ANDERSON COUNTY, S.C. (WSPA) – For Anderson County dispatchers, answering 1,400 calls per day is the norm.
Dispatchers Kacey Rogers, Zachary McMillion and Derek Kennedy were recently honored with National Public Safety awards for their swift actions in an emergency.
“It’s not often that dispatchers get recognized for what they do, so it’s a pretty proud moment,” said Zachary McMillion.
The Anderson County Communications Center has been using RapidDeploy technology for the past year. The software has helped dispatchers make quick life-saving decisions.
RapidDeploy can pinpoint GPS locations every five seconds to find someone using radius call mapping.
The software helped a person who was stranded in Lake Hartwell.
“They had lost control of their boat and the friend had fallen and gotten a concussion,” recounted Kacey Rogers. “When they reached land, they had no idea where they were. It was actually a transfer from Hart County, Georgia, so it had no information in the call. I used the deploy to find coordinates to help get EMS to this man.”
The technology has real-time texting features that once helped students who were barricaded in a local high school and had to stay quiet. Students were able to share photos with dispatchers to show what was going on.
“If you’re not able to talk or speak another language or something, we can just text you or vice versa,” said Derek Kennedy.
Zachary McMillion recalled the time when he successfully negotiated with a dangerous suspect to surrender.
“We had initially reported that he had made threats to kill law enforcement so that was a very serious accusation,” said McMillion. “Being able to talk to him and find out where the weapons were inside the vehicle and to get him out, I believe it made a big difference because he could have gone south very quickly.”
Dispatchers said it’s the side of law enforcement most never get to hear about.
“In my opinion, RapidDeploy should be in every 911 center across the country. It has helped us out tremendously,” said McMillion. “We did our job before without it, and our job was stressful enough as it is but with RapidDeploy, it takes a little bit of that stress off and helps us get resources to people faster and not only in emergency situations, but also in law enforcement, investigative technicians. Overall it’s just a great tool.”
RapidDeploy has 10 state wide customers who use the technology.
Anderson County isn’t the first Palmetto State area to use the software, Charleston and Greenville started using RapidDeploy years ago.
