Riverhead ambulance and town in dispute over emergency dispatch services

The Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps is looking to switch its emergency dispatch provider from the Riverhead Police Department to Suffolk County Fire Rescue and Emergency Services.

The town police department is understaffed and cannot provide the level of service Suffolk County FRES can provide, ambulance corps officials said.

“Ultimately it’s not allowing us to provide best service we can provide to residents,” RVAC Chief Mike Caron said in an interview today.

There have been ongoing problems that the town has not resolved, Caron said.

“We notified them about problems and needed improvements over the past couple of years, but it fell on deaf ears,” Caron said. “Nothing was changed or corrected.”

Caron said RVAC officials discussed the plan to switch over to FRES dispatch with police department brass who have since retired. “This plan was in the works for a while,” he said. But when he met with Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller and Capt. Richard Smith “about two weeks ago to go over everything, to make sure everybody was on the same page,” he said, “we were immediately met with resistance.”

Hegermiller seemed to feel “blindsided” by the request, according to Caron. He blamed the problems on police department staff that have retired, Caron said.

The police chief did not return a phone call today seeking comment.

Caron said Riverhead’s public safety dispatchers are trained in Emergency Medical Dispatch, but do not implement the system, known as EMD. EMD requires a dispatcher to follow a certain procedure that includes posing scripted questions to the 911 caller and giving the caller instructions tailored to the nature of the emergency — instructions for performing CPR or administering NARCAN, for example. This is done while an ambulance is on its way, Caron said.

The process can be quite time-consuming, Caron said, and the understaffed public safety dispatch office at Riverhead PD lacks the personnel resources to be able to go through the EMD procedure consistently, according to Caron. As of the last month, the town employed nine full-time dispatchers and five part-time dispatchers.

They have to move on to other calls, because it’s a very busy office and they are stretched thin, the ambulance chief said.

Every 911 call made in Riverhead Town goes to the Riverhead Police Department dispatch office, because Riverhead PD is a “primary answering point” for the town.

Calls for fire and emergency services within the Jamesport, Wading River and Manorville fire districts are routed by Riverhead dispatchers to Suffolk County FRES, which dispatches both Jamesport and Wading River fire departments and rescue services. RVAC provides ambulance services to areas within the Jamesport Fire District, but Jamesport Fire Department first responders answer all EMS calls within the district.

Having EMS calls within the Riverhead Ambulance District also routed to Suffolk FRES would “simplify the operation across the board” for Riverhead dispatchers, Caron said. “They wouldn’t have to figure out who they have to call by determining which district the call is coming from,” he said. “Every 911 call coming into the Riverhead Police Department requesting ambulance response would be handled in the same manner.”

Riverhead PD would still be able to activate RVAC when it needed to in critical circumstances, Caron said. “They would still have that communication ability — inter-operability,” he said.

Caron said Hegermiller asked him why he believed he had the authority to switch RVAC’s dispatching center.

“I believe as the chief of the department, who’s charged with oversight of day-to-day operations of the organization, that falls under my purview,” Caron said.

The police chief disagreed. “He told me that him and the town board feel that the sole decision lies with the town board,” Caron said. “He advised me to contact our legal counsel and have him contact the town’s legal counsel to work this out. So we did and that’s what landed us in the situation we’re in right now,” Caron said.

“Our agreement with the town does not say we must use the Riverhead Police Department dispatch center,” Caron said.

The agreement between the Town of Riverhead Ambulance District, of which the town board is the governing body, and the Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps, which provides emergency medical services to the district, does not mention dispatch services at all.

Today the town board met in executive session with the police chief and town attorney to discuss what was listed on the board’s agenda as a contractual matter with the ambulance corps.

Supervisor Yvette Aguiar said in a phone interview this afternoon that on Friday, an attorney for RVAC sent the town attorney a letter notifying the town that as of Feb. 1, “they are going to take over the services of dispatch.”

Aguiar said although she only became aware of it on Monday, there had been “negotiations” without her or the other board members’ knowledge.

“We have our own fire dispatchers. We need to maintain them. Otherwise there’ll be a lag in time and the response will be delayed and undoubtedly will cause further injuries or even death,” Aguiar said.

“This is now — it looks like it’s going to be contractual. We have a contract with the RVAC and so at the moment it is being addressed with the attorney,” the supervisor said.

Editor’s note: Due to an editing error, a sentence regarding the number of public safety dispatchers employed by the Town of Riverhead was deleted from a paragraph in this story when first published. It has been restored.