City employees gathered at the Scotts Valley Police Department headquarters Wednesday morning, Jan. 19, to welcome Paul Simpson to his new job as emergency dispatch clerk.
Simpson, a native of the United Kingdom, worked as a police officer in London from 1992 to 2001, when he moved to the United States.
He got back into law enforcement in 2006, when he took a position as a police dispatcher in Novato.
“(Law enforcement) is not a job, it’s a vocation,” Simpson said to the gathering. “I left it for a while, and boy, did I miss it.”
He transferred to Scotts Valley from Novato when he and his wife decided to move closer to her family. The position opened when Shannon Taylor left the department in September after two years with the department.
Simpson said he looks forward to working in the small community setting that Scotts Valley offers.
“It’s a nice area to live,” he said. “I’ve always liked it here.”
Before Simpson was sworn in, Scotts Valley Police Chief John Weiss lauded his experience, both as a lawman and as a dispatcher, and said that Simpson understands the close-knit community the police serve.
The Scotts Valley Police Department has a 24-hour emergency dispatch center with four dispatchers who handle 12-hour shifts, along with two upper-level dispatchers who cover shifts and an administrator.
The Scotts Valley center is one of three in the county. Santa Cruz Regional 911, formerly Netcom, handles dispatch duties for all the police departments, including the sheriff’s office, except for University of California, Santa Cruz, which has its own dispatch center.
