BENTONVILLE — In the popular imagination, on television and in the movies, law enforcement is a matter of crashing cars and high-caliber handguns.
But in the real world, a microphone — and the person on the other end of it — may be an officer’s most valuable weapon.
In Benton County, the voice on the other end of the radio comes from “CenCom,” the county’s Central Communications facility housed in the basement of the County Administration Building.
Last year, 27 dispatchers keyed up their microphones 1.8 million times, keeping law enforcement officers, firefighters, emergency medical personnel and others working in emergency services aware of the world around them.
Detective Cody Harper with the Centerton Police Department said CenCom handles all of the department’s 911 calls and any calls that come in after normal business hours. The department has 10 officers now, Harper said, and would have a radically different structure if CenCom wasn’t available.
“We would have to build towers, buy radios and hire dispatchers,” Harper said. “We would have to have our own dispatch center.”
Josh Billis, director of county emergency communication, has worked for the county since 2003, working his way up through the ranks from dispatcher to director. Billis has seen CenCom grow from the days it was housed in a closet-sized space in the old county jail into a modern, state-of-the-art communication center.
Billis said the work of handling emergency communications has grown along with the county’s population. In 2006, he said, CenCom handled 27,578 calls for 911 emergencies. By the end of 2010, that had grown to 36,107. CenCom handled 57,708 calls for service in 2006. That increased to 90,554 in 2010, Billis said.
“These are really the unsung heroes,” Billis said of CenCom’s dispatchers.
Billis said the county divides its 27 dispatchers into three shifts, with between four and nine dispatchers working at any given time. Based on history, the staff is “bulked up” for the busiest times, typically night shifts beginning Thursday and continuing through Saturday.
Billis said the staff doesn’t rotate shifts and the county allows dispatchers as much choice as is practical and feasible while keeping the county’s needs in mind. Some dispatchers choose to work nights, some prefer days. Some try to work around family responsibilities or schedules.
Jeremy Wall, a second-shift supervisor, said he likes working nights.
“To me, it probably is one of the busier shifts,” Wall said. “We get a variety of calls, but I think we get a lot more of the ‘edge-of-your-seat’ type of calls. And I’m a night person, so I prefer the night shift. I don’t function well in daylight.”
Wall, a 1997 graduate of Bentonville High School, is a veteran of six years service in the Navy and worked as an emergency medical technician in New Orleans for several years. He said the volume of activity and the nature of many of the calls — shootings and stabbings were common — pushed him out of New Orleans.
“One day I just said ‘I’ve had enough of this’ and I had to move back home,” Wall said. “Compared to what I used to do in New Orleans, this is calm. It’s still busy, it’s just different.”
Wall said there are moments when the calm is broken. He was recently teasing dispatchers about the catastrophes they should be expecting on their shift when a call came in that interrupted the levity. An airplane left the airport in Decatur and circled the airspace of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport.
No one could contact the airplane by radio, Wall said, and visions of disasters flashed through his mind as they tried to keep up with the situation. The airplane finally landed in Siloam Springs, Wall said, bringing the excitement to an end.
Billis said that while the county has upgraded equipment and officials are always studying ways to better use technology, the human element remains the key to CenCom’s success.
“My view of technology is that you can’t always rely on it,” Billis said. “We could get a system like a Cadillac or a Mercedes car, but technology fails randomly. The entire staff is trained to go back to doing things manually at any given time because of that.”
Billis said there is no predicting what may happen or when, so each dispatcher is trained and expected to handle any call that comes in. Last year, he said, one dispatcher handled more than 13,000 calls.
“I’m really proud of my staff for being able to attack the increase head on and show the public we’re here to do what’s necessary,” Billis said. “I wish there were more ways to reward them for the job they do for the county.”
***
At A Glance
What Is CenCom?
Created in 1991, CenCom employs 27 dispatchers and directs the work of the Benton County Sheriff’s Office, 10 municipal police departments, 20 fire departments, three ambulance services and numerous other emergency response agencies.
Source: Benton County