911

I read a story today about a dispatcher making a mistake that potentially resulted in a woman's death. The dispatcher had been working for the agency for less than a year, and I think back to my first year as a dispatcher/calltaker at MoCo. It was scary! For any of you who have never considered what 911 calltaking/dispatching is like, picture this: you have a headset, 4-6 computer screens in front of you, and a steady stream of incoming calls from people who are frustrated, angry, scared, hurt, or otherwise distressed. Very few people call 911 in a calm, serene state. So you have people yelling at you, cussing at you, asking why you aren't helping them when, in fact, that's exactly what you're trying to do. You're trying to get as much pertinent information as possibly from people who are potentially at their worst and don't understand why all you're doing is asking them questions instead of GETTING THEM HELP NOW.

The system isn't always user friendly, and training isn't always perfect, and it's easy to set into action a series of events that look like you did something horrible when you were just trying to do your job to the best of your ability. The circumstances aren't known. The 911 center could've been flooded with calls (those are the worst times). There might have been other emergencies the fairly-new dispatcher was trying to attend to. Any number of things could have happened that would've presented as urgent and pushed the thought to make a followup call or take additional steps to the back of their mind.

I'm not necessarily defending the dispatcher. I don't know the exact situation and circumstances or their agencies protocols and general workings, but I feel for them. If I had become involved in an investigation like that, to decide if my actions had directly or indirectly resulted in the death of another person, I can't imagine how that would have affected me. All my life, I've been drawn to positions of public service. To discover that I was involved in the loss of another's life... it would be crushing, completely devastating to me. It was awful enough to take the calls when someone had just lost a loved one.

I'm lucky to work at a small, slow agency now. It gets, dare I say, boring, at times, but rarely are there huge, life-threatening emergencies to dispatch for. Sometimes, boring is good.

TxT