Doug Cohron, a 9-1-1 telecommunicator at the Jeffersontown Police Department, is among 40 national finalists in the Smart Telecommunicator Awards, a program which recognizes and rewards 9-1-1 telecommunicators for their contributions to their 9-1-1 agency and community.
For the past several weeks, 9-1-1 call-takers and dispatchers (telecommunicators) in the United States have been nominated by their colleagues and citizens. The annual awards program now in its’ 4th year has received hundreds of nominations from all across the country, and today finalists were announced to kick off an online public vote to determine winners.
The public can now review the finalist submissions and vote online at www.smart911.com/sta through April 3, 2015 at 5:00 pm EDT.
This year’s nominees once again illustrate the crucial services that 9-1-1 telecommunicators provide, their dedication and the stressful situations they encounter. Doug was nominated by a peer for his starting of Kentucky’s first Tactical Dispatch Team that handles communications for SWAT responses, his over 10 years of involvement with the Kentucky Community Crisis Response Team that responds to crisis situations and provides psychological first aid to responders and the public after a traumatic event. Whether it is an officer involved shooting, fatal fire, child involved in a serious accident or any event that is deemed to require the assistance of the Community Crisis Response Team.
The Smart Telecommunicator Award was created, and is sponsored, by Rave Mobile Safety’s Smart911, the acclaimed national public safety service, in order to highlight the critical public safety role telecommunicators play. Smart911 will name a national winner and four regional honorees during National Telecommunicators Week (April 13-19). The national winner will receive a donation of $1000 to the charity of their choice, while regional honorees will receive a $500 donation to the charity of their choosing. If Doug wins, he has made the decision to donate his money to the Kentucky Juvenile Diabetes Foundation as his daughter suffers from hypoglycemia.
Smart911 allows citizens to create a Safety Profile online for their household that includes information they want 9-1-1 and response teams to have during an emergency. When a citizen makes an emergency call, their Safety Profile is automatically displayed to the 9-1-1 call taker, allowing them to send the right response teams to the right location with the right information. Introduced four years ago by Rave Mobile Safety, the most trusted software partner for campus and public safety, Smart911 is active in 38 states and more than 1,000 municipalities. It has been credited with positively impacting emergency situations across the U.S., including a missing child case in Arkansas, victims of heart attack and Epilepsy in Nashville, and saving the life of a man trapped in a house fire in Michigan.