Wyoming Highway Patrol Graduates Six New Dispatchers

Six new dispatchers completed their classroom training and celebrated with a graduation ceremony on September 19th at the communications center in Cheyenne.

Wyoming Highway Patrol Dispatch trainees go through five weeks of classroom training where they learn about a variety of topics. Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD), geography, emergency and non-emergency call taking, telephone procedures, National Crime Information Center (NCIC), basic law and high risk traffic stops are just a few of the many topics the dispatchers studied.

According to a news release, this class was the first Wyoming Highway Patrol Communications Basic that members of the Wyoming Department of Transportation Traffic Management Center attended. Communications Trainer Heather O'Connor stated that "the joint training was very successful and helped us gain a better understanding from both sides".

Now that the dispatchers have completed the classroom portion of training, they will move to phone room training for approximately four weeks where they sit side by side with a Communications Training Officer (CTO) and learn how to take actual calls and enter them into the CAD system. After successfully completing the phone room training, the new dispatchers will begin radio training where they work each radio in the dispatch center for one week at a time.