The week of April 9 begins National Telecommunications Week. This week was founded in 1994 as a means to thank all police, fire and EMS dispatchers.

Last year alone our communication officers received 50,000 non-emergency phone calls, 5900 additional calls on our 911 lines, and dispatched 4,300 fire and EMS calls between Wilmington, Blanchester and Sabina. Our communication officers dispatched 17,500 police calls, handled countless other walk-ins, and service-related calls for water and sewer.

Over the past 30 years, training and certification standards for public safety telecommunicators have been established in areas such as emergency medical dispatch, active shooter scenarios, and crisis negotiation to reflect the ability and expectation for these professionals to perform more advanced protective work.

The primary driver of the change in public safety telecommunicators’ work has been the technology revolution. Cellphones, multi-band and encrypted first-responder radios, vehicle telematics such as data provided by a service such as OnStar for an accident about the speed, impact, number of passengers, potential injuries, text messaging, and public alerting – just to name a few – have significantly changed the way these professionals communicate with the public and first responders

This week I too would like to extend my thanks to the Wilmington Police Communication Division — Becky Myers, Beth Tolliver, Terri Johnson, Robin Cassell, Terri Murphy and Andrea Pletcher. I couldn’t be more proud of all the hard work they do each and every day.

Duane Weyand

Chief of Police

Wilmington