"They don't care 'cause they stay paid anyway"

[yendi]

911 operators in Chattanooga take breaks together, and let the phones go unanswered.

911 operator in Detroit chews out a kid calling about his mom collapsing; help arrives after three hours.

I have not the slightest bit of sympathy for anything that happens to the operators involved, whether it includes dismissals, lawsuits, or jail time.

Comments

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

I have to ask what the living hell they think they were playing at. That's just flat out wrong.

[nishar.livejournal.com]

I know a gal who worked as a 911 dispatcher in Nashville and quit for how they acted there. Same type of stuff, I bet all of tennessee has that same problem.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I'll take that bet, and raise the stakes across most (if not all) of the rest of the nation.

Unfortunately.

It's just modern convenience and modern customer service come together to raise the bar of stupidity even higher.

[glowkitty]

There needs to be a national standard of training, and there's not. Iowa (where I live and work as a 911 dispatcher) is one of the very few states that requires intensive training within the first 12 months as a dispatcher, and you're not supposed to work unsupervised until you've completed and passed it. I spent about three weeks at the state law enforcement academy going to all sorts of different classes in the first two months of my job, and I have to go to inservices once a year and keep my First Aid/CPR and IOWA/NCIC (driver records/criminal history database) certifications current with classes and testing.

Frankly, if a state is not going to require that their emergency response workers meet a minimum level of competency, common sense, and basic customer service, I point my finger at the state department of public safety and the individual agencies. Dispatchers usually get paid relatively well, so it's an attractive job option for a lot of people. And even those who do a piss-poor job at it often manage to stick around longer than they should, at least until someone gets killed or hurt as a result of their (in)actions.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Do you happen to know what the other states that require such training? That'd be useful information, both for those who can breathe easier, and those who need to request that it becomes a requirement.

[glowkitty]

I don't know offhand, but I can get in contact with our state education director fairly easily and she will probably have a list somewhere. I will let you know!

[glowkitty]

Preliminarily:

http://www.911dispatch.com/training/train_survey.html

It shows at top which states they don't have any information from, but they do have info from most states. It also looks like some states are really getting their training programs going (I'm curious to find out what goes on in that 360 hours of training in DC!). Looks like Michigan doesn't require any - surprise, surprise.

If I find anything more or any differing info, I'll post it. Also, I should note that there are 72 hours of classes to take in Iowa but only 40 are strictly required. The 32-hour class is only required if you can't test out of it (which you can do if you do all of your study at home, but one of the people who I started with did that because of scheduling conflicts, and found it to be a pain). I don't know if they'll start requiring the actual class for everyone or not, because it's mostly technical information that you really could learn out of a book with a terminal in front of you. The most important stuff is the call-taking and dispatching skills. I also took a 24-hour emergency medical dispatch class that's not required by the state but a lot of centers will send their dispatchers there anyway because it's very useful. Most of the time the state or individual jurisdictions will end up covering the cost of those classes, which might be why some places haven't yet made any requirements - it's expensive to train a dispatcher. Maybe states will start looking at this when the lawsuits start pouring in, because it's certainly cheaper to train a dispatcher than to pay for pain & suffering as a result of a crappy dispatcher.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Pennsylvania has a new(ish) requirement of 120/24+ so that's somewhat of a relief.

[glowkitty]

Another thing my boss mentioned when I brought this up to her this morning was that a lot of agencies don't have standardized protocol for dealing with suspected prank or hangup calls. So there's no official recourse within the agency for people who do otherwise inexcusable stuff like that - whereas they'd probably get fired if they just didn't show up to work one day.

Glad you got a little relief out of that. I was really impressed with some of the states' mandates. I hope the others will follow suit, and quickly.

[glowkitty]

I have not the slightest bit of sympathy for anything that happens to the operators involved, whether it includes dismissals, lawsuits, or jail time.

As a 911 operator myself (although I'm not the first person to handle an incoming 911 call anymore - politics moved that out to the sheriff's office last year), neither do I. That shit is just completely unacceptable, and it's sick that it happens. There are no national regulations for 911 dispatchers, only by states, so if you are lucky enough to live in a state that thoroughly trains and certifies its dispatchers (like Iowa), you can feel a little more confident in your emergency response system. I heard on CNN the other morning that Minnesota does not require any sort of training whatsoever for their dispatchers; you just get thrown in and told, "good luck." I had to go to approximately 100 hours of fairly intensive (and widely varied) training within my first few months of working at the police department, and it was all completely useful. They tell us at training that not everyone gets through training and decides they still want to be a dispatcher, which they consider to be a good thing. It's that kind of training that weeds out the people who are going to tell a kid to quit playing with the phone while their mom is dying on the kitchen floor. And I don't care if you have 15 years of experience on the job like that lady did - if anything, it made her more likely to do what she did, because she's burnt-out and bitter about her job. Even though I currently love my job, I don't figure I'll be doing exactly what I do now for more than 10 years, tops, basically because of how easily it can wear you out.

