Matthew Brown moved to High Point in 2002 working for the department for 18 years before his recent medical retirement. He died early this week. HIGH POINT, N.C. — Friends and co-workers of the retired High Point emergency dispatcher who died this week described him...

Kaitlyn's creative hobby is watercoloring. Others she works with say they like to spend time with their friends, just like she does. About 10 feet away from her sits co-worker Andy, who plays ice hockey and softball in his spare time. They're two of about eight...

Tuesday marked a day of firsts for the Cleburne Police Department and the North Central Texas Emergency Communications District’s annual 9-1-1 Awards Ceremony. The North Central Texas Emergency Communications Districts, also known as NCT9-1-1, for the first time in...

NORTHFIELD — Members of the Emergency Services Facility Committee are investigating three potential properties to house a shared facility for the Fire, Police and EMS departments. Fire Chief Floyd “Skip” Dunnell III and fellow committee members recently discussed one...

CLEVELAND — New technology is on its way to help Cleveland area first responders.AT&T is adding to its FirstNet, first responder network.FirstNet is a high-speed broadband communications platform dedicated to and purpose-built for first responders and the extended public safety community.The network was launched three years ago to alleviate any congestion or communication problems that can arise in an emergency situation.Beginning in April, FirstNet is now adding 5G connectivity. The 5G connectivity will ultimately bring a combination of benefits like ultra-low latency and ultra-high speeds to support a variety of users.AT&T is also adding security features to the network, and Cleveland is one of two cities to have the features first.FirstNet will be the first-ever nationwide network with comprehensive network encryption. That means FirstNet traffic will be automatically secured as it moves throughout the entire network.Commercial networks may encrypt parts of the communications pathway, but only FirstNet will have encryption along the entire route.“We all sat there and witnessed what happened in 9/11,” said President of AT&T Ohio Brad McLean. “We certainly want to make sure those who are on the frontlines, our first responders, are getting the services they need to adequately respond during those times.AT&T says this network works as a dedicated high-speed lane on the highway.Emergency responders will even be able to send real-time data, like from an ambulance carrying a patient to a hospital where that patient is headed.Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here.You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We’re also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here.

