul Guillen reminds dispatchers that they should still be “cloning” calls that go from low priority to emergencies.

“While this issue is no longer in the daily newspapers, it remains an important goal of the Department to keep response times below five minutes for emergency calls,” he wrote.

The memo, titled “Reminder of Priority ‘E’ Calls,” begins by citing the criticism police took from activists in early 2008. It goes on to underline and bold the word “clone” in providing instruction to dispatchers.

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