Local agencies divided on future of dispatch codes

Providing help to the areas affected by the devastating tornadoes in the northern part of the state taught several lessons to Houston County Emergency Management Agency Director Clark Matthews.

One of them is the advantage of using plain English to communicate with other emergency responders.

“We just used straight talk,” said Matthews, who traveled to Tuscaloosa to help the city recover from the tornado that devastated it last month. “It worked a lot better because we weren’t familiar with their ‘10-codes’ or signals. We had so many different law enforcement agencies from the state coming into Tuscaloosa and people all the way from Utah there with dogs and those kinds of things, so it had to be straight talk.”

In the Wiregrass, as in most of the state, law enforcement agencies use dispatch codes with a “10” prefix to describe each situation to which they respond.

“The 10-code, it’s quick,” said Houston County Sheriff’s Capt. Antonio Gonzalez. “A 10-23 means, ‘I’m on the scene.’ Everybody knows that officer is on the scene. It’s (three) syllables compared to ‘This unit’s on scene,’ which has more radio traffic tie-up.”

But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began recommending plain speech in 2006, and Matthews said the differences between each area’s codes lead to problems in disaster situations.

“There are no advantages to a 10-code, speaking from a disaster (standpoint),” he said. “The advantage is to go to straight talk. The (Dothan) Fire Department has gone to straight talk pretty much, and if we get into a Level 2 disaster or higher, we would use straight talk anyway. That would be part of the emergency management plan.”

Gonzalez said discussions have been ongoing about the future of dispatch codes in the county.

“It’s always being talked about, but nothing concrete at this point,” he said. “Straight talk has its advantages and the 10-code has its advantages. The problem with plain talk sometimes is enunciation of words. Until we get research seeing which one benefits the sheriff’s office more, we need (the codes) for dispatching issues.”

The Dothan Police Department, however, has no plans of changing its communication system.

“We’re not going to go plain talk,” said Dothan Police Sgt. Rachel David. “We’re big advocates of the 10-code. Typically, for smaller agencies, plain talk is more than sufficient. The problem with an agency Dothan’s size or larger is we have such a high volume of radio traffic as it is that using 10-codes makes our traffic more succinct, much quicker on and off the radio. When you have the possibility of many officers on scenes, traffic stops, things we need daily, if you went to plain talk it could become a safety issue.”

The sheriff’s department may soon find a happy medium, though.

“We really haven’t come to a conclusion which way we want to go,” Gonzalez said. “The sheriff is looking at possibly a combination of both that we might end up using.”