The Virginia and Florida offices have celebrated Derek Poarch over the last couple of weeks as we bid farewell to him. Special thanks to APCO board member Jack Varnado and his wife Peggy for preparing the BBQ lunch in Daytona Beach featuring NOLA favorites of jambalaya, fried fish and white chocolate bread pudding.

Best wishes to Derek!

APCO is seeking comments for two candidate American National Standards:

• Public Safety Communications Incident Handling Process: This revision identifies the steps and decision-making points that should be considered while processing public safety requests for service.
• Non-9-1-1 Call Processing and Dispatch: This standard addresses technological evolution, as new services become available to the public.

Both standards are open for public review and comment until January 29.

APCO has issued a call for participation in the creation of a new technical standard titled 700 MHz Deployable Public Safety Trunking Systems. This standard will expand on best practices developed by the National Regional Planning Council (NRPC) and covers both the provisioning of deployable trunked radio systems and programming of subscriber radio equipment when providing mutual aid.
Join the working group

Offered online and in the APCO Virtual Classroom, the course Crisis Negotiations for Telecommunicators, 2nd Edition examines the special concerns related to crisis situations in 9-1-1, including hostage situations, barricaded subjects and persons with suicidal intent. Course takeaways include the conceptual tools to help understand crisis situations and skills to use when working to resolve these incidents. The course is worth 8 CDEs. Space is available on these dates:

• Virtual Classroom (1 day): 12/21 | 2/15 | 4/2
• Online (3 weeks): 1/17 - 2/6 | 2/7 - 2/27 | 3/6 - 3/26
• In-Person: Thomson, GA - 2/7 | Toledo, IA - 4/11

Spaces are available in these courses starting soon:

APCO Virtual Classroom Courses

• 12/19: Bullying and Negativity in the Communications Center, 2nd Edition (8 CDEs)
• 1/9 - 1/11: Communications Center Supervisor, 5th Edition (24 CDEs)
• 1/15 - 1/19: Public Safety Communications Staffing & Employee Retention (8 CDEs)
• 1/23 - 1/26: Emergency Medical Dispatch, 5th Edition, Version 4 (32 CDEs)

Online Courses

• 12/27 - 1/30: Communications Training Officer, 6th Edition
• 1/10 - 1/30: Surviving Stress (8 CDEs)
• 1/17 - 2/6: Disaster Operations and the Communications Center
• 1/24 - 2/27: Comprehensive Quality

View the course schedule

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