Former longtime 911 Central Dispatch Director Gay Murrell has filed a federal lawsuit alleging breach of contract as well as age and sex discrimination over her March 2020 termination.The lawsuit was filed in early March in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Tennessee in Greeneville.Murrell worked for Hawkins Central Dispatch for 27 years and spent the last 19 as the director. The 911 board voted at their March 12, 2020 meeting to terminate Murrell for breach of contract.At that meeting, then Chairman Mike Herrell reported to the board that Murrell had allowed dispatchers who had not yet obtained EMD (Emergency Medical Dispatching) certifications to answer emergency 911 calls.When a person calls 911 with a medical complaint, the dispatcher goes to a complaint guide card and it directs the dispatcher to ask specific questions about that person’s complaint.Depending on how the questions are answered results in how the dispatcher sends an ambulance — emergency or non-emergency.Someone who is not EMD certified is basically a lay person advising an ambulance if they need to respond emergency or non-emergency to a medical complaint, the Review’s source said.Though all staff were back in compliance with EMD certifications in just a few days, the board noted at the time that this process cost Hawkins Co. Emergency Communications Department (HCECD) around $8,800 and could easily have led to legal ramifications.As a result of these actions, the board concluded that Murrell had breached her contract and voted 6-1 to terminate her.Lawsuit alleges board didn’t have “good cause” for terminationThe lawsuit, which was filed by Morristown attorney Braxton Terry, alleges that, “On March 12, 2020, without any warning or prior notice, [the board] abruptly terminated [Murrell’s] employment as Director.”It also alleges that, prior to her termination, Murrell “had not been counseled or issued any written warnings for policy or procedure violations” and “had not violated any of [the board’s] policies as Director.”It further states that the board did not have “good cause” to terminate Murrell, who was awarded unemployment benefits last July by the Appeals Tribunal of the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.The lawsuit quotes from the Appeals Tribunal’s decision, noting that, “At the Appeals Tribunal hearing, little, if any, evidence was presented by the Employer that the Claimant [Murrell] was either insubordinate or failed to follow the Employer’s policies.”Murrell’s employment contract with the 911 board had specified that, in the event of termination without “good cause,” Murrell would be paid a lump sum of severance in the amount of salary she would have received until the end of her contract, which was set to expire on Oct. 1, 2022.The contract did note that, in the event of termination with cause, the Director would not be paid any severance pay.Through the lawsuit, Murrell is seeking pay and benefits she would have received from the severance agreement as well as interest and compensatory damages for the 911 Board’s “indifference to Murrell’s protected rights.”The lawsuit also alleges that Murrell has suffered “lost wages, lost benefits, lost interest on wages and benefits, inconvenience, embarrassment, humiliation, anguish, loss of lifetime earning capacity.”Sex, age discriminationThe lawsuit goes on to note that, after Murrell’s termination, the board “hired a significantly younger male who is known to have been in his late thirties” to replace Murrell.As the Review previously reported, the 911 board voted in April of 2020 to hire Douglas Boone as the new director.The 911 board received a total of seven applications when the position was advertised, but the board’s personnel committee narrowed this list down to three finalists. The board made the final decision after interviewing the three finalists on in a closed-door executive meeting. Boone received the majority, with a 5-2 vote.However, Boone resigned from the position, effective on March 5 of this year. He noted in his letter of resignation that, due to an illness in the family, he desired to find a position closer to home.The board is currently looking for a replacement director. Herrell told the Review that the board is set to interview three potential candidates on April 18.Months of disagreement, conflictMurrell’s termination followed months of disagreements and conflict between Murrell, members of the 911 board, and several Hawkins Co. officials.As the Review previously reported, in September of 2019, Hawkins Co. Mayor Jim Lee refused to sign the Intergovernmental Cooperation Agreement between the county and Hawkins County Central Dispatch until Murrell released bank statements, credit card statements and salaries to Lee.911 Board member and Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper David Good told the board in September of 2019, “I was talking to Mayor Lee before I came here. I’m going to tell you word for word what he wanted me to tell you. He said that, as long as Gay is 911 director and still employed here, he will not sign the contract.”After some back-and-forth, Good added, “Well, like I said, that’s what he said. The fact that she (Gay Murrell) can’t ever get a budget done right and has never passed an audit in the last several years. He’s just not going to sign it …”“Until I’m gone?” Murrell asked.“Yep,” Good replied.However, when the Review spoke with Lee, he explained, “I can’t fire Gay Murrell. That’s not my job — that’s the board’s job if they decide to do that. I’d like to see her records and then we’ll move forward. If we look at it and everything looks good, we’ll move on, we’ll go with the contract (between Murrell and the 911 board that governs her employment). If not, we’ll stop and correct the problem.”When the Review spoke to Murrell at the time, she explained “we (Central Dispatch) has never failed an audit. We had one finding. As with any other audit, it is on the comptroller’s website. It’s all there. It’s public record. Everything is public record. It’s all right here. What is spent. Salaries. Everything.”The records were given to Lee in November of 2019.Lee later told the board in January of 2020 that he had turned in Central Dispatch bank statements for the past three years to the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury on Jan. 8, 2020, regarding unspecified “inconsistencies” which the Mayor claims he noticed in those documents. This investigation has not yet been completed.

HILLSDALE, N.J.—A proposal to outsource emergency dispatch services to Bergen County’s Public Safety Operations Center (PSOC) could save the borough more than $1 million over five years, according to the borough’s business administrator. Council members have yet to...

In the last fiscal year, the board of supervisors created a countywide new fire and emergency services district levy that would allocate $0.11 of the $0.72 real estate tax rate to offset rising public safety costs. The balance of the real estate tax rate ($0.61) would...

Weeks after Mayor Svante Myrick ’09 made national headlines for unveiling a sweeping proposal to replace the Ithaca Police Department with a civilian-led agency, the city and county have both approved the recommendations.

As the Chittenden County Public Safety Authority thrusts ahead on its nearly $2.3 million effort to regionalize emergency dispatch, the voices on the other end of the phone worry how consolidation will distort their jobs.“You lose that institutional knowledge when you take someone out of their community and put them into a new environment,” said Deb Kruger, who has dispatched in South Burlington for 40 years.She dispatched for her father, a retired South Burlington firefighter, and for her late husband, a police lieutenant who she met over the phone.

