Dispatch board: Police, fire chaplains should respond only if requested
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio
Wednesday, March 11, 2015, 5 p.m.` — Chaplains who serve with first-responders in Nelson County are being asked not to respond to emergencies without a specific request to do so.
The policy was approved Tuesday afternoon by the Nelson County E-911 Dispatch Board.
E-911 Board member Joe Prewitt. (File photo)
Board member Nelson County Sheriff Ed Mattingly told the board he was concerned about the possible liability issues that arise from the way first-responder chaplains have been self-deploying.
“Chaplains have been responding to whatever they want to,” Mattingly said.
Chaplains monitor police and fire frequencies and they have been responding to incidents without being requested, he explained. Because the chaplains are usually associated with an agency — a police or fire department — they typically are covered by the department’s liability coverage.
Mattingly said he appreciates the work chaplains perform, but if they are acting on their own and responding when they aren’t requested, it becomes a liability issue with the agency.
Board member Frank Hall, chief of the Rolling Fork Fire Department, agreed that if a chaplain associated with an agency has an accident while responding to an emergency without being requested, the agency could wind up facing liability claims.
“Eventually that’s going to come back and bite one of us,” he told the board.
Death notifications are the job of the county coroner’s office, Mattingly told the board. And in the event of a house fire, the American Red Cross responds with its own chaplains.
Mattingly said at present, the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office has no chaplain, and he said his agency has functioned fine without one.
Mattingly and the board agreed that while chaplains are beneficial, it was important that they follow the policy and only respond to an incident when they are specifically requested to do so.
MICROWAVE VS. FIBER. The high cost of the fiber-optic link between EMS station 1 and the Nelson County Dispatch center prompted a discussion by the board of alternative ways of connecting the two.
The City of Bardstown had provided the lines at no cost until last year. The city began charging the dispatch board for use of its fiber lines last year after the dispatch board moved to quit handling phone calls for city utility outages.
Dispatch Director Debbie Carter noted that the dispatch center budget had no money to pay for the fiber lines. EMS Director Joe Prewitt said the ongoing fiber costs may mean the dispatch budget will begin the next year $25,000 in the red.
Prewitt suggested using microwave links to replace the fiber lines, which would mean a one-time cost of $4,600. The microwave links may improve signal quality between the linked locations, he said.
The board also discussed the coming upgrade in the dispatch center’s computer-aided dispatch software. Carter and GIS mapping consultant Josh Cammack expressed concern that they have been told the software’s import and export features for updates won’t be as seamless as they initially believed. Carter said the discussions with the vendor, InterAct are continuing.
NEXT UP. The board will hold a special meeting 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 24, 2015, to review and approve its budget. The board meets at Nelson County EMS Station 1 on Atkinson Hill Road.
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