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This is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week (April 12-18, 2026) and Sheriff Ric Bradshaw honors the dispatchers working for his agency.
He tells us that deputies rely on those dispatchers to get the right information in a timely manner.
"The men and women that are out there in the green and whites (uniforms) like to think that they are everything that happens. But, logically speaking, if the communications people don't start this thing off right...if they don't get the information they're supposed to, and it doesn't go right with them to start with, it's not going to go right the whole way."
There are over 240 million 911 calls annually across the U.S., and a large number of that is in Palm Beach County.
"They're busy. We did 1.2 million calls for services ourselves...just us."
Bradshaw says those numbers from last year only represent calls that came in to dispatch for service in unincorporated areas of the county and in the municipalities where PBSO provides law enforcement. He calls it a "high-stress job."