Montana Highway Patrol seeks dispatchers for Helena communications center
Helena’s MHP dispatch center handled 165,769 calls in 2025 and is now hiring dispatchers for around-the-clock coverage.
At Fort Harrison in Helena, the Montana Highway Patrol is hiring dispatchers for the center that answers the calls before troopers ever roll, and the job starts at $26.05 to $27.55 an hour. The opening is part of the State of Montana Careers system and is listed for Lewis and Clark County.
That work is not a desk-bound back office assignment. The posting says dispatchers are the first point of contact for emergency and non-emergency calls, staff the center 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and must function in a fast-paced, multi-task environment while handling highly stressful calls from emotionally charged, unstable and impaired callers. Their duties include documenting crashes and other incidents, dispatching field units, and working in the Criminal Justice Information Network. Shifts vary, including nights, weekends and holidays.
The staffing push comes as the workload keeps climbing. During National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, Attorney General Austin Knudsen and MHP Colonel Kurt Sager recognized dispatchers at the Helena center and said they had answered 45,581 calls for service so far in 2026, about 460 a day. The center handled 165,769 calls in 2025 and 162,177 in 2024. Knudsen called the dispatchers “unsung heroes,” and Sager said they are “the calm voice in the most critical moments.”
Those calls do not stop with Highway Patrol traffic. The center also handles calls for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Department of Transportation Motor Carrier Services and Department of Corrections Probation and Parole, and it sometimes assists the Division of Criminal Investigation, the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, VA Police, the U.S. Forest Service and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. The center works with all 56 counties in Montana, so a vacancy in Helena can tighten the margin for answering, routing and documenting the next emergency.
Anyone who needs MHP emergency assistance can call 855-MHP-3777, or 1-855-647-3777, and the agency’s headquarters are at 18 Trooper Drive in Boulder. The dispatcher recruitment page was posted Sept. 15, 2025, and remains a rare opening into one of the state’s most consequential public-safety jobs.
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