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Cochise County’s 9‑1‑1 center to assume full Tombstone dispatching July 1, adds staff and AI fire-detection pilots
Summary
CECOM director Tammy Jo Wilkins said the regional 9-1-1 center will take over full-time dispatching for the Tombstone Marshal's Office starting July 1, has hired its 18th employee toward a 20-person budget, and plans to use Pano AI cameras for earlier wildfire detection.
Tammy Jo Wilkins, director of Cochise County Emergency Communications (CECOM), told KWCD's First Watch that CECOM will begin full-time dispatching for the Tombstone Marshal's Office on July 1 and is expanding staffing and technology to improve response.
"Starting July 1, we'll be dispatching for Tombstone Marshal's office on a full time basis," Wilkins said, adding that the change will bring "better technology and a lot better response time for the Tombstone area." She noted the marshal's office previously relied on part-time support.
Wilkins said CECOM has hired its 18th employee and is training the new staffer as part of an 18‑to‑20 staffing plan. "We just hired our eighteenth person," she said, and described a structured internal training program and a move to county human-resources processes that reduced hiring turnaround from roughly six months to about two months.
On operations, Wilkins described the center's use of standardized priority-dispatch protocols and an example where a dispatcher provided CPR instructions on the phone for more than 30 minutes while first responders were en route. "We had a dispatcher yesterday do an amazing job on a, incident where CPR had to be instructed, and she was on the phone for over 30 minutes until help could arrive," she said.
CECOM is also testing Pano AI, a program Wilkins said is free to the county and uses two fixed AI cameras to identify small smoke plumes. "It's called Pano AI... it actually gives me an alert when there's a teeny tiny plume," she said. The system provides latitude/longitude and can distinguish probable smoke from dust devils; the county plans to dispatch smoke checks to confirm and reduce fire spread if the alert is not ruled out.
Why it matters: Full-time dispatching and added technology aim to shorten response times for calls in Tombstone and across Cochise County, while Pano AI offers early wildfire detection in a county increasingly attentive to fire risk.
Supporting details: Wilkins said CECOM dispatches for 17 fire departments and nine law-enforcement agencies across Cochise County, with Benson and Douglas as exceptions. She provided the nonemergency number for CECOM as (520) 803-3550 and said the center has built internal trainer capacity (six trainers, up from three).
Ending: Wilkins emphasized partnership with county human resources and community agencies as keys to CECOM's rapid growth and technology adoption; she encouraged residents to use the nonemergency line for nonlife-threatening issues and to expect upgraded dispatch services for Tombstone starting July 1.
