California Emergency Dispatcher AssociationCommunications Spotlight
El Cajon PD
(San Diego County)
by Jamie Zeller
(L-R) Craig Groll, Adam Gustafson, Rick Alvarado and Selena Perez
This issue's Communications Center Spotlight is the El Cajon Police Department. The Communications Spotlight articles are a way to highlight various dispatch centers around this beautiful state of California! I am sure a lot of us wonder how different agencies dispatch centers function, staff, and operate on a daily basis and this will give us ALL an inside view on Southern, Central and Northern California comm centers. I spoke with dispatch supervisor Craig Groll about his dispatch center, dispatchers and what makes this agency a great place to work. Here is what he had to say!
El Cajon Police Department is a primary PSAP that dispatches only for the police department. Fire and medical related calls are transferred directly to a secondary PSAP to evaluate and dispatch.
We currently have 8 Police Dispatchers, 5 Communications Operators, 4 Dispatch Supervisors, and 1 Communications Manager. Generally there are 2 Dispatchers, 1 Communications Operator, and 1 Dispatch Supervisor on per shift and we have a civilian manager. Our dispatch center offers a wide variety of opportunities for our dispatchers.
We have a 911 for Kids program that focuses on educating children on the use of 911. The program is taught at local elementary schools and at special events like safety fairs and Community meetings.
There is also a tactical dispatcher team. There are 4 dispatchers on the team and they work very close with the SWAT team. The tactical dispatchers attend monthly training with the SWAT team. Members of the Communications Center also participate in Neighborhood watch meetings, the ECPD Holiday storefront, and training department staff.
We have a great Communications Center that has a really great group of people. We are small enough that everyone knows everyone really well yet we are big enough to experience a wide variety of calls. We all work together as really tight team. We are only a few months out from moving into our new Public Safety Center and Communications Center. Our new center will be state of the art, including a replacement for our current CAD system with a completely new product that will allow us to communicate more effectively with the field units and provide better data sharing between each. This is a very exciting time for not only our Communications team, but for our entire department.