In the last few years, mental health care in law enforcement in general has become more of a priority than it has been in years past. But like a lot of things in the law enforcement realm, Dispatch is the last to know, or in this case, last to receive that message. We’re FINALLY being included in major incident debriefs and offered similar resources to the field.

In practice, there’s still room for improvement.

There recently was an officer involved shooting in my department, and the dispatchers on duty during the incident were invited to the debrief with the sworn side. Three of those dispatchers decided to attend, and of the three, two were on days off. The one that had work that night, was told that she could attend the debrief that was scheduled for the early afternoon, and would have to be back on time, for her shift, with no adjustment or grace given, and that they would not assist in helping her find someone to cover part or all of her shift. Since she had worked the night before, that only left her a couple hours between the end of her shift and the start of the debrief. Once the debrief was done, there would maybe only be an hour or two before she was expected in for shift. And that’s not even to mention getting her kid to school, preparing her food for shift, shower, etc. in her personal life. That’s enough to make most people reconsider attending.

The inflexibility of our own department to accommodate a healthy mental health shows that we are not there yet. There is still more work to be done for our dispatcher’s mental health, and the attitude towards it as well.

So dispatchers, keep up hope. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health. If your department doesn’t believe it, then you should believe in it enough for yourself. We spend our days prioritizing everything, and that overflows into our personal lives, putting mental health low on the list. So take some time for yourself and keep fighting the good fight.

The communications center that I work in is not unique in the fact that we are understaffed. I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of comm centers are SEVERELY understaffed. I've been in dispatch for enough years to not be a newbie, but not be an old bitty yet. My center has been understaffed since before I started, but never at the low that it's at right now. We have officially dropped below 40% staffed. I work in a major metro area of California, with a pretty sizable amount of inbound calls.

If you aren't a dispatcher, or you aren't aware of the inner workings, there's a generally followed guideline from NENA where 90% of the incoming 911 calls should be answered within 10 seconds, and 95% should be answered within 20 seconds. These stats are very important to the center, and most PSAP dispatchers can tell you exactly what their stats are, or at least what they average.

Our average is pretty decent considering how short staffed we are. Most of us at the center work very very hard to keep the stats up despite our low staffing because of how important it is. Radio dispatchers are doing double and sometimes triple duty as a calltaker and your own backup, and sometimes at the expense of the field.  But we are all getting very worse for wear and I'm not sure how much longer we can continue at the rate... nor do I want to.

Our direct management is failing to recognize that we are having a staffing crisis. We have had 15+ trainees start in the last three years - only one has made it though, and she's still on probation for another couple days. They aren't doing anything to up recruitment, headhunt from other departments, or re-vamp the training program. The message that they are sending to their bosses is "Look at these stats! They're fine! We're fine! Everything is fine!" I don't know in what world being below 40% staffing is anywhere close to acceptable, but they are burying their collective heads in the sand.

So all of us on the floor have all come to the same conclusion. The only way to send the message up and over the managers' heads to higher up the chain is to sink the stats. Or not even to sink them - but to answer calls without rushing the caller, making crappy logs, and all the other shortcuts that we have adapted to in the last few years. Stats are the only measuring stick they seem to care about (not even that OT bill...), so this should send the message, loud and clear.

But here's the problem with that. Every call that is holding could be a mom who just found her son hanging in the bathroom. Or a woman going into labor. Or a domestic that is turning from terrible to deadly. It could be a parking complaint, true, but looking at that count of holding calls doesn't tell us what is is that is holding. That's why we can't help but rush that call to get to the next, and the next, and the next, for 10/12/14 hours straight every day. Our humanity gets us in the end. Most of us started this job wanting to help people, at least I know I did. Sitting there just looking at the calls holding without doing anything should feel wrong. These are emergencies, some life or death, and the person that the public wants and needs on the other end of the line isn't the person that knows all of this and watches the timer tick up on each call.

