Chief Jackson’s Quest for a Better Police Dispatch
Seattle’s Chief of Police returns from a fact-finding mission to Portland and San Francisco, hoping to import a superior telephone patrol system to curb the static and confusion of the local line.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Chief of Police Andrew Jackson returned to Seattle yesterday after investigating police patrol systems in Portland and San Francisco. He praised the Portland 'Gamewell' system for its clear telephone lines, noting that the use of three wires and reverse currents eliminated the induction noise that plagues Seattle's current network. While the San Francisco system was ahead in its registry capabilities, the Chief found Seattle’s patrol wagon operations to be superior. Jackson intends to advocate for the adoption of the Portland telephone technology to replace the current system, which he described as inefficient due to constant interference.
“I found that instead of yelling one minute, whispering the next and in the meantime hearing the confused sounds caused by induction, words came clear.”
This is a quintessential local governance story: the constant pursuit of 'modernization' for city services. It captures the very moment municipal police departments were shifting to early telephonic infrastructure.
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