Muskingum Co. Sheriff’s Office Approved for Grant for Dispatch Technology

ZANESVILLE – The Muskingum Co. Sheriff’s Office is approved for a grant to finance new and improved dispatch technology.

The Sheriff’s Office has some “911” equipment that is still functional but it is facing the end of its warranty and coming closer to expiration.

The office is receiving a grant of over $128,000 that is being funded by at the federal level as well as the Muskingum County Commissioners.

“The benefit of this now with this new stuff, we will include the 911 texting. It’s something that has come out here in recent years that people are making it available and, again, its just another step in that safety avenue for our citizens,” Muskingum Co. Sheriff Matt Lutz said.

The new technology will be a very big benefit to the sheriff’s office and it feels there will be less room for error when it needs to respond to an emergency.

“We’re a 24/7 operation and we have to have that stuff up and ready to go. You know, we dispatch for all of our volunteer fire departments, volunteer squads, and, so there’s a lot of people depending on that dispatch center. So, this just takes us a notch up. It provides the equipment back there that we have now but its puts brand new equipment in there; more dependable,” Lutz said.

Lutz hopes to have the new equipment installed and ready to go soon but is not sure when that will be at this time.