Full Notification

On Thursday, April 17, 2014, the Corona Police Department will have six of their Public Safety Dispatchers honored during the Annual Telecommunications Awards Banquet. This event is held in conjunction with the National Telecommunicator’s Week, which is April 13-19th.

The California Public-Safety Radio Association (CPRA), and its parent organization, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International (APCO), solicited and reviewed nominations from over 240 local Sheriff, Police, Fire and EMS agencies in the Southern California area.

PSD Laura Nielsen, Krista Aja, Karen Alexander, Kaitlin Croix, Briana Escobedo, and Karen Sevier were selected as this year’s winners of the CPRA’s Exemplary Service Award Team. This award is designed to honor two or more individuals from the same public-safety communications agency that worked on the same incident.

This particular incident occurred on December 19, 2013. The Communications Center started receiving several 9-1-1 calls reporting an overturned bus on the I-15 freeway. It was ultimately determined to be a Mass Casualty Incident with 30-40 patients, which required additional apparatus from other agencies and extra AMR units.

The PSD’s coordinated with one another in regards to the information being received, entered, and relayed to personnel on the scene. In the midst of this incident, they continued to answer and process emergency and non-emergency calls.

During the time of this incident, and in continuing normal operations with incoming and outgoing phone calls, police radio, and fire radio, the Communications Center experienced two CAD system failures, which lasted up to 35 minutes.

With all that was going on, this team of dispatchers continued to provide exemplary service to the community, police personnel and fire personnel. They displayed an unwavering positive attitude throughout a challenging time and ensured public safety service levels were not diminished.

Pictured left to right (top): Kaitlin Croix, Karen Alexander, Karen Sevier, and Laura Nielsen (bottom) Briana Escobedo, and Krista Aja