So, we dispatchers will keep churning and burning through that call queue, and here's what we ask:

Of the field: Please be patient with us. It sucks having to put you on standby, or to have to do five other things before completing your request. We hate it probably more than you do. Every shift we have to make Sophie's Choice multiple times, and we usually beat ourselves up for it afterwards, more than you know.
Of the public: Please be patient with us. If we tell you that you'll have to call the non-emergency line, or we put you on hold, please know that it's for a reason. If we seem distracted during your phone call because we take radio traffic in the middle of obtaining your info, please don't take offense.
Of our family/loved ones: Please be patient with us. When we don't answer your text while we are on duty or even for hours, we're probably buried in calls. And when we get home, we may not want to talk about our day, or even talk about anything for a bit.


And to all the other dispatchers in the same boat, keep on going. Embrace your humanity, and keep taking those calls, one at a time until that queue is at zero. You've got this.

Every once in a blue moon, the high brass orders a review from the field of their direct supervisors and managers. One of the questions was something to the effect of "Does you commander know personal details about you, like the name of your spouse/children or hobbies outside of work?", to which I answered the lowest score possible. I'm not even sure my commander knows my name, let alone any other details about me.

​Not even two days after I submitted the review with my peers, I passed my Lieutenant in the hallway. They tried to strike up some light conversation, and started with "How was your Thanksgiving? Did you and your husband go anywhere or did you stay in town?"

It took everything in me to not be sassy and reply with something to the tune of "I'm sure he had a wonderful Thanksgiving... whoever he's with... whoever he is.. *stares off into the distance*." but instead just smiled, nodded, and stated "It was fine, I was here, working. Have a good day." and walked out.

I think it's best if I keep the smartassery for Twitter, and in return keep my job for a little bit longer.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve heard all about the tragedy in Las Vegas that left over 50 concertgoers dead, and hundreds injured.

I was working a slow sector that night, so I had the Las Vegas Metro feed up and listened to it from very early on all the way until I was signing off my CAD for the night at 0600, when they were starting to talk about relieving the units that had long passed their off-duty time by many many hours in Vegas. After they had spent the night running towards the gunfire. Using their own bodies to shield helpless citizens. Dragging near lifeless bodies in the back of their patrol cars to get them to hospitals. Kicking down a hotel room door that they new had pure evil behind it with no second thought.

The “fresh” officers who were going to take their post, also referred to as their “relief,” provided not only physical relief, but allowed them to finally go home and let get some semblance of their own emotional relief. That’s something that they didn’t get immediately afterwards, nor did they get it in the days that followed. This is something that none of them will ever completely get over. Will it get easier? Sure. There may even be days in the future that they don’t think of this tragedy. But it will always be with them.

And also with the dispatchers. Listening to their feed was incredible. The fear and anguish in the voices of the officers and command on scene was almost too much to bear, but those dispatchers held an even, consistent tone, and didn’t even waver in the slightest, despite hearing and repeating such horrific radio traffic. We’re taught to do that in any kind of priority traffic, but doing so in a tragedy of that magnitude is admirable. It is not an easy thing to do. Have you ever been talking to someone (just in conversation) that raises their volume? Unconsciously, when you reply, you’ll raise your volume. Then they reply, and before you both know it, you’re screaming at each over, whether it’s a heated discussion or not. Now imagine applying that to an officer-dispatcher conversation. It’s not as easy as you’d think to hold an even, but still compassionate tone. And they did so for HOURS. I know none of us do this job for the glory or the accolades, but they deserve every bit of affirmation and award that is out there. I also hope that Metro provides them with after-care like they probably will to the sworn side.

There’s never a “right” thing to say after a tragedy. There’s definitely WRONG things to say, but there is no right words in such unrighteousness.
So I’ll round this out with one of my last tweets of that night: be good and kind to each other, near and far.

I am so thankful for all of you that follow me. Some of you are fellow dispatchers, some are LEO, some citizens, some are somewhere in between.

On most of my tweets, I try to make it very public/citizen friendly.
Occasionally, I'll tweet something that is more LEO oriented, but sometimes I tweet some very dispatch-specific things - things only other dispatchers would get.

I'll get replies from citizens that clearly don't understand dispatching. And how can they? Unless you've done it or have seen it real-live-in-person, it's a difficult job to comprehend. And most of us dispatchers aren't exactly the showboat type (Thanks type-A personality!), so it's not something that we normally boast about.

