WORTHINGTON — When a call comes in to the 911 dispatch center at the Prairie Justice Center in Worthington, the emergency services dispatcher never knows what they might encounter on the other end of the line.
What’s next for 9-1-1?
Natchitoches Parish has a state-of-the-art facility, well trained dispatchers and staff and an excellent call answering record. So what is next?
In this age of constantly changing technology, the 911 NATCOM center must keep up to ensure the citizens of the parish are served.
On Oct. 26, 18 members of the campus community graduated from the first Department of Public Safety (DPS) community police academy. The academy is a free four-week program designed to give students, faculty and staff an idea of what it is like to protect and serve the campus community. During their time, participants learned from guest presenters, including representatives from DPS, Fire and Life Safety Services, Residential Safety Program and Syracuse University Ambulance. The presentations included tours, lectures and hands-on practical trainings.
San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said a “higher priority dispatch” was sent to the residence of Paul Pelosi because of the 911 operator’s “intuition” that there was “something more to the incident than what she was being told.”
All calls for emergency services (Police, Fire, EMS) are processed through a unified communications center. The communications center houses both Spokane Regional Emergency Communication employees (SREC) and SPD dispatchers. The change comes as both SPD and SREC seek to maximize the efficiency of limited resources while dealing with increased workloads.
“It is advanced technology in the 911,” Michele Abbott, communications and training coordinator for the Kansas 911 Coordinating Council, said. “That’s where you get the Next Generation 911 labeling.”
