Regular readers know I changed LE agencies a couple years ago. From a very large metropolitan LEA to a small LEA. Am glad to be back to my roots and knowing all my officers by name and face and voice.
My new agency is finally able to go MDS. Yippee. Get computers in the patrol units. Less air traffic. Easier to communicate with the officers too.
In my former LEA job all the units, even many unmarked, had MDS's in their vehicles. I love MDS dispatching. Lots of years experience with upgrades and changes and still love the overall effectiveness.
In my new LEA I am the only dispatcher that has worked with MDS dispatching. Only two of our newest officers have worked with MDS dispatching.
And NONE of us were part of the team who put together the training, design, and application. The team were senior sgt, senior dispatcher, senior lt, our department tech person and the company rep.
And now the training has begun. Instead of getting the experienced MDS dispatching people in at least the first class, we are all part of the last group to get trained. As the training room is nearby my dispatch center - and all their "training events" are popping up on my dispatch screen, I am already seeing a problem I pulled the tech person out to point out on my screen.
Why would the department not put the most experienced people as part of the team in the integration to more quickly spot problems and cut them off? To help with training? Share their experiences?
2 comments:
Police dispatcher here.. and as this is public, I am going to choose my words wisely.
It seems that this sort of thing is the same everywhere. :) We had a minor policy change done recently, and I just about spat my coffee out when I saw it. The change obviously made it through many levels of management and several departments before being approved, and looked pretty on paper. But there was no way for it to actually happen with the way our CAD software works. Impossible. If someone had taken 30 seconds to actually ask a dispatcher if it would work, they'd have been told no.
Nice to know some things are universal. :)
It's true Matt. It's a shame but what it is. Use to work for a very large agency and things, like policy changes, would trickle down to us in dispatch and we'd just shake our heads in wonder and go about our business like before.
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