What the process entails.

One of our trainees worked her last night as she chose to resign in lieu of dismissal for poor performance.  That leaves our open number of available dispatcher spots at six positions.  We currently have three still in training and all of them seem to have worthwhile potential.

Officer Smith started a good series about becoming an officer and what it entails.  What's the process of becoming a dispatcher?  For many agencies, it's an involved process of 3-5 months and that doesn't include classroom and on the job training, that is merely getting hired.  My process from application submission to a conditional hire was just over four months due to the number of applicants.  We had about fifteen positions open at that point and a huge rush of applicants.

There's the initial application, role playing scenarios, spelling and other weird tests.  If you're lucky to get to that point you have a background interview, psychological exam, drug testing and medical exam.  The drug testing part has always puzzled me because it's such a big issue during hiring but our agency doesn't retest the dispatchers ever again. 

Depending on the number of people in your hiring group you spend anywhere from 4-6 weeks covering every aspect of phones and the radio.  Memorization is a huge aspect in this stage, everything from 10-codes and policies to the entire criminal reporting system, i.e. warrants and drivers license info. 

When you've passed every test you are assigned to a trainer.  Whether you start on phones or radio is dependent on what trainer is available and what shift works best to start.  We generally don't throw a newbie on weekend nights, ultimately that kills the deal right there and stresses them out too much.  On the job training lasts anywhere from 8-12 months depending on aptitude and breaks in between positions. 

What can you expect when you're released?  Anything from chaos to extreme boredom.  Feast or famine.  Frustration, despair, relief, joy, anger and laughter come and go all night long depending on the calls.  You'll inevitably have the crappiest shift on the planet when you first hit the floor.  You will question many of your decisions for about the first year.  Mistakes will be dealt with swiftly to ensure they don't keep happening.

Then one day you'll turn around and realize time has flown quickly and you have an enormous amount of time under your belt and that you absolutely love, love, love your job.  Every crappy, wonderful part of it and you wouldn't choose to do anything else.

Blood is thicker than vodka.

I got to be a negotiator tonight.  That's not as exciting as it sounds.  As calltakers, being a negotiator is essentially being stuck in the middle between suspect (or victim) and a pack of officers.  If you have experience, you know what information they need yet they still ask anyway.  It's how they are, especially since they are facing a situation laced with potential violence but you're still sandwiched right there in the middle.

My "customer" if you will was bent on telling me every falsehood in the book...through no fault of his own really.  The Grey Goose vodka stripped him of any hint of lucidity.  His story changed about five times then evolved into emergency traffic very quickly.

This was another suicide call.  I don't think that any of us get used to them in the sense that they're routine.  Each one is unique in it's own way.  It didn't start off as a suicide, or so he claimed, but an exchange of blows with sharp objects between two "friends".  It evolved into the facts that this was self-inflicted, the details peppered with insults and swearing leveled in my direction.

He wanted to hurt the officers if "they tried to hurt me."  Arguably in his reduced mental and physical state due to the wounds, he wouldn't have put up much of a fight, but he said the words, I relayed the words and everyone was on high alert.

There's nothing more overpowering than a mixture of eight officers, one sergeant and one lieutenant outside your home.  Telling me you have a weapon when you don't actually have one will cause the troops to stir.  As the officers barked orders and questions for me to ask him, I was again, stuck in the middle.  I'm not annoyed about it, they're playing their role and I'm playing mine.  You can't get blood from a turnip.  If he's dead set on doing his own thing and barking out anything but the truth, nothing I can say will change his mind.

He finally started to listen.  Maybe it was the blood loss, maybe it was alcohol, maybe it was what I said that finally sunk in.  In his weakened state he knew he needed someone.  The officers probably weren't his first choice but when you've cut yourself up pretty badly and called 911, your options are pretty limited.  You can come out or we're coming in after you.

I'm thankful it ended well.  Not many calls anymore move me to the edge of my seat.  This one did.

You kiss your momma with that mouth?

If you don't find it very difficult not to think less of the heavy majority of the human race at the end of your work week, then apparently you are in some other field of work other than emergency services. 

While my motivation in posting is not to bitch and moan 100% of the time, the last few weeks have offered little reason to do anything other than that.  I hung up the phone last night after fielding a complaint that had to be forwarded up the chain of command and realized that they just keep getting stupider and stupider.

And meaner.  Vile, rude, brutal mean. 

This one was particularly rude.  We get cranky people all the time, those people are what we're used to and don't give a passing thought to after the call.  You've perhaps had one of the shittiest days of your life, I get that you're going to take some of it out of me, even though you don't do so intentionally.

What was a simple traffic stop and citation became his attempt to unearth and wake-up every high ranking unit in the department, up to and including the chief.  If you've been pulled over, spoken to the officer and then released, you certainly have had sufficient time to chill the frick out.

Your frustration, which should really be put back on yourself because you are THE ONE AT FAULT, does not justify swearing repeatedly at me.  Two warnings was enough on this call before he finally got a clue that his issue was forwarded to an upper level and then hung up.

Is it really not common sense that we may actually show some level of understanding or sympathy to your situation if you treat us like a fellow human being?  Be it after a police contact or say....life in general, handling difficult situations like a mob with pitchforks does not create any level of empathy on our side.

I refuse to take any shit that is unjustified, unwarranted and down right cruel.   Keep it up and you're getting a warning......and then a disconnect.  At least in this area, we are always backed up by management.

When all you can do is listen.

I didn't look to see if it was a full moon tonight when I came in, must have been though from the amount of weird calls that endlessly flowed in.  Worse than crazy was the three attempted and one successful suicide calls this evening alone.

