Abisola Adeyemo
Marshall County - When children go missing 911 works to gather information to bring them back home.
Marshall County 911 dispatch partnered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to train dispatchers. They will now gather more detailed information, using a checklist to get the right resources to the scene and find the child faster.
911 Assistant Director John Townsend completed the training for the new program. He said at the training he heard from parents who had missing children that were never found.
"It was hard to sit there and look somebody in the eye while they told you the story about how they lost their child," Townsend said. "You know that they're never going to come back when the circumstances may have been different had the people in their community had the training we were taking."
911 Director Chris Freeman said the new protocol cuts response time in half.
"You got to protect your children," Freeman said. "The children are the future of our community, they're our future leaders. They need every opportunity and when something like that happens, we've got to come to their aid."
Townsend said other dispatch centers need the program, so more families might get the answers they're looking for.
Marshall County - When children go missing 911 works to gather information to bring them back home.
Marshall County 911 dispatch partnered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to train dispatchers. They will now gather more detailed information, using a checklist to get the right resources to the scene and find the child faster.
911 Assistant Director John Townsend completed the training for the new program. He said at the training he heard from parents who had missing children that were never found.
"It was hard to sit there and look somebody in the eye while they told you the story about how they lost their child," Townsend said. "You know that they're never going to come back when the circumstances may have been different had the people in their community had the training we were taking."
911 Director Chris Freeman said the new protocol cuts response time in half.
"You got to protect your children," Freeman said. "The children are the future of our community, they're our future leaders. They need every opportunity and when something like that happens, we've got to come to their aid."
Townsend said other dispatch centers need the program, so more families might get the answers they're looking for.