“I refer to the cops as my cops, as my firefighters, because that’s how I feel; they’re part of my family,” said Kruger.She’s heard this song before: In the 1990s officials took steps to consolidate the strained infrastructure, eventually petering out, but she does not think regionalization is the best option for revitalizing dispatch, nor will it provide relief to overburdened dispatchers.South Burlington city manager Kevin Dorn, who heads the public safety authority, sees the regionalization as a much-needed efficiency booster, adding a safety net of mutual aid and updated technology to streamline the process.The revamp efforts, which began in 2018, plan to cover five communities via one dispatch center, housed in a space above the South Burlington Police Department, Dorn said. By cutting some extra steps currently in place, and with updated technology, he thinks the efficiencies will dramatically reduce response times and increase use of emergency apparatus.“Time is a valuable asset in an emergency,” said South Burlington fire chief Terry Francis. Long before joining the South Burlington fire department, he worked as a young dispatcher in Burlington and remembers the stress of being alone in a booth answering calls.On Feb. 1, when an 18-year-old fired gun shots in University Mall, one dispatcher was coordinating South Burlington police, fire and rescue and at least six other agencies, on top of emergency and nonemergency phone calls, Francis said.“There were well over 100 phone calls, people saying, ‘I’m in a closet at Spencer’s because I heard gun shots,’” he said. The dispatcher did a great job, but she was overtasked, he added. “That’s a tough job. You’re juggling a lot of plates when it’s busy. If it’s chaotic enough, it’s easy to have a plate drop.”After forty years dispatching in South Burlington, Kruger knows the balancing act better than most. Some calls still haunt her, leaving her wondering what might’ve happened if she’d done something different.But other shifts, like when she dispatched for the ice storm of 1997 — alone in the booth — or when she’s been able to help older residents through Project Good Morning, are what keep her going.Since she began dispatching in the 1980s, Kruger said demand and call volume has grown but the way dispatch is structured has largely remained rigid. Currently, full-time dispatchers each work a 10-hour shift, one person answering phones at a time, with a few hours of overlap in the morning and at night.

“They’ve added and added and added to call volume but not necessarily added to staff,” Kruger said. She thinks hiring more dispatchers and more people to cover 9-1-1 centers would be a much simpler solution than regionalization.Kruger also worries that community connection and knowledge, which can save valuable time in an emergency, might be lost if dispatchers are working for multiple unfamiliar communities.“We get to know our police, firefighters and EMS very well. Even from the intonation of a voice on a radio when they call in, we know if they’re under stress,” she said. “If you’re working with different officers all the time, you’ll lose that.”South Burlington police chief Shawn Burke agreed that the regionalization efforts have “led to a degree of uncertainty” within the dispatch team. But since the authority made clear all current dispatchers will have a position in the new center, if they want it, Burke said apprehension has calmed somewhat.“The synergy between police officers and dispatchers is great and I think that the thought of all of us being regionalized troubles them in that sense,” said Burke. Still, the growth of fire and EMS demand in South Burlington alone has overwhelmed what’s designed to be a police dispatch center, he said.While the idea has been ruminating for decades, many dispatchers felt they’d been left in the dark on the current county-wide regionalization efforts, added Burke.“Culturally it is a big change,” he said, but “we haven’t really made the requisite personnel investments to keep up” with demand.Should renovation above the South Burlington police department move forward, Burke said the consolidated dispatch center would be “terrific to have here as a tenant.”At a meeting last month, the public safety authority discussed plans to break ground on the new dispatch space this summer, after Burlington — which will sponsor a large chunk of funding — ratifies its city budget in June. But the authority cannot take concrete renovation steps until all funding is in place.“Funding is still the key issue,” said Dorn. The total capital cost for regionalizing dispatch clocks in at around $2.2 to $2.3 million. Not a small chunk of change.While the participating communities have already committed to a slice of funding each, Dorn hopes that additional grant money and COVID-19 relief will ease the pressure on municipal pockets.Francis admitted the current efforts are an expensive solution to “a big question,” but he believes the long-needed effort will improve public safety service to communities, reduce delays and provide some relief to dispatchers.“A lot of people don’t appreciate how hard of a job it is,” said Francis. “Ultimately, it’s about serving the public and making sure we’re getting resources to the community. If COVID moneys are available for that — improving public safety after a pandemic? I can’t think of a better way to spend it.”