By Cheryl Splain, KnoxPages.com Reporter
MOUNT VERNON — The number of calls the 9-1-1 dispatchers handle are on the rise compared to 2016, and an increasing number are drug related.
Laura Webster, operations director for Knox County 9-1-1, told County Commissioners Teresa Bemiller and Roger Reed that as of Thursday morning, the dispatch center has handled 97,890 calls this year. Emergency calls account for 14 percent; non-emergency calls, such as theft, non-injury crash or nuisance, account for 86 percent.
In 2016, the center handled 31 overdose calls and 319 drug-related calls. “We have 67 right now to date of overdose calls,” said Webster. “We are at 376 right now with drug-related calls.”
Domestic calls totaled 587 in 2016; thus far in 2017, the count is 457.
“You can see how much the drug epidemic has affected things,” said Bemiller.
Dispatchers average 384 calls a day and 16 an hour. The peak call day is Tuesday; the peak hour is 3 p.m. The majority of incoming calls are wireless.
Webster said that she has talked with County Administrator Jason Booth about possibly raising the minimum staffing level of three. Typically, there are four to five dispatchers on a shift now because dispatchers pick up overtime when it is offered. “Right now we can’t mandate they work overtime,” said Booth. “We would look at call volume by shift before increasing the minimum staffing.”
Webster said the Tactical Dispatch Team deployed to the Fredericktown Tomato Show in the mobile command center. “That all went well,” she said.
Booth said that the next phase for the mobile command center might be using it as the backup 9-1-1 center. The current backup center is the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, but the equipment there is older. The mobile command center can be taken anywhere. The portable communication units are not kept in the trailer, so even if something happened to the trailer, dispatchers will be able to handle calls. “We are in the early stages of thinking about this,” said Booth.
The 9-1-1 center is getting ready to upgrade its phone capabilities and dispatch software. Webster said the new software has IBM Watson capabilities. One advantage of Watson is that the software listens to the call and prints out a recording, eliminating the need for dispatchers to go back and search for a particular call.
Reed and Bemiller both said they have heard good things about the dispatch center. “We don’t hear anything but that you are doing a good job,” Reed told Webster. Bemiller agreed, adding, “We appreciate the job that everyone does there.”