Our motto is, "when in doubt, send 'em out." If it's suspected to be a prank or is just an open line/hang-up, we send officers first and then page the ambulance if it's determined to be a medical call. Our officers are trained in first aid/CPR (as are we, as well as something called EMD, so we can give pre-arrival medical instructions over the phone to the caller), so if it would have been something like that case in Detroit, they could have been doing CPR on her while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. But again, it depends on the dispatcher to get them there. I'm not the one who has to make a judgment call - I just tell them where to go and what I was told is going on.

Anyway, I'm sure this is all going to give dispatchers a bad name in general, and I'm bracing for it. Ironically, this is National Telecommunicators' Week or something like that. Not all dispatchers are incompetent schmucks with attitude problems. We take a fair amount of verbal abuse from the general public for things that are completely out of our scope of control. I also get calls asking for a phone number to Pizza Hut or what time the grocery store opens, or someone wanting some person's unlisted phone number. There truly are many cases where 911 is misused and abused, but there is a certain way to deal with those calls - and it doesn't involve anything like telling a small child he's in big trouble for calling.

< /rant >

[thelastrobot.livejournal.com]

Being from Detroit, I try to keep up with the local news. Here's the Free Press with more, even the calls:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage

[losgunna.livejournal.com]

Being a Detroit girl myself, I heard and posted about this the other day myself. What in all bloody hell were they thinking??? Parents try so hard to get their kids trained to call 911 when there is a problem, and here is this little boy who did exactly as he should....and basically got to watch his mother die while the system totally let him down.

What pissed me off the most is the fact that the operater is still on duty. They've said that she'll probably be reprimanded, but not fired, due to her years of excellent service. I was so furious I was sputtering.

I have a cousin who has called 911 on several inappropriate occasions, to the point that they all know exactly who he is, etc. Every time, though, somebody comes to the house. Now, at this point, it's just the cops, and they give the kid a serious lecture, but somebody does show up. (Said cousin has Aspergers, and may or may not realize exactly how inappropriate it is for him to make his calls....) However, the fact that they know that he's a problem child, and still show up every time anyway.....that's how it should be done. Yes, it causes problems for them, but if somebody were in danger....

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

And in Atlanta they need the address for the Olympic Park before sending help...

dont even start me on the Memphis system...

[crickie.livejournal.com]

And in Atlanta they need the address for the Olympic Park before sending help...

That doesnt bother me. I would rather have a dispatcher ask me for an address, than have someone die because the dispatcher was afraid to admit that they weren't intimately familiar with all areas of town.

Bad typing on my part...

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

Was referring to Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, which covers multiple blocks downtown...during the Olympic Park bombing, 911 delayed sedning out help because they wanted a street address for the park...kind of like NYC 911 asking for an address for Central Park rather than sending to a vicinity...point is well taken for like a small neighborhood park but tougher for a major sized one, especially one that was the gathering place of the planet during the 1996 Olympics...

[glowkitty]

They ask for the address just to confirm that you're talking about the same place they're thinking of. Sometimes the name is close to a name of another place (although Olympic Park might be a pretty unique name, I don't know Atlanta at all) and they can be completely across town, making things extremely hairy if you pick and send them to the wrong place. For example, we have three of the same store in town, and they are completely across town from each other, so I always double-check which one they're talking about. It takes the guesswork and liability out of the dispatcher's hands.

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

see above...point taken for a smaller park(Atlanta has several neighborhood parks named Phoenix Park(numbered I, II, III, etc.)...

[glowkitty]

Aha, gotcha.

[ckd]

I am pleased to be able to note that when I had to call 911 here in Cambridge, the dispatcher was polite and helpful, and the help requested arrived quickly. They also picked up really, really fast.

That said, I'd prefer not to have had to call them, but it's nice to know that if I do need to call them again, I'm likely to be helped.

[jmfunnyface.livejournal.com]

When my sister was a baby, she got ahold of one of my Strawbery Shortcake plastic dolls and swallowed it. She turned blue as my parents called 9-1-1. When the operator heard it was a baby choking she flipped out. She started screaming and freaking out. She couldn't even hold it together to send an ambulance. The only thing that saved my sister was my father turning her upside down and slapping her back really hard. I have such a clear memory of my mother calming the 911 operator down after my sister was okay again. Had we left it up to 911, my sister would have died.