Chatting with the Chief: Staffed Up in Dispatch

At the November 21 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council, the governing body approved the hiring of two part-time and one full-time dispatcher for the Saratoga Police Department.

The two part-time dispatchers are Tiffany Moore and Tana Davi, the full-time dispatcher is Joshua Mathieu.

“We’re doing the onboarding right but we’ve still got a couple of hoops to jump through to get the full-time going,” said Saratoga Police Chief Mike Morris. “Then we’ll be able to put him on the schedule and start the training process. Saratoga’s communication center has, approximately, a six week field training program.”

This six week training program is broken down into three different phases, said Morris. During training, candidates will be exposed to different types of calls, how to handle those calls and how to help the people making the calls if they are excited or upset.

“We’re preparing for those things, preparing the dispatch officer how to respond to those calls and then what assets are available for them to help in those calls,” said Morris.

Fortunately, with this training process, Morris has two experienced full-time dispatchers to help: Alyx Munson and Jennifer German.

“That’s part of the process of the field training is to use the knowledge and the experience of the training officers. The whole point of the field training program is to not only give them information but also for the training officers to give their experiences along with that,” said Morris. “Our goal is to expose the trainee to as many types of calls and as much as we can.”

While Saratoga may seem like a sleepy little town to most, Morris said many of the same things that happen elsewhere in the country also occur in the community. The only difference is the frequency in which they happen.

“Those types of calls that we don’t deal with on a day-to-day, week-to-week—sometimes year-to-year—basis, we still try to give exposure to that by going back and using historical calls and recordings to help prepare the dispatcher,” said Morris. “Just make sure the person is ready before they’re out on their own, so that they can do the job efficiently.”

As the training process takes place, Morris said the public should not see much of a difference in the quality of service they receive from the Saratoga Police Department dispatch. Part of that reason is because, as training takes place, the police department and the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office are operating under an emergency dispatch Memorandum of Understanding. That MOU is good for 60 days, but can be extended if needed.

“The sheriff’s office and the County were gracious enough to offer to help us in this regard,” said Morris. “We’re going to try to limit that as short term as we can so they can get their operations back to normal as well.”

Morris stressed patience and respect from the general public for dispatch, not only during the training process but in all instances.