Indiana Treasurer of State Kelly Mitchell listens to a presentation from county Assistant 911 Director Sarah Lancaster on Thursday, Aug. 30.

WARSAW — The top finance officer for the state of Indiana made her rounds through Warsaw on Thursday, Aug. 30, to observe Kosciusko County’s emergency dispatch nerve center in action.

Treasurer of State Kelly Mitchell was given a tour of the county’s Public Safety Answering Point, the dispatch center located in the basement of the Kosciusko County Jail, by 911 Director Lt. Rick Shepherd and Assistant Director Sarah Lancaster.

“As state treasurer, I am chair of the statewide 911 board,” said Mitchell. “It’s our job, that if you call or text 911, that it gets here, as it should. So, we are the ones who are responsible for the infrastructure of the statewide 911.”

During the treasurer’s tour, Lancaster told the treasurer that the center is staffed by three to four full-time dispatchers at all times. She said that of the three dispatchers present during the tour, longevity would be an accurate statement to make of the trio. “The three who are working today have a total of 60-plus years,” Lancaster said.

Lancaster told Mitchell that the centralized center was created from four original dispatch locations in Warsaw for the city and county, as well as North Webster and Syracuse.

Lancaster told Mitchell that the county receives thousands of emergency calls and that the center is also a default center for outside the county. The center has 13 incoming lines, seven of which are dedicated to 911 calls.

“We also are the state’s default center,” said Lancaster. “So we get all the 911 calls that get caught up in the loop and don’t know where to go. We’ve actually received 911 calls from the country of Brazil and from Ireland.”

Lancaster, Shepherd and Mitchell discussed one of 911’s most recent features, which allows citizens to text into the centers in emergency situations.

“We have done the texting 911 statewide for two years now,” said Mitchell. “So, when we did it, we were the world’s largest deployment of text 911.”

According to Lancaster, 911 calls reaching the center are the minority of calls received, possibly due to the program’s infancy. She also said that residents who use this feature are encouraged to include their current location since tracking is more difficult with texts. She stressed that texting should be used in situations where voice communication is not feasible. Emergency services personnel prefer voice calls. But in situations where callers cannot vocalize or must remain silent, the texting feature provides a way to communicate.

Another important milestone involving 911 service makes Mitchell’s visit extra significant.

“Also, we are celebrating 50 years of 911 in Indiana this year,” said Mitchell, who said the board is looking for more opportunities to provide training for dispatchers.

During the tour, other features of 911 were discussed, such as the program’s ability to communicate in other languages. Lancaster and Shepherd said that while Spanish is a primary second language in Kosciusko County, there is also a significant population of residents who speak other languages such as Mandarin and Burmese.

Mitchell said that since 911 is funded primarily through telephone bill user fees, “They made the treasurer the chair of the board when it came together and I am the only treasurer in the country who’s in charge of 911. But, I absolutely love it. We’re, quite literally, world leaders in 911 technology,” Mitchell said.

From May 2017 to May, Kosciusko County received 183,125 totals calls, 24,712 of which were from wireless devices. The county received 352 incoming text messages, a number that ranks the center the seventh highest receiver of texts in Indiana.