Sheriff’s Office Recognizes National Public Safety Communications Week

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – April 9th through the 15th is National Public Safety Communications Week which recognizes and honors the vital role public safety dispatchers play in their community. 

Much goes into the process of a 9-1-1 call. From interpreting the call to assessing the best way to respond to notifying the first responders and Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz discussed the county’s dispatching system and how the complexity of the job has broadened over the years.

“There’s different types of dispatch centers but ours is a multifunctional one, because we not only dispatch for all the sheriff’s office employees, we cover the five village police departments in our county that we work with. We cover university p.d. at Muskingum University. We have all the school resource officers at the schools. And then we take care of all the township fire and EMS that’s out in the county,” Lutz said.

Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office Communications Supervisor Joleen Kinsel talked about how the technology has changed from basic telephone and radio to a computerized operation that adds more tasks to keep up with.

“Well in the last 30 years things have really grown leaps and bounds,” Kinsel said. “We started with a radio and a piece of paper to now having GPS technology and mapping and text to 9-1-1. And having to keep up with all of that software and all of that different type of training that requires dispatchers to have to be able to keep everybody safe. It’s very detailed work.”

The state sets requirements for emergency communications so that all counties have a universal platform to operate and the sheriff expressed gratitude for the financial support offered by the county commissioners in trying to keep pace with technology.