National Public Safety Telecommunicator Appreciation Week

The week of April 8, has been recognized at National Public Safety Telecommunicator Appreciation Week and the Oconee County Sheriff’s Office is recognizing dispatchers everywhere, including in the Sheriff’s Office own E-911 Communications Center, for their continuing professionalism and their job performance each day. “Dispatchers are indeed, in many cases, the first responders for any public service agency and no public service agency can effectively serve their citizens without the job our telecommunicators do,” says Oconee County Sheriff Mike Crenshaw. “Dispatchers obtain pertinent and important information so when law enforcement, fire, rescue or paramedics are dispatched to a call, the women and men who respond have a picture of what is going on at the scene where they are dispatched. Because of the information our dispatchers provide, it helps all public safety officers in the performance of their duties that they are assigned to do.” The Oconee County Sheriff’s Office E-911 Communications Center receives and issues calls for service for the deputies of Sheriff’s Office but that is only part of the story. The Communications Center at the Sheriff’s Office also dispatches calls for four of the municipal police departments in Oconee County (Salem, Walhalla, Westminster and West Union) as well as county fire and rescue. Another important point to bear in mind is that, regardless of the weather conditions or holiday schedules, the Sheriff’s Office E-911 Communications Center is always staffed to receive call for service from the citizens of Oconee County 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. As well as recognizing the women and men who answer the phones and dispatch and provide information over the radio, this week also recognizes those who maintain the radios and equipment that allows all the parties involved to do their jobs effectively. According to the 2017 Oconee County Sheriff’s Office summary, 88,087 calls were received for service at the E-911 Communications Center. The total amount of telephone calls was 190,832 with 35,664 Emergency 911 calls and 155,168 non-emergency calls. Oconee County dispatch continues to exceed the requirements of the national standards based on NENA and NFPA requirements for 911 calls answered within ten and twenty seconds. Dispatchers spent a total of 5,402 hours on the telephone in 2017 and employees had around 1,320 total training hours during the year.