Communications

Sweet Home Police Department operates a secondary public safety answering point (PSAP) dispatch center and receives transferred 911 emergency calls from Linn County 911 Center.  It provides emergency and non-emergency call reception and dispatching services for Police operations.  Our dispatch center operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout the year and is staffed by 5 dispatchers and one supervisor.  For the year of 2019 the Communications Division processed 18,184 Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) calls and 8,639 Incident related calls.

Dispatchers provide a vital link between field personnel and citizens.  Their responsibility and service extends beyond the mere conveyance of information.  Dispatchers are highly trained in a very technical field of communications.  They anticipate the information needs of field personnel and make such data immediately available to improve the quality of service provided by the department and greatly increase the safety factor for the officers in the field.

Dispatchers at Sweet Home Police Department must receive training annually to maintain their certification in the field of Emergency Telecommunications.

Calls for service are received via telephone, walk-in traffic and radio. We utilize a computer aided dispatch system (CAD). All calls for service are entered directly into the computer.  The computer system subsequently tracks all activities related to that call.