Police Officer Preparation & Law Enforcement Resource - Archive

Their is a dispatch center out here in Illinois, where I live it's called Wescom dispatch. I think at this place when you are a dispatcher you dispatch fire, ems, and police?? Is it like this everywhere?

Thanks!

Some dipatch for one part of Public Safety, some dispatch for all.

Wescom is a Illinois PSAP. They are in the Plainfield area. Most centers in the country are set up to handle police, fire and EMS. This causes less confusion then having separate centers for each service. The Telecommunicators are cross trained to handle all types of calls/incidents. My agency, TriCom, in Illinois is the same way. And there are many other similar agencies in northern Illinois alone.

Where's Tricom?

Some are private owned and sublet their services out to agencies. Where I work, dispatch is operated by the Sheriff's Office and then we charge the municipalities and fire/ambulance districts. Each agency has a representative, along with some private citizens that form a communications board.

Our city has it's own dispatch based in the PD. They dispatch for all police and fire calls in the city. Our dispatchers call the County Sheriff Dispatch for all ambulance needs within the city.

Our PSAP is the Communications Bureau of the Police Department.

Fire calls are routed to the FD's Communication center.

Medic and County Fire (volunteer) are routed to the EMS dispatch center, which is a privately owned company.

what is the different between 911 and local police office dispatch line :confused:

The police office line is most likely for non-emergency calls, such as if you came home to find something of yours stolen. As long as you're sure there is nobody in your house, there's no need to clog up the 911 lines.

My city's dispatch center handles fire/ems and police, but it also supports the radio systems for my seperate school police, my school district's buses and such.

what is the different between 911 and local police office dispatch line :confused:


In my area if you call a towns non-emergency number your going to the PD front desk. They have no dispatch capabilities and cannot send them anybody, so if the caller needs the police, fire or EMS hey are going to get transferred to the 911 center on a transfer line as opposed to a 911 line.

Around here if you need any type of police, fire or EMs response people are told to call 911.

Chances are your not going to find a 7 digit number for the public for the 911 center to call directly.

My agency dispatches for law enforcement only. We are the primary 911 call center for the county, so except for cell phones, we get 911 calls for all the unincorporated areas and our contract cities.

There are two large fire dispatch centers in the county that dispatch fire/ems.

*edit*

Oh yeah, we have a non-emergency number to call direct, and all our station numbers roll to our non-emergency lines after hours.