Ammon News - AMMAN - In a bid to increase security and road safety in the capital, the Public Security Department (PSD) has recently adopted a high-tech system to streamline the work of emergency responders.

The system includes a single emergency hotline number (911), which Amman residents can call to report crimes, road accidents, fires, medical emergencies and other incidents, as well as 138 surveillance cameras recently installed at 25 major intersections.

Information collected through the hotline and cameras is directed to the PSD's Command and Control Centre (CCC), headquartered in south Amman, from which PSD staff can quickly identify the nature and location of the incident and dispatch emergency responders, according to CCC Director Colonel Zaid Zu'bi.

The new system helps authorities respond more efficiently to citizens’ reports regarding various incidents taking place in city, by offering rapid information about the time and place of a specific incident and whether or not there are any casualties, Zu'bi told The Jordan Times in a recent interview.

He said the information received by the CCC is transmitted directly to a network of concerned parties including the Civil Defence Department, the Traffic Department and the Greater Amman Municipality.

Between 10 to 36 police personnel are continuously present at the centre’s headquarters to respond to 911 calls and relay the reports to their colleagues in the field, Zu’bi explained, adding that the information is also filed in a database to document details of each incident and the identity of the person who reported it.

If an incident takes place where there is a camera, CCC officers can focus on the intersection to control the response of field patrols, monitor response times, and respond to public reactions and possible road blockages, he noted.

“One aim is to confirm whether the information we receive is true or not, because sometimes we get false alarms,” the colonel told The Jordan Times, adding that some people report false accidents to divert the police’s attention in order to commit crimes in other areas.

The surveillance cameras, he noted, will help the PSD catch those who try to exploit an incident to commit opportunistic crimes like theft and provide independent verification when citizens claim that police personnel ill-treated them or did not respond to their requests.

“In order for us to enforce transparency between people and the police, there should be a sort of control and surveillance,” Zu’bi said.

Phone calls received by the centre are all recorded for “quality assurance”, which allows the staff to determine the identity of persons who call, even through their phone numbers if they decline to give their names.

The PSD began testing the 911 service in June 2009, and it officially went into operation last month.

Meanwhile, other emergency lines numbered from 190 to 199 will remain valid for a certain period “until all Amman residents know about 911 and get used to it”, Zu’bi pointed out, explaining that the CCC also needs to make sure its operators are familiar with the new system.

Before the launch of 911, incidents were not reported via phone and recorded manually, with the means to rapidly transmit the message to patrols in the field, nor to document details of the incident, who reported it or whether it really happened, Zu’bi said.

He added that the majority of reports they used to receive were false.

The officer recalled an incident several years ago in which an aeroplane was falsely reported to have a bomb on board.

“We moved and forced the plane to land after it had taken off,” Zu’bi told The Jordan Times, adding that the person who reported the fake bomb threat was sentenced to 15 years behind bars.

He noted that the idea behind establishing the CCC came in response to a growing international trend of using advanced technology for security and counter-terrorism purposes, a need that became more apparent after the 2005 Amman hotel bombings, which killed dozens and injured over a hundred.

(By Thameen Kheetan/ Jordan Times)