Amazon Floozy Goddess- That happens quite a bit… especially from hotels. But businesses a lot, too. We need to change the “Access an outside” number from 9 to 7 or something.
Series of Tubes- Anytime Despite how jaded we can get up there sometimes with regards to people abusing 911 or trying to get police involved in their drama, or lying to get some sort of fast police response… all of us really take on the importance of our job head on and are prepared to deal with anything at any moment.
RandMcnally- The job is really stressful in spurts. It’s unusual that there is a long sustained period of stress, and when there is you can usually get permission to take 5 minutes and go get some fresh air or something. If you take a particularly awful call, you can get the day off paid. (But that is usually something really awful… usually it is something dealing with kids, because that sucks ass. Especially SIDS deaths.) I think if you took something THAT bad it would be hard not to take home with you.
But it’s all work stress, so if I’m feeling particularly edgy when I’m off- this might sound goofy- I like to visually picture being surrounded by it, and as I walk out of the door into the outside world- feel it peel off me and be left behind.
puddleglum- sometimes. Usually if I do… they’re screaming and I can’t understand a word of it. I think it’s harder to understand when you’ve gone from nothing but the white noise of your headphones to “AIORUGHAIPOGAS;LDKGHSUGHAQIFHQIO” . It’s clear to you there’s something up, but who knows what. You need the person to calm down enough to understand what’s going on and where we need to send people. We really need to get as much information from you as possible.
Interestingly- if you relisten after the call (Or later, when you’re talking to your supervisor because you’ve screwed something up.) that first outburst is usually a lot clearer. I’m not sure if its the addition of hindsight or what.
My first question is USUALLY “Where are you?” Sometimes even if I can’t understand- because it’s clear there is an emergency need, and all I really need is somewhere to send people. “Female screaming into phone, can’t tell what she’s saying, but sstarting police…” is more than enough to get a call started as a high priority call. However, I still need a location.
Sorry for resurrecting this thread but I’d saved it to read offline and this inspired a question. Do you ever feel that you’d rather be on the other side of the job, ie: being a police officer responding to the call rather than the one taking it? Do you sometimes think you’re missing out on the fun yourself?
Not that I think being a 911 call-taker is a lesser job than being a police officer, its something I certainly couldn’t do.
Buran You are lucky I am sick and can’t sleep… I don’t normally check out the internet on Sundays (Football and all )
Sometimes I think it would be fun to live on the other side. But to be honest, they do a LOT of things that really just suck (for ex. Transporting drunk guys who barf in their cruiser, any death that doesn’t occur in a hospital) or is really really boring (for ex. Waiting for a tow, blocking traffic, random cold call reports like vehicle thefts or things like that). Probably much more so than the “fun” stuff.
So, yes, sometimes I like the idea of being out in my cruiser crushing myself some crime. But, it will get tempered the next time I hear about an officer that has to deal with some drunk guy who peed on himself while being taken to detox.
This has been a fascinating thread. Thanks for what you do.
Here’s my question. What percentage of emergency calls would you say involve alcohol in some way? How many people call you while intoxicated? Do the alcohol-related calls tend to be more genuine emergencies or frivolous?
Excellent…well not about you being sick but you know what I mean…
Thanks for the answer, one more question, have you noticed any change in the nature of the calls you’ve been getting since you started the job, eg: more violent incidents, less drink-driving etc?
edited to add: in either this thread or another someone made a good point about why 911 was chosen as the emergency number as its harder to randomly hit widely spaced numbers. In the UK, the emergency number is 999 and the Europe wide emergency number is 111. I’ve accidently hit 999 myself and wondered why a disembodied voice was asking if I was injured, can I reach the phone etc…
I was at a friend’s house and she was baby-sitting a little girl (four or five years old) who was playing with the phone and dialed 911 on accident. She hung up, my friend took the callback and of course, told the dispatcher it was an accident. There was absolutely no follow-up to this – no questions, no cops, nothing – and it kind of disturbed me.
Is that how calls like this are usually handled?
I haven’t noticed any marked difference int he types of calls. I mean, really, 80-90% of things is people getting drunk and causing havoc. But once you get a good grasp on the type of things that can go wrong, it doesn’t vary that much.
