Occurring this year from April 9th through April 15th, National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week (NPSTW) is celebrated every second week of April to express gratitude and to acknowledge and honor the often unseen work of telecommunications personnel in public safety.
Seventeen (17) telecommunications staff are employed by ACCC in its Communications Division, working around-the-clock and 365 days per year. Thousands and thousands of phone calls from ACCC program participants are received and handled yearly by ACCC’s Communications staff, comprised of both Dispatchers and Monitoring Technicians. Each of these interactions require a sense of calm while simultaneously demonstrating assertiveness, kindness, compassion, empathy, and respect when assisting participants in their times of stress, worry, and uncertainty.
In addition to closely monitoring the precise locations of hundreds of individuals who are court-ordered to GPS monitoring each day, Communications staff process participants’ weekly schedules, install and troubleshoot participants’ monitoring equipment, and provide safety and classic dispatch services to ACCC’s Home Detention Officers/Special Deputies. To effectively manage these important duties in their professional roles, the Communications Division staff must possess and demonstrate many hidden superpowers which include maintaining calm when chaos presents itself, efficiently multi-tasking while under great pressure, reading and typing faster than the speed of light, actively listening with focused determination to hear fine details and collect all information needed to relay to Officers in the field and ensure their safety, and super strength to pick themselves back up when needed!
ACCC acknowledges and honors each of their public safety telecommunicators during the week of April 9th. ACCC thanks you for your tireless efforts, professionalism, and dedication to the mission of ACCC and to public safety. Agency-wide and county-wide, each of you truly makes a difference.
