In the early hours of Tuesday, July 22, 1997, Monterey CHP Communications shut down the Comm Center to have two windows installed in the exterior walls. A few days ahead of time (and again, immediately before evacuating the center) we notified the allied agency Comm Centers we deal with on a regular basis -- AND our CHP 'sister centers' adjacent to us -- that we would be operating our two radio positions from two patrol units in the carport.... and would have a single phone instrument set up there, too, to handle what would hopefully be few calls for the next few hours.

You see, we also had the facility re-painted, and this required moving all the equipment to the center of the radio room and covering it with tarps. I'll have some pictures of what THAT looked like, shortly.

But this is a view of the Comm Center with the windows installed.

We had no way of adequately getting the computer terminals outside, so we couldn't access any criminal justice telecommunications networks (such as CLETS and NLETS, DMV and NCIC, etc.) so so we made prior arrangements with the allied agency Comm Centers to "run" such requests for us, if necessary. Our field units were briefed for two days ahead of time that their requests had danged well better be important -- none of this "run for registration expiration on this abandoned vehicle" types of things!

It's certainly a good thing that Montery CHP is still using dispatch cards instead of a CAD system, or it would have been a far more inconvenient three-and-half hours!

At 0300 hours, we went "live" from the carport. I staffed the phone. A dispatcher sat in each of two patrol cars, using the radio control heads in the units to communicate with the field units. I set up the phone instrument on the trunk of one of the patrol units, along with my supply of dispatch cards and pens and maps and other accoutrements.

We had arranged for this facility renovation to occur on the "statistically" slowest day of the week, during our least busy hours. Being July, it wasn't cold outside; the dispatchers had come to work dressed in layers, and were able to function without sweatshirts and jackets over their normal attire. The painters and construction workers installing the windows got to work as quickly as they could. They offered US a chance to break through the wall once they had outlines of the window casements prepared!

Additionally, the units on duty had been prepped ahead of time to have cellular phones with them -- and we had their numbers -- in case they weren't able to copy our transmissions from the cars. We had a minimum number of units out there, anyway..... One officer working overtime at a special detail actually thought we had been KIDDING when he contacted us by cellular phone; he couldn't imagine us actually dispatching from the carport.

It went SO well! We had fun! And when the work was done at 0630 hours and we could move back into the Comm Center, we had two lovely windows in our walls -- we could see OUT and folks in our parking lot could see IN.

Forward to the rest of the renovation story.

Back to photos of the Comm Center before there were windows.