What really worries me is the stuff that “never” happens. When some sort of catastrophe happens nationwide, I like to ask myself how that call would go how I would code it in our computer system and things like that. Last Winter we had a Tornado outbreak in Vancouver, WA (Immediately to the North of Portland). We didn’t get anything in Portland- but asking around I still am not sure what the proper response would be for that. We just aren’t prepared for it, because we don’t get that type of thing here. Conversely, when the bridge collapsed in Minnesota, we all agreed how that would be handled should it happen here. (Which is important, because we have 12 major bridges) So I try to be prepared for anything.
[quote=justafriend]
I was at a friend’s house and she was baby-sitting a little girl (four or five years old) who was playing with the phone and dialed 911 on accident. She hung up, my friend took the callback and of course, told the dispatcher it was an accident. There was absolutely no follow-up to this – no questions, no cops, nothing – and it kind of disturbed me.
Is that how calls like this are usually handled?
[quote]
Well, I can only surmise here. Our SOP is to confirm all is ok with a 2nd person on scene. HOWEVER, I know that this is often not actually done- USUALLY because it is apparent what the issue is. So I would guess that the calltaker heard the child on the line (Not unusual) and knew that it was a mistake and just needed to confirm with an adult. If I had heard what sounded like some sort of disturbance I would press further and if I just flag didn’t believe what I was hearing- even after talking to a second person, I’d still set something up.
Sorry for resurecting this thread, but I have another question.
I’ve applied to a position out of state and I have to go to take a Video and Critical tests. What exactly are those, and is there a book I can study from?
I’ve had military experience where I had to pay attention to a lot of things while listening to the radios while flying (the worst was when I broke my finger and had to fix my weapon one handed), anything I should watch out for?
Oh, the job is in Eugene, Oregon. How is that place?
I’m a telephone operator myself but not a 911 dispatcher so I have different rules I have to follow. And basically I have the freedom to hang up on anyone who is being a real jerk. How much discretion do you have to hang up on or reprimand someone who is being verbally abusive?
Say terrorists bust into your place of work and everyone is taken hostage and forced into a supply room at gunpoint. You can’t access your dispatch controls, but you do have a cellphone in your pocket. Who do you call for help?
I don’t know whether it’s helpful for the services themselves, but in Spain there are several emergency numbers.
112 is the equivalent of 911, it will get you “any emergency service needed.”
091 is the national police.
092 is local police.
088 autonomous police, in those regions that have it.
They still stress that, unless you’re 100% sure which service you need, the number to call is 112 and they’ll put you through.
Feel free to resurrect the thread anytime you like.
I’m not sure what the Video test is… the Criticall test (not misspelled) is one of the tests I had to take as well. I don’t know that I can give you any information to prepare for it… other than there were several sections. During most of them, we had to answer various questions- int he meantime- we could also have to “deal” with some sort of emergency that might come up via a little dispatch icon deal that stayed on the screen the whole time.
So you might be having to listen to a story and answer questions based ont he story- in the meantime you get an audible beep, need to read and dispatch the appropiate resource (just click a button) but still listen to the story so you could answer the questions about it afterward. It’s part memory, part multi-task, part comprehension.
The other section I remember was just straight memory… it listed off a set of numbers and you had to accurately recall them in order. I don’t know how Eugene does it, we validate the test against current dispatchers. So your score is curved a bit- and compared not to 100% but to what a certified dispatcher can get.
Eugene is a funny town. It is somewhat of a hippie/college town being both the living place of Jerry Garcia and U of Oregon. Seems like a nice enough place though. I’ve enjoyed any time I’ve spent there, but I’ve never been there longer than a day or two.
DWMarch- dealing with people who are verbally abusive is pretty much my job. You really need some thick skin, because if there is a true emergency and people’s lives are in danger- i’m not going to let some jerkwad prevent me from a doing what I can to get as much info as I can. That said- if I’ve done what I can do and somebody is just verbally abusing me because he can… sure… I can hang up. I just need to be able to explain it to a supervisor should the guy decide to complain about me. I am lucky in as much as people that call during the night are usually too drunk to care. Complaints are usually driven by residents who feel some sort of entitlement and are unhappy their cold car prowl didn’t receive the emergent care they felt it deserved.
Rigamarole- I’d call Clackamas Counties (Closest neighboring county to our center)10 digit 911 number. They can switch a radio over to our police radio channels and let them know whats going on. (Or send them private computer messages so that it will not be broadcast and picked up on by the terrorists.) The downside to this is that off the top of my head, I don’t know the 10 digit number for our neighboring agencies (I couldn’t dial 911 since my cell phone would hit a tower that would direct me to where I was being held hostage.) but I know plenty of people here that do know them all by heart.
