Stanislaus sheriff moves to negotiate alternative 911 dispatch contract with Ceres after yearslong JPA dispute

The Stanislaus County sheriff’s office said Tuesday it will negotiate with the City of Ceres to move the county’s law-enforcement dispatch operations out of the Stanislaus Regional 911 JPA and onto a Ceres-run public safety answering point, and that it plans to implement an integrated CAD, records and jail-management platform being developed by Oracle.

Sheriff’s Office leadership told the Board of Supervisors that years of unresolved governance, technical and data-access problems at the SR 911 joint‑powers authority prompted the search for a new partner. The board voted to authorize the sheriff to negotiate a police-dispatch services agreement with Ceres and return a contract for final board approval; the motion passed on a 3‑2 vote.

The sheriff’s team said the Oracle platform would combine computer-aided dispatch, records management and jail-management functions in one system and give dispatchers and deputies faster, consolidated access to information the sheriff called vital to officer and public safety. “This presentation has nothing to do with the dispatchers personally or their work performance, but how SR 911’s governance structure has failed to deliver effective and efficient dispatch services,” said Captain Tori Hughes, patrol operations, Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office described several technical and governance faults in the SR 911 arrangement: dispatchers employed under the JPA lack full access to California law-enforcement databases (CLETS), the JPA lacks…