–AT&T disputed the cause of the Miami Shores Police Department (MSPD) inbound call outage.
-AT&T blamed MSPD’s server for the outage while MSPD blamed AT&T’s phone line.
-It is not clear whether the station’s phone system is back to running as it was before the outage.
-Inbound calls to the police station were unable to go through for at least an hour and a half on January 3. The outage could have been longer, however.
-Residents of the village were directed to call 911 or the Miami-Dade PD who would then forward requests for assistance to MSPD.
-A MSPD spokesperson said that it wasn’t the first time the department has lost inbound phone service.
-She also said that the department doesn’t have the budget to get a more sophisticated phone system.
——–
Residents in Miami Shores were unable to directly reach their police department for at least an hour and a half on Jan. 3, and it’s not entirely clear why.
The Miami Shores Police Department (MSPD) said that AT&T’s phone line went down, causing them to lose connection to inbound phone calls.
But AT&T said that isn’t what happened.
The company blames MSPD’s server for the outage and say there was nothing wrong with their phone line connection.
MSPD sent out a text alert to residents signed up with the Nixle service at 10:53 AM on Jan. 3.
That alert said that inbound phone lines were down at the station and that residents would have to call 911 or the Miami-Dade County Police Department in order for “requests for assistance” to be forward to MSPD.
The next text alert indicating that the phone lines were working again didn’t come until 4:50 PM.
MSPD spokesperson Elizabeth Keeley told RISE NEWS that inbound phone service was only down for around an hour and a half, after the station was notified of the outage by a Miami Shores resident.
Keeley said that MSPD was investigating how long the lines were down in total.
Kelley said that the station implemented a “workaround” that is used as a backup plan in case the analog line goes down.
AT&T didn’t respond to the station’s outage call until earlier today, nearly 48 hours after it was first announced to the Miami Shores community.
But according to a AT&T spokesperson, when one of their technicians responded to the station, he was unable to find anything wrong with their phone line.
INSIDE: The Shocking Conditions That Condemned The Miami Shores Motel
“We sent a tech to the Miami Shores police department this morning,” AT&T spokesperson Kelly Starling said in an email to RISE NEWS today. “The issue the city experienced was with its server, not our network.”
Starling also said that when MSPD’s server went down, their IT department requested AT&T forward its lines until its IT team could fix the problem.
But MSPD spokesperson Elizabeth Keeley said that AT&T is wrong.
“Their information is not correct,” Keeley said. “They can not say who they spoke to. They didn’t speak to the chief. I don’t know how they came to that conclusion.”
Keeley said that AT&T’s analog system was the problem and that the station’s server indicated that it never went down.
When pressed, Keeley could not say whether the station’s phone system was back up and running in the way it was before the outage.
“It is running currently to accept incoming calls in a way that the chief is satisfied with,” Keeley said, while refusing to answer whether inbound calls on the AT&T analog line were now being received.
Keeley said that it wasn’t the first time that the station has lost inbound call service.
When asked why the station has to rely on an AT&T analog phone line for service, she said that it had to do with lack of resources.
“There’s plenty of options, but it all costs money,” Keeley said. “We don’t really have that budget [that Miami-Dade County PD has, for example].”
Keeley said there will not a report on the matter released to the public and that Chief of Police Kevin Lystad was en route to a conference and unable to answer questions about the situation.
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College-Bound Girl Sails 3,000 Miles Alone For One Year
By Allyn Farach
With not a soul but her dog Elli, Sally Gardiner-Smith spent the last nine months at sea. The 19-year-old pledged to sail 3,000 miles by herself to college as a gap year, making it just before freshman orientation.
Gardiner-Smith decided that in October, she would set sail from Woolwich, Maine to Eckerd College in Saint Petersburg, Florida where she would attend college in the fall.
Traveling has been a part of Gardiner-Smith’s life ever since she was a little girl – she was born during a two-year sailing trip that her family was taking.
“Some of the earliest years of my life were spent traveling on a sailboat with my parents and sister. On two trips, which each lasted about two years, we traveled to Central America, the Caribbean and across the Atlantic to Europe,” Gardiner-Smith said on her Portland Press Herald blog.
Like any grand voyage, there were obstacles along the way. A dinghy line got caught in the propellor and caused the engine to stop. This proved to be an easy fix for Gardiner-Smith, who jumped into the water and cut the line.
Another issue arose when Gardiner-Smith’s dog, Elli, was hit by a car in Maryland and had to have a leg amputated. Gardiner-Smith was at first upset by the damage that her dog had suffered. She wrote: “… I hope that I can be like her when faced with catastrophe. There’s a lot that I cannot control and misfortune strikes everyone. It can hurt us, make us sad, and set us back. But there is never, ever, a reason to give up. Life is too full of wonders – for Elli there are places to be sniffed and belly rubs.”
Gardiner-Smith docked in Saint Petersburg in late July and is currently attending college, but is showing no signs of slowing down. She plans on taking a trip to Cuba over winter break.
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Making Little Haiti, Miami’s Next Big Tourism Destination
What’s News In This Story?
–For a group of young Haitian-Americans, Little Haiti is poised to become Miami’s next big tourist destination.
-Each Saturday, Jean Cidelca leads dozens of people on a tap-tap bus tour around the area.
-It’s the first of its kind in Little Haiti.
-The tour takes visitors to historical landmarks including to the monument to Haitian Revolutionary leader Toussaint L’ouverture.
-L’Ouverture is a sort of George Washington figure to Haitians. He helped lead the slave revolt that resulted in the overthrow of French rule in 1804.
-The bus also stops to let guests take pictures of street art produced by Haitians including Miami’s graffiti godfather Serge Toussaint.
-One of the more “wild” parts of the tour is when it stops at Earth N’ Us farms. It’s literally a hippie’s dream from the 1970s.
-Complete with a three story tall treehouse, Earth N’ Us is a commune of sorts right in the heart of Little Haiti.
-And there’s plenty of animals to check out while you’re there too.
–Cidelca’s tour is in partnership with the Little Haiti Cultural Complex, the centerpiece of goings-on in the neighborhood.
-They tried to get some of the big tour bus companies to start coming to Little Haiti, but they didn’t get any takers.
-But now, there’s a cool way to see the area with local eyes.
IF YOU GO:
WHEN: Every Saturday
TIME: 10am & 1pm & 3pm
DURATION: 75 Minutes
MEETING POINT: Caribbean Marketplace | 5925 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL, 33137
PRICE: $10Reserve tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/little-haiti-bus-tours-tickets-49520491122?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
Call: 205-649-0787 For More Information (Not a typo- the area code is 205)
Private Bus Tours Available Upon Request.
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Meet The Three Frenchmen Who Are Taking Over Miami’s Culinary Scene
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Person Of The Year? Bernie Sanders Wins Time Magazine Readers’ Poll For Prestigious Honor
Democratic Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders came out victorious in a poll to see who TIME Magazine readers thought should be named as its “Person of the Year.”
Sanders finished with 10.2% of the vote, well ahead of human rights activist Malala Yousafzai, who garnered 5.2%, and Pope Francis’ 3.7%.
However, when TIME announced the official shortlist for the coveted award, neither Sanders, nor any of the top 10 vote-getters in the readers’ poll, were named.
The 8-person list is made up of Republican Presidential contender Donald Trump, Russian president Vladimir Putin, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, transgender activist Caitlyn Jenner, and Black Lives Matter activists.
TIME’s editors will select the Person of the Year, which they define as the person who had the greatest impact on the news this year, Wednesday on NBC’s Today.
Cover Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey/Flickr (CC 2.0)
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