Wednesday, the Pearl River County Board of Supervisors put many minds at ease with the reinstatement of dispatch services for the Poplarville Police Department.
In 2012, the Pearl River County Board of Supervisors discontinued dispatch services to Poplarville Police Department due to budget constraints, Pearl River County Administrator Adrain Lumpkin said.
Pearl River County Sheriff David Allison said in 2010 and 2011, the board of supervisors sent him to the Poplarville Board of Aldermen to ask for financial help with the city’s dispatch services.
“Both times I was told by the aldermen that they had already set their budgets,” Allison said.
In 2012, Allison said the board asked him how much two dispatchers cost annually, which he said at the time was $85,000 per year. That year, the supervisors cut the sheriff’s department budget by $100,000, which forced Allison to make some cuts.
After a meeting with the board of aldermen that year, Allison said he was told that the city wasn’t prepared, or had the money, to fund dispatching services.
After the cuts, Poplarville Police Chief Butch Raby said the Poplarville Police Department and Picayune Police Department forged an agreement regarding running vehicle tags and driver’s license numbers. That agreement did not include dispatch calls, Raby added.
“If someone called the Poplarville Police Department, the call would ring the cell phone of a police officer,” he said. “That’s how they are dispatched to calls. If they run tags or licenses now, they sit in their car and utilize their laptops. It’s dangerous trying to run a number when you’re trying to keep an eye on the violators and you don’t know if the car is stolen or if a crime has been committed. They got to have communications.”
A few weeks ago, Raby initiated a meeting with Poplarville Mayor Brad Necaise, Allison and members of the board of supervisors to discuss the possibility of reinstating dispatch services.
“The residents of Poplarville pay city and county taxes,” Raby said. “My goal was for us to work together as a county.”
During Wednesday’s board meeting, District II Supervisor Malcolm Perry made a motion to add two more dispatchers to the sheriff’s department for the Poplarville Police Department’s use, Perry said Thursday. The motion passed unanimously, he said.
The sheriff department’s budget will have to be amended to accommodate for the positions, Perry said.
Necaise said he supported Raby’s desire to return dispatch services to the city,
“As we approach our budget year, the board and I are going to look at how much we pay for external services such as NCIS on a monthly basis,” he said. “If we tally those costs, which is roughly about $1,000, we can make that our contribution to the costs.”
Raby said one of his top goals as police chief was to reinstate dispatch services.
“I’m ecstatic this was accomplished,” he said. “I’m thankful we were able to sit down and talk and come up with some resolutions for our department and citizens. I’m thankful to the board of supervisors, the mayor and the sheriff for this. We are all in this together for the betterment of this county.”
Everyone agreed that the safety of Poplarville’s police officers is their number one priority, none more so than Sharie Collier, wife of Poplarville police officer Danny Collier. She is also a former dispatcher.
Her husband has been a police officer for the past 23 years and seven of those have been with the Poplarville Police Department.
“As a dispatcher, I was taught to inform the officers with any information that could make what they were doing more safe,” Sharie Collier said. “When they call in, it allows them to keep an eye on the suspect, vehicle and tag. It jeopardizes their safety when they have to look away.”
One of biggest fears is that her husband will walk into a situation he may not walk away from. While dispatch services can’t guarantee his safety, his chances of being safe increases, she added.
“It was a constant worry,” she said. “I would bring him a meal at the station while he was on duty and sometimes his phone would go off. He jumped up and out the door when he heard someone say they needed the police. He never stopped to gather information to know what he was getting himself into. My biggest fear is that he will get shot on a traffic stop and no one will know he’s out there. Now someone will.”