Before Justin Dyson came to the Department of Public Safety and began a 26-year career in telecommunications and IT, he was young, broke, and working two or three jobs, unsure of what he wanted to do with his life.
“You’re trying to find your place in the world, figure out what you want to do and what you want to be when you grow up,” said Dyson, IT Asset Manager for SCDPS.
“But now, 20-something years later, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up,” he said with a laugh, as he prepares to retire after 26 years with the agency.
Known around DPS for his dry humor, quick wit, and vast knowledge of both telecommunications and information technology, Dyson took an interesting route to his career in IT. Growing up around law enforcement and public safety, he said a family member urged him to consider a career in the technology field.
“I wasn’t interested,” he recalled. “I went to school for business management and took a few IT classes, but I wasn’t interested, which is ironic because that’s where I ended my career.”
With his father working in public safety, and law enforcement friends of his mother taking him for ride-alongs, Dyson became interested in dispatcher work instead.
After graduating from high school, he began working for the Hardeeville Police Department as a weekend dispatcher. He loved it so much that he applied to work for the Highway Patrol at 19 years old.
When Dyson joined the Highway Patrol, the telecommunications centers were called “radio rooms.” Troopers more than a few miles away from each other were unable to talk between themselves except through the radio rooms around the state. And the computers at the time were green screen terminals.
“We had to write everything by hand,” Dyson said, recalling the many pages of notes and logs accumulated from each shift. Dyson stayed in Telecommunications through the implementation of the SmartCop CAD system in the early 2000s, moving to Charleston in 2001. This transition marked the end of TCOs using “wreck pads” to take incoming collision calls, and instead entering them directly into CAD. Unbeknownst to Dyson, this new system would eventually lead to his transfer to the Office of Information Technology.
“They gave my crew and me the option between continuing to use the paper logs or swap over to the electronic,” he explained. “We said, ‘If we’re going to do it, let’s do it.’ So, we started using it.”
In 2005, headquarters began to notice that the new CAD system was being used more often in Charleston compared with the rest of South Carolina, and Dyson was offered a new position to help implement it statewide.
“I knew that what I was doing then was IT-related,” Dyson said. “I would meet with the IT department quite regularly, and I was encouraged to apply for the Field Supervisor position. I’ll be honest, at first I said no, but eventually, I decided to just give it a shot and see where it went.”
That led to the second half of Dyson’s DPS career, in a field he said he never had a desire to work in. Just two years after officially joining OIT as a Field Supervisor in 2017, Dyson was promoted to the position of Manager over Field Support. Then, in 2022, he was promoted to his current position of IT Asset Manager, overseeing the procurement, receipt, and deployment of laptops/desktops and other IT assets.
He admits he didn’t plan to stay at DPS for 26 years when he arrived. But, he feels like now is a good time to retire.
“I was told years ago, ‘You will know when you know,’” he said. “I never understood what that meant. One day, it clicked.”
While Dyson looks forward to moving to the mountains of western North Carolina and focusing on his family, he also will miss his DPS family. In early December, friends and colleagues gathered to thank Dyson for his dedication, with Director Robert G. Woods IV presenting him with the prestigious award of naming him an Honorary DPS Officer.
“This has been my life,” he said. “I’m not going to say it’s like leaving home, but it’s really close.”
He’s proud of the many technological improvements the Highway Patrol and DPS have made and hopes that has helped serve the law enforcement community and the residents of South Carolina. He also is proud to have grown with some troopers and command staff.
“Growing up on the Highway Patrol, there’s a lot of command staff people I’ve grown up with,” he said. “There are a few, I can remember that shaky voice when they first keyed that radio up to call the dispatch center and sign on,” he said with a smile.
Despite the apprehension that accompanies a life change like this, Dyson is ready to spring into the unknown.
“I’ve had many memorable moments here,” he said. “Now, it’s time to take some time off, sit on the porch and relax.”
