Oakland County Sheriff calls for national funding of Next Generation 911 centers

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (FOX 2) - Oakland County Sheriff Bouchard is the head of government affairs for the organization "Major County Sheriff's of America."

Sheriff Bouchard assembled a group that critically utilizes 911 services almost every day. After two years of working with various stakeholders, he says they're close to seeing nationwide funding to upgrade our 911 systems.

"At least there was an acknowledgement that this is something we need to do," said Sheriff Bouchard. "And now we need to say this is a thing we need to fund and get going because literally every day probably lives are lost or could be saved if this was done."

With funding, Next Generation 911 centers would be able to get a variety of multimedia and other data from callers and share this information with other 911 centers and first responders in the field n real time. This would work like text messages with information and location.

"What we say is if you can call… do. If you can't call… text, said Sheriff Bouchard. "That'll allow us to get situational emergency calls where people maybe can't speak having a crisis, or maybe they are physically unable to speak."

Sheriff Bouchard says Oakland County has been able to introduce similar tech on a smaller scale, but full-funding would mean everyone could take a step forward.

"We've been able to piecemeal role that out, one of the first in the country, but there's so much other things that we can't do because the system; the backbone, doesn't present that information to any center let alone ours," said Sheriff Bouchard. "We're using the best equipment within our facility that's available with today's technology. What this would do is really build the backbone for the whole system for the country."

FOX 2: "We were talking at the outset, something like $10B coming from build back better plan that would've been infused into these Next Generation 911 systems and I think that got slashed like $470M. Is this in the ballpark of what you need?"

Sheriff Bouchard; "$470M more or less was a placeholder. Probably a more accurate estimate to do this for the country is somewhere between $16B and $19B."

"On a fiscal level, when you talk about the trillions of dollars that they have pushed out over the last couple of years, $19B to upgrade the 50-year-old 911 system for the whole country is not something that should be even paused to do," said Sheriff Bouchard.

Sheriff Bouchard also says he's seen progress on 911 system upgrades acknowledged as a bipartisan issue. He also says that both members of the House and Senate are coming on board.