Police jurors, first responders voice dispatching problems

CLINTON — Complaints about emergency services dispatching surfaced in a Wednesday meeting of East Feliciana Parish law enforcement and fire department officials, with Police Jury members attempting to mediate the dispute.

Police Jury President Dennis Aucoin said he called the meeting after hearing complaints from members of the parish Emergency Communications Commission about an alleged lack of cooperation from the Sheriff’s Office.

“We want to talk about how to make the operation run smoother, especially in dispatching,” Aucoin said.

The commission is responsible for maintaining the emergency 911 telephone equipment with funds from telephone subscriber surcharges.

It pays half of the salaries for four dispatchers, or call takers, who work with dispatchers paid by the Sheriff’s Office at the Parish Jail.

Commission Director Ben Chasteen said only part of the 911 call-taking equipment is being used, maps and addresses are out of date, dispatchers need more training and all agencies must cooperate.

“If there’s one person working against it, it’s going to be hard to do,” Chasteen said.

Commission Chairman Bill Ford said the computer-aided dispatching equipment has not been used to its full extent since 2007 because the dispatchers haven’t been trained.

Ford also said Sheriff Talmadge Bunch appointed Parish Jail Warden Ray Newman to the commission, but allegedly told Bud Weigand, the parish emergency preparedness director, to be the sheriff’s liaison with the commission and told Chasteen to go to sheriff’s Maj. Bob King with any problems.

“One-on-one is OK, but three-on-one is the way it is now,” Ford said, referring to Newman’s call for representatives of the Sheriff’s Office and commission to sit down and work out the differences.

Newman took umbrage at the complaints, saying the Sheriff’s Office has suffered drastic cuts in its budget because of reduced state payments for housing state prisoners, some of whom are in a work-release program.

“Without the inmates, you don’t have a Sheriff’s Office,” Newman said, adding, “We have some obstacles to overcome” in working with Chasteen.

The commission has “memorandums of understanding” with all parish fire and police agencies, but Ford and Chasteen said the documents have never been fully implemented.

The meeting ended with Newman saying he would ask Bunch to name someone to go over the memorandums with Chasteen to make recommendations to the commission for smoother operations.