This Saturday, June 7, the ribbon will be cut at the newly updated Washington Parish 911 Communication Center.
The ribbon cutting ceremony will take place at 9 a.m., and everyone is invited to attend, said Sheriff Jason Smith.
In addition to the actual ribbon-cutting, attendees will be invited to tour the facility, which is where eventually all emergency 911 calls to all parish first responders will be answered. The Communications Center is located in the center of the parish, just off Hwy 10 on Dollar Road.
During May, the Communication Division of the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office relocated to the Dollar Road facility after months of planning, installing new state-of-the-art equipment, and rigorous testing to make certain that the new center would meet the needs of Washington Parish.
As Smith noted, after years of delay and many technological hurdles, the center is now fully operational.
“The facility was originally built more than a decade ago, but financial and political roadblocks, coupled with a lack of planning, left it unused,” he said.
Smith said he wanted to take full advantage of this immense asset to the parish’s law enforcement and emergency management personnel, and shortly after he became Sheriff in 2024 he prioritized the effort to put the communications center into full use.
The next phase of the plan is to have all law enforcement dispatch efforts in Washington Parish centralized under the same roof, allowing all agencies to share information faster than ever before. The center will also serve as an information and investigations hub, giving deputies and other law enforcement personnel access to technological tools and support and enabling them to solve crimes more efficiently.