Have to wonder what goes through an individuals head when something so serious leads them to contemplate, attempt and then for this one gentleman tonight, succeed in ending a life that they feel is absent any meaning or hope.

Only one of them tonight was one I had to handle.  Female, late twenties, distressed over the recent end of her relationship.  There's really no option to tell her that she'll find someone else and that there's plenty of fish in the sea.  Sometimes the only course of action is to listen.  If she wanted advice, well, maybe she could have gotten that from someone else.  She didn't call us for direction on what do to with her life.

While we can hope that if a citizen is "on the fence" about whether or not to take their own life that they will call someone, anyone really, no one can save someone who is bound and determined to complete the final act.  The one who did succeed tonight was just that case: note, phone call to first responders, disconnected line and one shot to the head.

At the very least I suppose we can take comfort in knowing that the family's grief is perhaps eased a small amount by not finding the person is such a state on their own.  It's certainly not a physically or emotionally pleasant situation for the officers to see or handle something some gruesome but some peace is discovered in knowing that we found them first.

Just another unfortunate night in dispatch.

Why we blog.

If you're reading a blog like mine, you're more than likely in some type of law enforcement or emergency related field, know someone in the field, or happen to be stopping by off a link from somewhere else.

As a result, it goes without saying that people who may read blogs like mine, or some of my daily favorites that I have listed on the right side of the page or in blogs that I follow, understand that the sarcasm and criticism are exaggerated to a point. We choose to release a little bit of steam in avenues such as these due to the pressures of a time demanding and very often, emotionally draining field of work.

You may criticize or judge all you want, but God forbid you should ever need an emergency responder to help your own sorry ass, or that of someone you love. We don't have the option to say what we'd really like to at that point, we just treat you like everyone else and do whatever we can at the time to alleviate any pain, suffering or damage as the result of your own insane actions or those of a total stranger.

Offering that we make suggestions to improve the system (rather than bitching) is not something that we haven't already done. Apparently, some people haven't noticed though that a lack of funding and tremendous city budget cuts have not allowed much in the way improvements that say......hmmm, cost money.

If you don't like cops then don't call one when you need assistance.

Encouraging bad behavior.

Self-admittedly a nitpicky person, I get annoyed while at work at little things that may be seemingly minor. I'm sure that my co-workers get equally annoyed with me so I don't bring up certain little gripes because I prefer not to have my own shortcomings thrown back at me on a regular basis.

When I was training, training the newbies, not in-training myself, I was pretty strict on enforcing the rule that non-emergency calls get off of the 911 lines. We only have so many trunk lines coming in. Unless the shit really hits the fan, we're not going to see the phone system lit up like a Christmas tree on a regular basis, but one good accident or emergency situation is gonna send us scrambling to get people on and off the phones as quickly as possible.

We had this happen a few times tonight, all by the same person. She's new has been around long enough to know that this isn't appropriate or following procedure. It drives us crazy but we know it's not our place to say something either. When it doesn't belong on 911, there are two good reasons, well, there's many really, but two specifically to stress as to why it's absolutely critical to follow procedure in this regard.

One....control of the call. That's probably teetering up there as one of the most important lessons learned in training. It's cutting that person off when necessary to free up lines and resources for the folks that really do have a need for police or fire. If you're struggling to get a party disturbance off a 911 line, good luck down the road getting information from a shooting victim or someone who's just been raped.

Number two, it's a valuable lesson learned for the citizen. While common sense would dictate that most people know not to call 911 when their power goes out or for illegal parking, if you keep the person on the line and finish the call for service absent a legitimate emergency, you encourage the behavior and they'll just keep doing it.

"Give a man a fish and you have him fed for today. Teach a man to fish and you will not have to listen to his incessant whining about how hungry he is." ---Author Unknown

Whew. It's over.....

I don't like being chaotically busy. That's what it was. Over the top, even for Halloween. It might as well have been New Years Eve for the volume of crime, utter stupidity and lack of balance that the general public exhibited last night.

I don't like feeling out of control at work which is exactly what the radio afforded me last night. While not the entire shift, it was six solid hours of what became the inability to so much as take a breath or a drink without an interruption. While it is understood on such a holiday as this that we will have extreme radio and call volume, I wished from the first radio transmission that I had been answering phones instead.

There's mediocre dispatchers and there are fantastic dispatchers. I wouldn't go so far as to put myself in the latter category, but I consider myself to be pretty damn good at my job. I don't like to make mistakes, not just for the personal satisfaction of a day gone well, but we have a lot riding on our shoulders in this field and screw-ups aren't a luxury we ever have. Just one at the right time can really have an impact that I just don't care to be a part of when it involves an officers well being or life.

Regular patrol units, officers on horses, bike units and the special enforcement arrest team. Officers working special events, police support personnel (non-armed but in uniform and in squad cars), sergeants, lieutenants, gang specialists, and traffic control detail units. I'm sure I missed a couple of categories of specialty units, but by the end of the shift (and still now) I am too tired to bring them all to mind.

The dispatcher is somewhat at the helm of the ship but certainly not directing the show by any means. One can only do so much from the confines of the room. The boys with guns have the most control and our participation is limited to what will be allowed when the officers choose, or are forced by situations, to change directions.

To expect perfection on a night such as this would be silly. No one, even the best of the bunch can control it all. You go into auto-mode on a night like last night and I suppose that the consolation is that I wouldn't have been assigned this portion of the city had they not felt I was trustworthy and experienced enough to handle it.

Everyone got home in one piece. No one was presented with situations that compromised their safety. That is good enough for me.

I'm thinking that next year on Halloween though, I just might come down with the flu.