The St. Joseph Communications Center is a combined dispatch center for the Police Department, Fire Department the Buchanan County Sheriff's Department and 7 Buchanan County Fire Depts. The Police Department employs the 20 civilian communications operators who, in 2006, answered over 230,200 administrative line telephone calls and more than 49,500 calls to 911. A number of administrative line calls are directed to us from cell phone providers and are actually wireless 911 calls. As we do not presently have the equipment to recognize these as 911 calls, we are working on finding a funding source to purchase the equipment. This would allow us to know before answering that they are 911 calls and to more properly handle them. The Communications Center is also responsible for monitoring other agencies' activities in our area.

Our communication operators use up-to-date computer software and equipment to aid them in their tasks. In late 2006, all police and fire agencies and the paramedics at Heartland began using a new, state of the art 800MHz trunking radio system that provides communications to all of Buchanan County. Public Safety Systems Administrator Tabby McClanahan maintains these systems. She was also the project manager for obtaining the Mobile Data System that aids in communications, dispatch and reporting. Captain Richard Wolfe of the Police Department has served full-time as the Communications Center Manager since June 2004 and was the local project manager for the new radio system project.

All dispatchers in the Communications Center are required to complete an in-house Certified Dispatch Officer (CTO) Training program. The seventeen-week program teaches new members department policies and procedures, radio operations, Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD), use of the Missouri Uniform Law Enforcement System (MULES), Nation Crime Information Center (NCIC), and National Warning Point for Emergency preparedness (NAWAS).

WHAT'S HAPPENING...

• On December 9th a widespread power outage created challenges for the Communications Center, case in point, on an average December day (24 hours) dispatchers can expect to receive approximately 150 incoming 911 calls and 400 calls coming in on the administrative lines. On the day of the outage the Communications Center received a total of 245 calls on the 911 lines and 667 administrative calls which translates to a 40% increase in the total number of calls received. The staff on duty at the time handled the situation in a professional manner as usual.
• The first major snow storm of the season occurred on December 24th, and the staff once again experienced difficulties with transmitting the Phase II notification to the public via the Cablevision Emergency Alert System (EAS). The problem was determined to be a known error with their equipment/software provider. Cablevision did provide an alternative temporary solution and are currently working on a permanent remedy for their next software release that should resolve the problem.
• An end of year review of workload indicators such as telephone calls in the Communications Center reveals as expected that August had the highest call activity while the month of February was the least active.