In an emergency, every second counts, and in Lehigh County, those seconds have been mounting. Dispatch times — when a 9-1-1 call is received to when the first crew is dispatched — have grown by an average of two minutes since the June merger of the Lehigh County and...

I’m here at the Guardian Center. This full-scale training facility, located in Perry, GA, is where Public Safety goes to test new technologies and their operational impact on real-world scenarios. I watch from my secure vantage point in the Joint Operations Center...

The Marshall County Fiscal Court last week announced it had denied the appeal of the former Marshall County E911 dispatcher who was terminated in December after being arrested and charged with a felony. Tonya Clevidence, 46, was arrested Dec. 9 by the Marshall County...

AUSTINTOWN — With a $503,000 expansion to the Austintown Township Police Department nearing completion, dispatchers in the building are eager to move to new space that not only will provide more elbow room, but also help improve efficiency in responding to emergencies...

ALBANY – Staffing shortages at the 9-1-1 communications center in the City of Albany is something NewsChannel 13 has been reporting on for months. The city is now taking proposals from emergency communications consultants. They want the consultant to come in and...

Snow isn’t a common occurrence on southern Vancouver Island, and the sight has caused many people to reach out to emergency responders. E-Comm, which runs the South Island 9-1-1/Police Dispatch Centre out of Saanich, said that when snow started falling on Sunday night...

Trooper Mitchell Reynolds of the State Highway Patrol’s Marietta post and Dispatcher Sara Morgan of the Cambridge Dispatch Center recently received letters of commendation and certificates for their life-saving efforts during an incident on Sept. 24 in Washington...

Upcoming changes to the statewide 911 system are expected to drastically improve the ability of dispatchers to locate 911 callers in rural Alaska by recording cellphone call locations, according to the Department of Public Safety. When 911 callers in rural areas...

Margaret Haugan is Minot Police Department’s new Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) Manager, according to a Facebook post from the MPD. Haugan has worked for Minot Central Dispatch for 12 years. She will take over as PSAP manager after Barb McPeak retires...

For this year, Jefferson County 9-1-1 is working on launching a brand new Computer Aided Dispatching (CAD) system to law enforcement and other emergency first responders. Chief Willaims expects the CAD system to be up and running by late second quarter of this year.

Iroquois County is making its strides to becoming NextGen 9-1-1 compliant. At Wednesday evening’s Emergency Telephones Systems Board (ETSB) meeting a GIS mapping bid and a recording software quote were approved to allow 9-1-1 director Eric Raymond to write the costs...

TORRINGTON — The name Doug Tillotson may not ring a bell, but his voice is a dead giveaway. His folksy oratory on the radio transmissions at Litchfield County Dispatch is one that Torrington police officers, firefighters and first responders across Litchfield County...

ALBANY – It's a problem NewsChannel 13 has been following for years, short staffing at the dispatch center in the city of Albany. Back in September, NewsChannel 13 covered the story after only three dispatchers were working overnight, two of them doing a double...

Imagine a job where your actions in the first few seconds after you pick up the phone can impact lives. That’s the reality our members working as emergency dispatchers face each day they report to work, sit down at their consoles and prepare to answer the public’s...

CUMBERLAND — As the county moves into the new decade, emergency communication specialists are getting a tool to aid callers during an emergency. The Allegany County Joint Communications Center has purchased Apple iPad tablets to replace a dated, flip...

KANAWHA COUNTY, W.Va. (WOWK) – 911 dispatchers; answering calls and getting the community emergency help. A job that can be strenuous and sometimes scary. “Like Metro 911 yesterday…they did a fabulous job,” says Jim Brown, a retired 911 telecommunicator. Metro 911...

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- If you ever find yourself in an emergency, you now have a new option to ask for help and it doesn't involve calling anyone. Raleigh-Wake Emergency Communications is now accepting pictures and videos sent via text to 911. Emergency...

CLARK COUNTY — Another person in the Miami Valley was jailed for making unnecessary 911 calls, a Clark County man who was barking like a dog at one point during numerous calls Tuesday to dispatchers. Earlier this week, a Washington Twp. woman was accused of making...

Horry County’s public safety departments need more than $10 million in additional staff, equipment, raises and facilities so officials can maintain services for a rapidly growing population, according to county projections. County staff relayed that message last month...

It was a busy year for local dispatchers and the responders they directed to calls for service in the county. A total of 15,055 calls for service — which includes anything from routine police activity to emergency fire and ambulance calls — were processed by the...