Sheriff Candidates Debate #2 — ‘Silent Dispatch’

The two candidates for Niagara County (NY) sheriff are debating how deputies should be dispatched: either via MDT using the “silent dispatch” technique, or by voice on the radio so other agencies can hear the information. Ernest Palmer, a Niagara Falls PD detective, says the current silent system should end. He accuses the sheriff of protecting his turf with the technique, and called the method “a 1950s mind-set of parochialism.” But sheriff’s chief deputy James Voutour says silent dispatching is a “manufactured issue,” since the technique works well. But Palmer issued a 7-page memo outlining incidents that state troopers never heard, and could have responded to. Voutour says fewer than one percent of incidents are dispatched silently. Read the entire debate here.