So for all the citizens - and even some of you LEOs out there - here is a really well put together video that shows what we the most accurately that I've seen.

Some of my fantastic followers have asked me what I've been up to, since I've had a drop in activity on Twitter.

If you've been around here for a while, you've seen some of my rants about low morale, excessive overtime, and generally poor working conditions over the last year or so.
It's gotten to a low recently that I didn't know my center could reach.

So this is a time of heavy contemplation for me. I have many options available to me, and it's just time for me to take a step back, and figure out what is going to be best for me. Will this mean a change in my online presence? Possibly. Probably, actually.
But I'm still figuring everything out. I'm taking time to spend by myself, with my family, with my friends, and make the decision that will be the best for me right now.

I know all you lovely people are going to support me, no matter what I end up choosing to do. I'm still around, I still see your tweets and blogs, and I appreciate you all.

The training cycle for my department for dispatchers is pretty long in comparison to some other departments. You're hired, sent to the academy, come back to the center, and are in training for three-ish months. Then you go back to the academy for a bit, and are back in training at the center for three to four months. During each time after the academy, you're with the dispatch equivalent of an FTO (field training officer). I had 7 different FTOs over my training. You learn how to do the job, yes, but you also learn a little bit of their style and adopt bits and pieces that stick with you.

I had one trainer who had a "crutch phrase."

"Do me a favor..."
EVERYTHING was a favor. "Do me a favor and ask the RP (caller) where this happened."
Is that a favor? No. "Do me a favor and give that call to this unit instead." AGAIN - NOT A FAVOR.


Some crutch phrases are less noticeable, or less annoying. One of my officers routinely uses "oh okay, cool cool" in response to most things. That one, you don't notice so much. Sometimes, I wonder if the crutch phrase perpetrators even know that they are saying these things ALL. THE. TIME.



Watching LivePD the other day, and there's an officer that said "I got'chu" every fifth word. Sounds ridiculous.


​No real point to this. But do me a favor and stick around for another post?

It's been a rough week.

It started with a hit in my personal life on my Sunday, then a storm they named "Lucifer" as a little 1-2 punch on my Monday and Tuesday - which made my shifts long in feel & actual length, and busier than they've been in a long while.

This week, for some reason, I've had a lot of death calls. People finding their loved ones that have passed. Suicides. Fatal traffic collisions. Hearing the impact over the phone of a vehicle hitting a pedestrian at high speeds. Calls that stick with someone for a while, and forces them to draw parallels with the worst of the worst calls they've had in their career. Usually these calls get these spaced out, so dealing with one of "The Top 5" all in the same week, doesn't happen.

A lot of us in the field make jokes about how we don't have souls. I even made this joke on my Twitter just 12 hours ago.
But I'll let you in on a little secret.
We do still have our souls.
And another truth? These calls - these terrible things that we hear and deal with on a daily basis - they impact us more than we let on. Most days we process and purge. Everyone does it a little differently, but we do it to survive and to be able to go back the next day and do it again. We go about life and work as if everything is status quo. Cause that is what's easy. You don't have to deal if you push it down.
And maybe it's because I had a chink in my armor already at the beginning of the week, but it seems to hurt more this week. Having a harder time with the smile and nod. One more work day for me this week, before a day off, then back to the minimum-14-hr-a-shift grind for another long stretch. So I'm gonna work on me a bit for a few days.

I hope this serves as a little reminder for those of us in the business to check on your beat partners from time to time. Not only the ones that are struggling, but the ones that have on the happy face and jolly disposition. They're impacted by this all the same.And for those of you that aren't in emergency services, take the same message away. Because most likely, just like me, there's people in your life that would say the same as I:

It's been a rough week.

There's one 911 call that I think about almost every Valentine's Day.

I feel like it was just yesterday... on a graves shift. 911 line drops into my ear, and it's an elderly woman that was by herself, who needed paramedics. Something that happens multiple times a shift.

But this woman... was different.

