911 OPERATORS ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS?

I just turned off channel 12 news in disgust. There was a terrible crime that occurred in Palm Beach this morning. A grandmother was found stabbed to death in her home also attack her 6 year old grandson. He survived the attack.

All the neighbors are upset and that is understandable, this is a terrible crime. What pissed me off was an irresponsible reporter. The reporter found a neighbor that stated he called 911 around 3am when the incident occurred to report 2 men they saw loitering near the residence the stabbing occurred. The neighbor watch the subjects jump the fence and then jump back across the fence a little while later. Officers where dispatched to the area but I am unsure what occurred after that all the guy could complain about was how the 911 operator asked too many questions. If the operator had been more concerned with just getting the officer there instead of wasting all that time asking questions the out come may have been different.

The reporter let the story end at that. Dispatchers ask too many questions…….

That is completely untrue.

One of the most important skills a dispatcher has to have is multitasking. If you can not multitask then you can not be a Dispatcher/911 Operator. If you are answering the phones you have to be able to type quickly and ask questions. As soon as I pick up a phone I try to quickly discern what the problem is and what is the address. Then I start a screen. I ask for name and phone number and then I start with the important questions; who, what, where, when, and how. I also want descriptions. If the incident is in progress I want to keep the caller on the phone until the officer gets there that can be the difference between catching a criminal or the criminal getting away.

Now while I am typing, once I get enough pertinent information I transmit the call to the dispatcher who in turn dispatches and officer to the scene. I am fast so this might take approximately a minute give or take. The time to create the call has much to do with how difficult it is to get the answers to my questions.

Perfect example: A hang up call…… someone calls hangs up. I have to call back if its busy I have to call back again. If someone picks up the phone and hangs up I still have to call back. I then build a screen and send it to dispatch. When the dispatcher gets the call they will call back the phone number maybe once some times twice. You can imagine how long this process is. We get hang ups all the time and though we try to treat them as emergency calls it is hard because so many are false calls………. Without information it is very difficult to determine what the priority of the emergency is and this alone can determine the response of a call.

Now after I have sent the call I am able to update the screens with the information I obtain. So even though I still have the caller on the phone and am asking questions I have already notified the dispatcher so she can do her job and in turn the officer can do their job. I don't keep people on the phone and ask questions because I feel like I do it because it is my job. My job is to obtain as much information as possible and to relay it to the officers on the street. I do my job well and it pisses me off when people like this reporter makes my job that much harder.