Five Questions with … a 9-1-1 Dispatcher
By HEATHER McREA, Orange County Register (California)
Growing up, John Carter wanted to be a police officer – he even tested with Los Angeles’ department.
In the meantime, he took a job with the Anaheim Police Department as a dispatcher in 1999. He found the job plenty exciting, and after the birth of his first child, he decided to stick with helping police catch the bad guys from his perch behind the dispatch radio.
Now a supervisor for the department’s communications division, Carter helps lead the 30-some dispatchers who work six to eight at a time. The department is looking to hire a new dispatcher – someone who will field calls from residents in emergencies and officers in the heat of a pursuit – and Carter took a few minutes to talk about life as a dispatcher and what someone new to the job might expect.
What is a typical day for a dispatcher?
We work 12-hour shifts, which is nice because we work three days a week and we get to unwind for the other four days a week. We get overtime. This is a 911 call center, and you have to understand sometimes you have to come in when you don’t want to.
There are different positions within a comm center. You have a phone position – that is the people who answer non-emergency lines. Then you have two radio spots. During the day, the dispatchers will rotate – they will go from the phones to the radio spots and then back to the phones. The rotation helps break up the monotony of a 12-hour day, and it helps keep your brain from melting out of your ears because if you are on that radio too long, it really does stress you out.
You talked about how the day shift and the night shift really are night and day.
They really are. The day shift is people calling: They want to know what is going on with their report; they want to talk with a certain detective. The types of 911 calls we get during the day are for traffic accidents or maybe there is somebody at a bank who is trying to cash a stolen check … that kind of stuff. Nighttime is a lot more exciting, a lot more action packed. You get more 911 calls, and those 911 calls end up more times being emergencies – fights, stabbings, shootings, that kind of stuff.
How do you want a call to go?
The two things that you need to remember are, one, know where you are. When my wife used to work full time, she used to work in Santa Ana and we lived in Corona. When I was off, I would cook dinner so I would try to time the meal right. I would call her on her way home and say, ‘Hey, where are you.’ She would immediately say, ‘I don’t know.’
I tell her know where you are. Look around, know your surroundings, know where you are all the time. That is what I tell people all the time. We will go to schools and talk to the kids: Take a look at street signs, if you don’t know how to read street signs, ask your parents to teach you. …
If we don’t know where you are, we can’t go any further. There is no help coming.
Secondly, just answer questions. We know the information we need to get help coming quickly, and we know the order we need that information. Things go a lot smoother when you just let us ask the questions we need. We know our officers don’t like surprises when they are out there.
What makes a good dispatcher?
The most important thing is empathy and the want to help somebody. If you come to this job and you don’t like working with people or you don’t like helping people, you are not going to be good at it, because that is the point of this job. We want somebody who has the ability to be empathetic – even after five years of fielding calls. We don’t want them to even fake feeling for that person; we want a person who actually does feel bad for that person who had their car broken into. Even if it is not important to them, it’s important to the caller. If it is not important to the dispatcher, then maybe they aren’t going to get the best service we can provide. …
We want somebody who is also going to be tough. You can’t, in the middle of an important call, take your headset off and run away. You can’t, in the middle of a pursuit, take your headset off and move away from the radio. You have to be tough.
We also need people to expect they are going to be working on their birthday, they are going to be working on Christmas, they are going to be working on holidays. They are going to be missing time with their families.
Why do people want to be dispatchers if it takes so much commitment?
It’s an exciting job. You come home from being a 911 dispatcher and you know you helped someone. … You might have saved someone’s life. You might have helped in catching bad guys. And that is every day, and I think that is what the main draw is.
John Carter is a supervisor in the communications division with the Anaheim Police Department.
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