by AllThingsECC.com | Jan 7, 2021 | Comm Center News
Sarah Hills, Emergency Communications of Southern Oregon, Lead Dispatcher, CTO, RPL, APCO Awards Committee Chair
How did you get your start in emergency communications?
I applied for the job while on maternity leave with my second child in February 2007. In August 2007, I received a call asking if I was still interested in a position in the local police department’s dispatch center. I did not remember applying for this job, but thought, what the heck. I had no idea what a dispatcher did. In fact, my idea of a 911 center was a national center that took calls for the entire nation and then gave them to individual first responder departments for response. After my first sit along, I was hooked. Today I cannot see myself doing any other profession; I love helping others on the phone, training and mentoring in the center, and volunteering on the national level…
by AllThingsECC.com | Jan 7, 2021 | Articles, Comm Center News
Repeal of T-Band Giveback
As many of you know, there was jubilation within the public-safety community when the bill that included formation of FirstNet was signed in 2012. That is until we came to the condition that, in ten years, eleven major metropolitan areas and their surrounding suburbs were to lose public-safety spectrum along with some businesses using spectrum previously allocated to TV stations. This 470–512-MHz spectrum had been broken into 6-MHz swaths to accommodate TV stations. Some of these blocks were assigned to public-safety agencies in major metro areas and some to business users. This T-Band spectrum is shared spectrum that would otherwise serve TV channels 14-20…
by ECC Editor | Jan 6, 2021 | Comm Center News
Mountain Valley Emergency Communications Center (MVECC), a regional public safety answering point serving the communities of New Providence, Summit, and Millburn, New Jersey, announces the implementation of Motorola Solutions CommandCentral Citizen Input, an application which will allow 9-1-1 callers to send pictures and video or “Incident Related Imagery” from an emergency scene to first responders through the 9-1-1 system. MVECC is the first public safety answering point in the state and the first in the northeastern part of the nation to operationalize this new public safety solution…
by AllThingsECC.com | Jan 5, 2021 | Comm Center News, Video
With a COVID-19 surge that is killing one person every 15 minutes in California’s Los Angeles County, the 911 emergency medical system has been stretched to the brink. [CLICK READ MORE TO VIEW VIDEO]…
by AllThingsECC.com | Jan 5, 2021 | Comm Center News
Kenneth J. Van Patten, age 85, of Punta Gorda, FL passed away December 9, 2020 at home. He worked for the Hennepin County Sheriff Department Minneapolis and later the Elk River Police Department and the Sherburne Country Sheriff Office. In his consulting career, he wrote many technical working papers related to wireless communications networking. He was a member of a number of organizations. He was a volunteer of Charlotte County Office of Emergency Management Communications group, The Association of Public Safety Communications Officers International…
by ECC Editor | Jan 5, 2021 | Comm Center News
HARTFORD, Conn. — A retired Connecticut State Police trooper who was among the first to respond to the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School has died of COVID-19, according to multiple police officials.
The CSP says retired Trooper First Class Patrick Dragon, of Brooklyn, Connecticut, died Saturday at Hartford Hospital.
Dragon, 50, retired from the state police on Feb. 1, 2018, and was working as a deputy chief of the East Brooklyn Fire Department and a police dispatcher in Foster, Rhode Island, before his death… READ MORE
