COPS Monitoring expanded and strengthened its operations by increasing staff in its Scottsdale, Ariz. central station. COPS owns and operates three strategically located load-sharing central stations in Arizona, New Jersey and Florida. “We believe that true reliability relies on more than just redundant systems and equipment — it also depends on people,” said Jim McMullen, president of COPS Monitoring. “Even the most robust systems can be rendered useless if your people can’t get to work to handle the alarms and phone calls.”

To balance staffing more equally between their three central stations and to improve their failover capabilities, COPS promoted 10-year COPS veteran Dale Marzili to operations manager of its Arizona central station. Dale, along with five additional dispatchers and shift managers, who have an average experience of nearly four years, relocated from New Jersey to Arizona in May. COPS also hired 13 additional dispatchers in Arizona who have all been put through COPS’ initial 120-hour training program.

“We take our responsibility to our dealers seriously,” McMullen said. “By diversifying our central stations and our workforce by increasing our strength in Arizona, we are not only showing our commitment to operate multiple 24/7 facilities, we also significantly reduce the chances that a single local catastrophe or weather event will affect our ability to serve our customers. Don’t be surprised if we open even more central stations.”

COPS’ philosophy was put to the test during the record-breaking 2010 snowstorms that crippled the Northeast region. Although the storms affected its ability to staff its New Jersey central station, COPS compensated by over-staffing its other central stations in Arizona and Florida. The result was a significant 2.69 sec. reduction of its 2009 average alarm response time of 16.09 sec.