Inside A Police 911 Dispatch Center

Walking through some doors can change your life forever.

The hospital door to the maternity ward or the emergency room. The church door for the vows of marriage or for memorializing an ended life. The door to a jail cell or the door to a halfway house or the door to a foster home. Walking through doors can change your life forever.

One of the doors in my life happened to be to the dispatch room of a police department serving a town that held the dubious honor of experiencing the highest number of homicides for a city its' size that particular year. It continued to hold this distinction for the next 3 years running.

As a mid-way point for drug runs out of Mexico and home to a college full of well-heeled students, it wasn't unusual to have several stolen vehicle reports a night and as many recovered stolen vehicles reported by counties to the south. A quick trade-off for a new sports car parked at a local bar meant drug runners could run hot and heavy 'til closing time before the vehicle would be reported missing.

The door I walked through opened onto a world and a reality that changed my world and my reality. A world of cops and chaos and human upheaval. A dark, smoldering place run by fear and ignited by raw anger. A place of no rules, all rules and wild card hands. A tempest of conflict, a whirlwind of confusion—where I was told to stand firm, be the rock, find the facts, deliver the message—and trust my instincts.

This was before 9-1-1 and caller ID. It was before trunked radio systems and cell phones. It was before "community policing" and police dispatch training and decent wages. And it wasn't that long ago…

Calls came in on a PBX switchboard. Rookie dispatchers had their 'training' by answering calls, deciding which were priorities and which weren't—and how to talk to people in crisis. The first thing you learned was that screaming, any kind of screaming was a priority. Then you learned that not all screaming was really a priority, some folks had learned the screaming priority rule and screamed just to get officers dispatched quickly.

Eventually you escaped the switchboard and moved to a calltaker position. This meant you answered all the screened, screaming calls and gathered information to send to the primary dispatcher, who radioed calls to the field units. This is where you confirmed that some folks had learned to scream to get police attention, and also that too often screaming meant something horrible had happened—or was happening.

Experience in call-taking would allow you to move to the records radio position. You finally spoke to, and directly supported officers in the field. Running records checks on computers with black screens and day-glo orange text, you would nearly caress the softball-sized microphone as you transmitted wanted information on suspects and property. It was a heady spot, important to field police work, yet not on the firing line of actually dispatching officers on calls.

My love affair with adrenalin and police work began in the records radio position.

Finally, a desk sergeant would determine that you were ready for the #1 position, the hot seat—dispatching officers on calls. When this decision was made, you were brought to the shift-start patrol meeting room and introduced to the squad of officers who would be on duty that night. Suddenly, the reality of what you would be doing turns your stomach to a chunk of ice as you look into the serious eyes on you. The room goes silent and you wait for – what? You don't know. Suddenly a tall uniform with brilliant blue eyes moves in front of you and takes your hand to shake in greeting. Quietly the rest of the uniforms flow past, shaking your hand in turn, sometimes offering a word or two of encouragement.

I worked the 3-11 shift—where twice as many calls for police response occur—and my first night in the radio dispatch position was right on target.

That night officers worked 7 stolen vehicles, 9 assaults, 4 armed robberies and 3 shootings. Suspect chases on foot and in vehicles exceeded 20—one vehicle chase crossed the county line—and all chases involved suspects with weapons.

We all made it through the night in one piece—my officers and I.

In the years that followed, I rode the roller coaster that embodies police dispatch work. Without training or counseling, for wages barely above federal minimum and regularly working 50-60 hours a week, I learned not only to discern a real scream for help, but I learned how to obtain information from screaming people and how to calm people enough to stop screaming and take safety instructions.

Fraternization with officers was against policy, but I petitioned for dispatchers to ride with officers. Case reports were closed to dispatchers, but I petitioned for access so dispatchers' could have closure on particularly devastating calls. Training was non-existent, beyond the position migration process, so I researched police training, adapted it to dispatch-level contacts and petitioned to make it available to new dispatchers.

When I left the department, I had been the 9-1-1 Center manager for the city and county for several years. Dispatchers received extensive training, had stress counseling on-call, worked with enhanced 9-1-1, 800 MHz trunked radio systems and a highly optimized Computer-Aided-Dispatch system. Ride alongs with officers were routinely scheduled and officers actively promoted the need for dispatchers to learn and understand police work and its requirements.

I have spent hours talking a caller down from suicide, only to hear the explosion of a gunshot as they take their life. I have eased location information from a rape victim hiding in a phone booth. I have watched officers walk into volatile situations where blood is flowing and weapons are showing—and they take command—and I have watched in fascination as people in crisis relinquish control, almost with relief, to these figures of authority.

I have broken pencils, pens and a desk drawer in anger and anguish, frustrated by my inability to help an officer in need. I have re-played tapes again and again in an attempt to capture words that would reveal an address, a description—anything to help the citizen who called in for police assistance.

I have learned FBI Hostage negotiation tactics, how to identify incendiary devices, how to say, "put down the gun" in a foreign language and have taken calls on a found Laws Rocket and a found body in a laundry bag.

I discovered that the burn of an adrenalin rush was great, until it happened again and again without a real outlet or release—and then it meant learning to pull the block of ice out of your gut and over your heart and into your mind to keep the burn out.

I have had the honor of working with police officers, deputy sheriffs, state troopers, FBI agents and Secret Service agents.

I learned to love and respect the men and women who walked through their own life doors—to become police officers and face a world and reality most of us never see.

A door opened for me. I walked through, and it changed my life forever.