Welcome to the Sheriff’s Communications Center… the hub of the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office. The communications center was renovated and remodeled in 2016 which provides four fully operational state of the art dispatch stations. The Sheriff’s Communication Center has a staff of eight full-time dispatchers and is supervised by a patrol sergeant.

The center is staff 24-hours per day, seven days per week. The dispatchers work rotating 12-hour shifts, and there are usually two dispatchers on duty at any time.

The communications center is responsible for answering seven 911 emergency telephone lines; two 7-digit back up emergency telephone lines, 10 business telephone lines, and several other inter-department telephone lines. Cellular 911 calls are currently answered by the California Highway Patrol Dispatch and must be transferred by them to the appropriate agency. Tehama County is in the process of transferring responsibility and will be receiving the cellular 911 calls for the county in the near future. The communications center dispatches for Tehama County only. The cities of Red Bluff and Corning have their own dispatch centers.

The dispatchers are responsible for keeping track of all patrol deputies, detectives, sergeants, and other miscellaneous personnel who are on-duty. The dispatchers must also monitor Red Bluff Police Department, Corning Police Department, CAL Fire, and the California Highway Patrol to make sure they are aware of an incident that may carry over into the county or assist those agencies if needed. This includes monitoring the primary and secondary radio channels and 11 other monitored channels used by other agencies. The dispatchers use a CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) system for tracking the units and calls for services. When a call for service is received, dispatch must enter the call in the computer and radio the appropriate deputy to respond to the incident. The dispatcher must check everyone involved in the call and make sure there are no alerts or dangers to the officers responding.

Dispatchers are also responsible for daily paperwork at the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office. Dispatchers enter and track countywide warrants, which includes entering warrants into the computers and state warrant systems, abstracting them to other counties or agencies when the person is arrested, and updating the warrants to show when they were served, recalled, or purged. Dispatchers run driver’s license queries, criminal history checks, and wanted person checks for the patrol units, other agencies, and for report purposes. Dispatchers will enter restraining orders into the computer system and keep track of the involved paperwork for the county. Dispatchers are also responsible for running paperwork for the county. Dispatchers are responsible for running paperwork for every intake into the Tehama County Jail, making sure each person has been booked completely, including driver’s license checks, wanted persons checks and criminal history.