Promoting Collaboration: Telecommunicators and Field Responders

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Collaboration is the key to any good partnership. As a public safety telecommunicator or a responder, the radio can become just a voice on the other end of the line, and not a real person. As our small, law enforcement-run agency expanded in rural South Dakota, we wanted to maintain our connection to field responders with whom we interacted daily.

The Watertown South Dakota 9-1-1 Center had great partnerships with our law enforcement officers. However, we struggled with communicating our dispatch procedures to our area ambulance and fire departments. In a few years, we had grown from dispatching for two counties to six, and taken on dozens of fire and ambulance agencies…