Anything more??? Frankly I’ve been surprised there have been not as many dispatch questions. But then, I know from sitalongs that everybody always enjoys the calltaking much more than the dispatch.
I don’t know how I missed this one!!! I’m sorry!!!
My first inclination is to say 100%… although that is obviously not true.
I asked my friend sitting next to me who said 65%.
The number is definitely quite high. Enough to say that what I really deal with is people who get drunk and start fighting… similarly to how I told people my job at (large cable company) was telling people to unplug their modems and plug it back in.
This is skewed by the fact that I work from 11pm-9am. If I worked during the day, I’d probably get no drunk callers or very few.
I think alcohol related issues are no more apt to be frivolous than any other calls. The thing is that large parties where a lot of people are drinking, if they get out of hand can be super dangerous for all involved… especially if a giant drunken brawl starts taking place. Or even just barfights, or a couple of drunks in the street fighting.
on the other side of the coin- you get people who invited a friend over who got drunk and now they’re arguing and the one 1/2 won’t leave.
Alcohol also causes random things like- people wandering in the middle of the street, or passed out people in various places that need to be taken to Detox,(Which are treated as priorities simply because if our caller didn’t check on them- we can’t be sure they don’t have a serious medical emergency.) and my favorite-- slumpers. People who started to drive off and feel asleep at a stop light, or in the drive through, or wherever. Foot firmly placed on the brake pedal and passed out at the wheel. Occasionally even pulled over or partially pulled over, car in park, engine running- driver sawing logs.
I guess the bottom line is this- if I were to pinpoint a #1 factor driving the majority of our calls- Alcohol would definitely be at the top of the list.
Thought of another one - do you have any “regulars” that most people there are familliar with by now?
I’m reminded of a Family Guy scene where Quagmire gets his junk stuck in a window sill. He picks up his phone and dials: “Hi 911, it’s Quagmire. (brief pause) Yeah it’s in a window sill this time.”
I had a drunk wander into my yard once. He could barely stand up, and was acting beligerant. I didn’t know him, I couldn’t get him to leave and he was trashing my yard. I called 911 expecting them to dispatch the police. When they didn’t arrive a half hour later (this was L.A.), I called 911 back. They said, “Is he obstructing traffic?” to which I said, “No, not really. He’s in my back yard now knocking down my BBQ.”
They said that it might be hours for the police to arrive. But if he was obstructing traffic, they’d have a cop right out on an emergency basis.
“Oh, look – there he goes down the middle of the street!”
Yes… we call them Frequent Fliers. Usually they are disturbed in some way and make for some interesting calls. Some people are elderly or disabled and frequently need the fire department for assistance because they are stuck in bed or fell and can’t get up or whatever. There used to be a lady who would call every other night because “my dog is barking at the door and he never barks… there must be somebody trying to break in.”
Not really much that you can do about it, except assess if they may really need some sort of assistance at that moment. Just because they’re crazy doesn’t mean they can’t have an emergency. We had one frequent flier that came across a body once. (A xient that had passed on) so you can never be 100% sure that whatever crazy they’re telling you doesn’t have some truth in there.
RandMcNally- All I get for working nights and weekends are sympathetic looks from the employees that don’t. To be fair- that may just be my center- I can’t tell you if Eugene gives out any sort of shift differential. Long before I was there the Union Leaders at the time decided to bargain away shift differential & holiday pay in exchange for an overall raise for everybody. :smack: We did just get back holiday pay for 6 holidays on the last bargaining though. Yay us.
Musicat- I try to dispatch based on the situation as it is- and try not to manipulate the situation. The way I see it- if the situation really should be a 3- then it’s a 3. (3 & 4=lower & lowest priority) If all my officers are legitimately busy dealing with high priority calls- then the system is working as it should. If you call back and it looks like things have changed- than I can always upgrade the priority. If you really have been waiting for awhile, and I can see my officers just appear to be hanging at Starbucks (The donut shop of the 21st century police officer) then I will add to the call you’re still waiting, and hopefully the dispatcher will nudge somebody along- or notify a sergeant who will go bang some heads.
In your situation- if he was destroying property (knocking over the bbq, etc) I would have upgraded the priority just for that. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if I thought the situation needed to be ugpraded- I’d upgrade it, not try to get my complainant to say some magic words.
Despite how jaded we can get up there sometimes with regards to people abusing 911 or trying to get police involved in their drama, or lying to get some sort of fast police response… all of us really take on the importance of our job head on and are prepared to deal with anything at any moment.
