Broward County Sheriff's Office - Communications Division

Communications Division

The Communications Division of Broward Sheriff's Office is responsible for 911 call-taking, dispatch, and teletype services for all Broward Sheriff's Office Districts. In addition, BSO also provides these services for several municipal police departments including, Town of Davie, Village of Sea Ranch Lakes, City of Lauderhill, City of Hallandale Beach, and Town of Lighthouse Point. In addition, BSO communications employees staff the dispatch center of Fort Lauderdale Police Department, however they operate off of separate radio channels and do not mix between BSO Law Enforcement Dispatch, and Fort Lauderdale Police Dispatch.

The Communications Division also provides dispatch services for the Broward Sheriff's Office Department of Fire Rescue and Emergency Services, as well as for several municipal fire departments. Davie Fire-Rescue, Oakland Park Fire-Rescue, Lighthouse Point Fire-Rescue, Lauderhill Fire-Rescue, North Lauderdale Fire-Rescue, Southwest Ranches Fire-Rescue, Tamarac Fire-Rescue, and Hallandale Beach Fire-Rescue are all dispatched by BSO Communications and operate on dispatch 2F North, 4F South, or 5F West respectively. Prior to 1999 BSO also dispatched Fort Lauderdale Fire-Rescue on 3F Central, however on November 21, 1999 Fort Lauderdale took over their own dispatch operations.

The last task that the Communications Division is responsible for is the Broward County Medcom system. Rescue units transporting to the various hospitals in Broward County must communicate through Broward County Medcom. Medcom's task is to patch the communications of the rescue units on the county's 800 MHz trunked radio system, to the 400 MHz radio system used by area hospitals. Rescue units call medcom, and medcom assigns them a channel that is then patched to the intended hospital.

In late 2011 the channel denomination changed becoming 2BCF, 4BCF and 5BCF, having the first channel become the main dispatch (2BCF-DISP,4BCF-DISP and 5BCF-DISP), the second channel become information (2BCF-INFO, 4BCF-INFO and 5BCF-INFO), the third channel become car-to-car for units to communicate over the air (2BCF-CC, 4BCF-CC and 5BCF-CC) and the fourth, fifth and sixth channels become TAC1, TAC2 and TAC3 respectively .