By JOEL PHELPS | The Arkadelphian
A situation that requires you to dial 911 means you need help, and you need it now. When every second counts, the last thing you need is to repeat your emergency to a second dispatcher. In Clark County, this happens more often than most would like to think.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office and Arkadelphia Police Department each have their own dispatcher who handles emergency calls. If “Susie” lives on Pine Street and phones 911 from a cell phone to report an emergency, she could likely first talk to a county dispatcher. Susie will say where she lives and explain her dire situation, only to be transferred to a dispatcher at APD and explain her emergency a second time.
Call transfers add 10-15 seconds to response time, and those few seconds could be critical to saving a life. By putting both dispatchers under one roof, local officials hope to streamline Clark County’s 911 operating system so that no calls will have to be transferred.
“It’s something we want to accomplish,” Sheriff Jason Watson said. “We’re going to have to consolidate.” Watson has requested to address the Quorum Court at its next meeting on July 10. He’s expected to begin talks of combining the county and city’s dispatching services and address the pay scale for sheriff’s office employees.
“I would like to have central dispatch within the next year,” Watson told The Arkadelphian in a telephone interview this week. “The days of transfer would be over. There would be quicker response on everything.”
Larry Cain, the county’s 911 coordinator, said that “almost all of the cellular calls go to the county first.” The city’s call volume amounts to roughly 10% of the county’s 911 calls, Cain said. Asked why some calls go to different agencies, Cain explained that it depends on the location of the cell tower.
Consolidating dispatchers isn’t news to public safety agencies — the state made central dispatch centers mandatory two years ago, setting a January 2025 deadline for all 911 stations in the state to be on board. Having waited this long jeopardizes state funding. “We’ve known we had to consolidate for the last two years,” Cain said, adding that while some have a plan in place, others do not. “We’ve only got a little over a year to combine the two centers, and we’ve done little yet to address it while other counties have taken initiative.”
“We should not still be transferring emergent calls up to three times to get people help.” — Arkadelphia Police Chief Jason “Shorty” Jackson
Although consolidating 911 dispatchers appears on the surface as a critical step in emergency services, there are moving political parts at play. Which entity — the city or the county — would control it? The county and city offer different wages and benefits, and the city offers higher wages than the county. The 911 funds that are collected from fees on residents’ phone bills is allotted to the county, but 911 funding does not cover personnel expenses.
The end result ultimately falls on county Judge Troy Tucker, who has directed the sheriff and Arkadelphia police chief to work out a plan. The city of Arkadelphia in 2021 purchased the former Sav U Mor building with the intent to house its police department there and put the dispatch headquarters in what is now the police department. The county would have the option to purchase the building currently housing the police department.
Arkadelphia City Manager Gary Brinkley admitted that there has been no work done yet to renovate the Sav U Mor building into a police department. “We’ve got it preliminarily designed, but we don’t have the funds to do it right now.” Brinkley said also that he’s in no rush to consolidate the 911 operation; asked if he’s concerned about missing the state’s deadline and hence the funding (an estimated $50,000-$100,000), Brinkley said he has a contingency plan and will not miss the January 2025 deadline.
The city currently plans to pay its own dispatchers in the initial phase of central dispatch and, through attrition, eventually transition dispatcher positions to the county.
Moving a 911 station can be a time-consuming process, Cain explained, as the transition requires moving multiple radios and 911 consoles. Cain estimated it would take at least six months to consolidate the two dispatch centers.
Police Chief Jason “Shorty” Jackson said there is room in the current APD to house a central dispatch operation. He hopes the consolidation happens quickly. “The sooner the better,” he said. “We should not still be transferring emergent calls up to three times to get people help.” The sheriff echoed Jackson’s sentiment: “This is something we’re going to have to do,” Watson said. “It’s not a matter of if, but when.”
In the meantime, Watson hopes to persuade members of the Quorum Court to consider increasing wages for sheriff’s office employees. Watson said he will provide justices of the peace with payroll statistics from other counties of similar size. “I have compiled a bunch of numbers to show the Quorum Court and will discuss stats for the last several years,” he said. Among those statistics he intends to share are the turnover rate at the sheriff’s office. In the past 10 years the office has turned over 124 employees, a number the sheriff called “outrageous. It’s an extremely high turnover rate just in the jail.”