Since 1995, the Ripon Police Department has been providing dispatch services to the Escalon Police Department via the Ripon Emergency Communication Center.

It started out as an after-hour service during the week, weekends and holidays.

Those services went fulltime as both agencies reached an agreement in March 2011.

The Ripon City Council recently approved an amendment to the dispatch service agreement to continue providing greater services to the City of Escalon police, charging them for one full-time equivalent dispatch position along with a fair portion of capital improvement and maintenance as needed to continue operating the Emergency Communication Center.

Escalon would reimburse the City of Ripon’s general fund for the estimated cost of $161,000 for 2022, according to police Chief Ed Ormonde in his Aug. 9 report.

Ripon added the City of Lathrop and its new police department to handle similar type services during the past year.

With Escalon, the Ripon Emergency Communication Center will continue to handle complaints and requests for assistance and information from its citizens by telephone, including 9-1-1 calls.

Dispatchers would maintain two-way radio communications with units on routine or emergency situations along with general activities.

They would continue to maintain and type in the various logs and keep up on computerized records of incidents.

In addition, the Ripon Emergency Communication Center would help out Escalon outside of normal business hours or when assigned staff is not available in handing such matters as missing persons, stored vehicles, stolen vehicles, and firearm entries, to a few.