She didn't have shortness of breath, or chest pain, or pain from a fall. None of the "normal" chief complaints for elderly women.

She had a very deep cut. On her leg. From a metal lid. That came from a can OF CAT FOOD.


I WAS TALKING TO FUTURE DAME. ME!

​Only appropriate I think of this call on this wonderful holiday. Cheers, future me. Cheers.

Dame: "911 emergency, what is your life threatening emergency?"
Caller: "MY POWER WENT OUT!"
Dame: "...okay, do you have a life threatening emergency? Have you contacted your power company?"
Caller: "MY. POWER. WENT. OUT! I called YOU!"
Dame: "I understand you lost power. Do you rely on a ventilator or other life-maintaining device that relies on power from the electrical grid?"
Caller: "...no."
Dame: "Okay, so you do not have a life threatening emergency then?"
Caller: "Well, you NEED to DO something ABOUT it!"
Dame: "What do you think 911 can do about your power? A police officer to come out and say 'Yep. Power's out.'? A fireman to climb up the electrical pole?"
Caller: "..."
Dame: "Okay, well while you are calling your power company, I'm going to go ahead and clear the line for real, actual life-or-death emergencies. Buh-bye."


Most people know this notion -
Need help? Call 911!

We've all seen the feel-good news clips where the grade-school kid calls 911 for help with the math homework.

But it should be this -
Have an actual emergency? Call 911!

If there is something urgent that a policeman or firefighter can do for you, then please call. If that is the case, then yes, I do have the power to send one of the two. Actual electricity power? Sad to say, I don't have that to give.

Back in August, Within The Trenches started the #IAM911 movement on social media in hopes to bring awareness and assist NENA and APCO International in the effort to change our classification from clerical work to protected work. Ricardo did this to highlight how very different emergency dispatchers are different from clerical staff and commercial dispatchers. To show that the responsibility that each of us emergency dispatchers carry with every call and radio transmission.
And it took off. Facebook, Twitter... it was widespread and even other countries joined in and shared their stories. Reading through the hashtag on twitter is so moving, even with me being an emergency dispatcher and living the life.

There have been a select few that say that what we are doing is putting down clerical work. We aren't. We're just trying to show how different it is.
Before I was a dispatcher, I was in administrative/clerical work for years - and all kinds of clerical work. Data entry to registrar, administrative assistant to receptionist. It was hard work. Stressful, even, some days. But it has no comparison to what I do now.

Having emergency dispatchers from all around share their stories is fantastic. But there's another thing that we need everyone to do. Wether you are an emergency dispatcher or a not, it's your turn to help us. 

APCO International has made it very easy to send your message and take action. A couple minutes of your time. Today. The #IAM911 movement will still continue, but the OMB is only accepting public comments through tomorrow.

Emergency dispatchers help countless people every shift, without knowing who they are and without prejudice. Now we need your help.

It's been a week since I posted the giveaway for having hit 3,000 followers - something I still cannot believe has happened.

ALL OF YOU ARE CRAZY BUT I LOVE YOU!

Anyway, I'm sure you're only visiting today to see who won the giveaway!

Thanks to random.org, the winner is...
​
@oopsudroppedths

Congratulations, Sheila!  I'll be emailing you in a bit with your prize!

For everyone else, better luck next time, and take a little gander around the blog! See you all on Twitter!

Oh, Friday. How every person in the working world awaits your arrival. I know I do. Except, like most of the juniors in emergency services, calendar Friday does not mean two days of rest are to follow. Friday is my second work day of four. My end-of-week-Friday falls on Sunday.
If anything, it makes it more sweet when it does come for us.

This one particular Friday, I had worked something like thirty overtime hours that week and was very excited to get home and sleep, without the need for an alarm to go off the next day to wake me up for anything. So I watched the clock all shift, and when 2am hit, I was out of there. Made it home, started cooking "dinner," and finally nestled into bed, with my kitties nestled up with me. Turned the lights off, then took a nice deep breath to start my journey into dreamland.

Aaaaaaaand then my smoke alarm goes off.

Yep. That sounds about right.


Don't forget to change the batteries and test your smoke alarms regularly, people. They save lives.