Citing the nearly five minutes it took for Chesterton Police dispatch to request an ambulance following a shootout in front of the Hilton Garden Inn in Chesterton Wednesday morning, Porter County Board of Commissioners President Jim Biggs says evidence is mounting that the towns of Chesterton and Porter need to join the county’s E911 consortium for their police dispatching and that the local income tax (LIT) needs to be raised to help pay for it.

A Chesterton Police officer who responded to the scene was shot, requiring air evacuation, and Joseph P. Gerber, 45, of Winamac, died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds in a shootout with police in the 500 block of Gateway Boulevard, according to an autopsy performed by the Porter County Coroner’s Office.

Chesterton Police were initially called by a Hilton Garden Inn employee who stated that there was a man who was acting “suspiciously” on their property. Gerber was not a registered guest at the hotel, the Indiana State Police said.

When the officers met with Gerber, the situation quickly became a confrontation and the shooting took place outside the hotel in the middle of Gateway Boulevard, police said. There were more than 50 yellow markers in the street, many of them covering shells.

Porter County E911 Director Debby Gunn said her first-class telecommunicators can monitor the calls going into Porter and Chesterton Police, though it’s not required. She said Wednesday morning, they happened to be doing so and heard in real time gunshots at 8:03:45 a.m.

“Within seconds of hearing those gunshots, we were able to generate medical calls,” she said.

Four seconds later, the officer announces he’s hit. Eight seconds later, a civilian calls 911. Fifty seconds after the first downed officer’s call, his colleague announces the first officer was “hit in the spine. Get EMS here STAT. Suspect is down, not moving.”

At 8:08:03 a.m. PC E911 received the first call from Chesterton Police dispatch stating, “medics are clear to approach.” Gunn explained that Chesterton and Porter Police each have one dispatcher on duty answering calls for their respective departments. The towns of Chesterton and Porter created the joint dispatch center more than nine years ago when they decided against joining Porter County’s dispatch center.

Gunn said dispatchers there are responsible for creating incidents, adding notes and officers to incidents, answering phone calls, and handling window traffic from the public. “That could contribute, and probably did contribute, to that delay in the call,” she said of the nearly five minutes it took Chesterton Police dispatch to request an ambulance.

“We could have had a five-minute delay and that’s completely unacceptable,” Gunn said of what would have transpired if her staff had not been listening in and ordered medics to the scene. “That could be life or death.”

Porter Police and Chesterton Police share a dispatch center in Porter and are the only municipal police in Porter County that do their own dispatching. All other towns use Porter County E911, which is a designated Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) with the state, as does the Porter County Sheriff’s Office for its patrol of unincorporated Porter County.

PC E911 does, however, dispatch fire and EMS for Porter and Chesterton and has done so for over 30 years.

Cellphone surcharge fees primarily fund PSAP. Because the Chesterton and Porter dispatch center is not a PSAP, it does not receive any of that funding.

Gunn explained that dispatchers must spend valuable time determining if a call doesn’t require fire or ambulance service before appropriate entities can be deployed. “So there’s a significant delay in that alone,” she said, giving the example of a resident calling with a domestic disturbance dispute.

Biggs, R-North, who is himself a 40-year resident of Chesterton, and whose brother was a member of the Porter Police force for 20 years, says he doesn’t want to do battle with the two towns.

“I’m not bringing that up because I relish the idea of 911 taking on another large call area,” Biggs said by phone Thursday. “Yesterday is an example of how detrimental it can be.”

He said he has a lot of respect for the two police departments. “This isn’t about them. This is about what program can we offer that will work best for residents and police officers.”

Chesterton Police Chief Tim Richardson said talk about the 911 center is a “conversation for another day.” As for the potential increase in the county income tax for law enforcement, Richardson said those discussions have been “on and off.”

Porter Town Council President Laura Madigan, D-Ward 1, said that while Commissioner Biggs contends that there was a delay in the emergency squad response, she has heard a different story. While the medics may not have been there, two Porter Police officers trained as medics were among the first respondents, Madigan said.

Porter Police Chief Todd Allen said that Sgt. Thomas Blythe and Officer Matt Reynolds helped administer first aid to the Chesterton Police officer who was shot before the emergency squad arrived. He was released from an Illinois trauma center late Wednesday.

Allen said that he wasn’t there so he doesn’t know the details, but he had to replace the medical equipment used by the officers at the scene that day.

The town of Porter is committed to keeping its dispatch center with Chesterton as long as possible. “As of right now, the town of Porter is pleased with the high-quality service and fast response,” Madigan said.

Madigan said the dispatchers are a small team that “knows the turf,” so their quality of service is going to be better for the local community. Biggs and Gunn said that argument doesn’t hold any water if the county has been trusted to locate those in need for fire and EMS calls, which make up 80% of all 911 calls, for over three decades.

“Our tech is far superior,” Gunn said, referring to newly added AI software that auto-dispatches while telecommunicators continue the human interaction.

“That center doesn’t have the training mandates (of a PSAP) that our center provides. That center doesn’t have the budget that our center provides,” she added.

For Porter and Chesterton to join PC E911, there would have to be buy-in from their two town councils, as well as simple majority votes from the Porter County Council and Board of Commissioners.

Biggs admits he doesn’t have a good read on how the council would view a LIT increase, other than support he says he’s gotten from Council Vice President Red Stone, R-1st, whose district includes Chesterton and surrounding communities. The county’s LIT rate is 0.5%.

Porter County Councilman Jeremy Rivas, D-2nd, is all for a consolidation. “There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be consolidated,” he said, but “I don’t agree this is a reason why we should go out and raise taxes.”

County Councilman Greg Simms, D-3rd, said not only do consolidation and raising the LIT seem mutually exclusive, but the two towns’ wishes should be respected.

“Where is their say in all of this?” he asks. “Shouldn’t we have that info first before worrying about the funding?”

Shelley Jones and Jim Woods are freelance reporters for the Post-Tribune.