Langlade County Sheriff’s Office in need of 911 dispatchers

ANTIGO, Wis. (WSAW) - The Langlade County Sheriff’s Office is in critical need of emergency dispatchers.

The department receives roughly 12,000 to 14,000 calls a year. But it’s been a significant challenge to find the right amount of dispatchers to be there for those in need. The Langlade County Board of Supervisors recently agreed to expand their staff to 12 dispatchers. Currently, they’re allocated for nine dispatchers but are short of that number.

Emergency dispatchers play a pivotal role to provide the help you need. Sheriff Mark Westen said they’ve been short staff for about five years.

“Our emergency dispatchers are a critical starting point, for essentially everything that happens in public safety. Whether you’re talking about fire response or an ambulance that needs to be dispatched or law enforcement necessity,” said Sheriff Westen.

It’s been a longtime struggle for the Langlade County Sheriff’s Office to find people to fill vacancies.

“A lot of people aren’t interested in working nights, weekends, and holidays. That’s a challenge that we face in public safety. That’s all real and it’s stuff that we have to do a better job of addressing,” said Westen.

Along with the struggle of finding dispatchers, becoming a quality dispatcher isn’t an easy ask.

“It’s a very unique situation to be able to find individuals that can multi-task, being able to talk on the phone, listen to the radio, type on a computer, and answer other stuff that’s happening around them all at the time,” said Westen.

It can sometimes be a thankless job. Sheriff Westen is thankful for the current dispatchers.

“They have stepped up to the plate big time when it comes to working shifts that they are not scheduled to work. Obviously, there’s a benefit to that, we’re paying a lot of overtime for those shifts, but it’s a heavy lift,” he said.

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