911 Director Resigns After Dispatcher Drug Case

The director of the Hancock County (Ind.) 911 center resigned after an investigation determined that he allowed a dispatcher trainee suspected of having drugs in his truck outside the comm center to remain on-duty. The unnamed dispatcher was later fired, and now county commissioners say Ty Wooten should have taken the dispatcher out of the comm center and immediately begun an investigation. Instead, Wooten said the trainee was only observing, had no contact with the public, and “was no imminent threat.” County commission president Derek Towle said Wooten should also have passed information about the incident up the chain of command. Interestingly, the sheriff’s office brought no charges against the dispatcher after a co-worker noticed an odor from the trainee’s truck in the parking lot, and a sheriff’s canine alerted to the presence of drugs in the vehicle. Wooten had been 911 director for the past year, and was previously a county firefighter/EMT, county comm center sergeant and manager of the Indianapolis airport comm center. Read more here. [A previous version of this story mistakenly stated Wooten was fired.]