Hi, my name is Marsha. I’m a retired 29 year veteran 911 instructor. During my tenure, I designed public safety communications training courses, wrote policy and co-founded Alpha & Omega Tactical Communications, where we have taken our tactical dispatch, emergency incident management and public safety experience into the private sector and non-profit community organization space.

Answering calls from the public, I heard trauma, shock, vulnerability and good will. I also heard fear, bias, racism, false witness and entitlement. These are all prisms through which information flows, and colors what and how incidents are reported and resources dispatched.

Consistently engaging with the reporting of incidents of harmful offense; those who witnessed it and those who are personally deeply adversely affected, offered me continual opportunity to display the fruit of the spirit broadly in the course of my work. It was a heavy burden, but a beautiful one that caused me to stay in the face of God, in exchanging my strength for His and asking Him to give me the words to say to the people calling for help, many in the most traumatic and vulnerable time in their lives.

The work I do now is focused on engaging around equity in public safety communications by working with law enforcement; community based organizations that provide alternative options to police dispatch to handle incidents of harm; and the public and their role, and in many cases complicity, in the negative outcomes of interactions between law enforcement and the citizenry.

We desperately need a reimagining around the definition and creation of safety within community - so I remain prayerful, with my hand to the plow. Please join me.