The Communication Division is responsible for answering all non emergency and emergency 911 calls to the police department. When you call 911 inside the city limits of Farmington, those calls are answered at the St. Francois County Joint Communications Center in Park Hills. All Emergency Medical Service and Fire Department related calls are dispatched by members of the St. Francois County Joint Communications Center.

If you have 911 calls that are Police Emergency Only they are transferred to the Farmington Police Department. We serve as a back up communications center to St. Francois County where in the event their communication operators need to relocate from their facility, they will be able to still operate with their agencies via radios and phones at our facility.

We have a state of the art communications center comprised of three positions. Two positions are located in the Communications Center and have enhanced E911 feature and the third position is located in the basement of the police department in our Emergency Operations Center. This means that when you call 911 from a landline phone, the 911 screen shows the address your calling from, name of residence/business and also the phone number. However if you call 911 from your cellular phone we will not be able to verify your location, until we speak with you over the phone.

 We currently have 5 communication officers and 1 communication supervisor. The Communications Division is a very important support service within the Police Department. It is responsible for maintaining a vital link between the public and the officers in the field. Police communication officers, or dispatchers, handle many types of calls and situations daily from routine to emergency calls and critical incidents.

Dispatchers provide a necessary indispensable function for the public and the police officers. Many calls received are simple requests for directions, phone numbers, locations and referrals that are handled directly by the dispatcher or transferred to another department for follow-up. Other calls result in “calls for service” which require either the response of a police officer or other action that needs to be addressed.

The majority of calls received are routine in nature and are easily handled by the dispatcher, but there are also calls of an emergency nature that require the communication officer’s greatest skills, training and level headed thinking to be utilized.

Calls for service are entered into a Computer Aided Dispatch system for logging purposes. We also handle after hours calls for city services such as Electric, Water, Sewer, etc, by contacting the appropriate representative.

Communication officers are responsible for relaying messages via radio to police officers, other police agencies, etc.

We also activate the Emergency Warning Sirens from the Police Department during TORNADO WARNINGS ONLY and when testing the system. If you have any questions you may contact the communication supervisor at 573-756-6686.