Dispatchers Publicly Air Complaints

In an open letter to the public, news media and law enforcement officials, 46 San Diego County sheriff’s dispatchers have asked that pressure be placed on elected officials to improve working conditions at the communications center, where employees are being forced to work overtime.

“The county is crying poverty, the sheriff denies responsibility and the travesty continues,” the employees wrote in a three-page letter distributed to newspapers, television stations, the grand jury, county officials and others.

The letter describes the exhaustion dispatchers feel from working overtime, the problems associated with trying to field calls with outdated equipment and the frustration of being underpaid.

“We the dispatchers are powerless,” the letter says. “We need a pay raise. We need new equipment. For our own sanity, we need to have the demands of mandatory overtime lifted.”

The Sheriff’s Department has 96 dispatchers but only 68 are fully-trained and on the job, said Leslie Harker, a dispatcher for 10 1/2 years. The rest are either trainees, on maternity leave, on medical retirement or on disability.

About 40% of the total have some form of repetitive-stress injury, including carpal tunnel syndrome and tendentious, she said.

Harker said the radio system, part of a decade-old communications center that sheriff’s officials admit is likely to be destroyed in the event of a moderate earthquake, is continually failing and being repaired.

But even more serious than the equipment failure is the constant turnover of the dispatch staff, who are trained by the Sheriff’s Department but move elsewhere quickly for higher pay. A dispatcher starts at $9.28 an hour and can earn as much as $14.05 an hour as a senior dispatcher.

The positions pay 25% less than those who work for the San Diego Police Department. Turnover is about one-third of the staff per year, sheriff’s officials said.

“A sheriff’s dispatcher is your lifeline to law enforcement, fire protection or medical response,” the dispatchers wrote. “Currently, your lifeline is fraying.”

Dispatchers handle emergency and non-emergency calls, direct deputies to service calls, and track their movements in the field. Dispatchers take an average 1,300 calls a day and at any given time, 15 to 20 are need during a shift.

For the past seven years, they have been forced to work an extra four hours a week in addition to their 40-hour work week. They are often ordered to work additional hours even when inconvenient and are contacted about twice a week to fill in on various shifts.

While dispatchers say they realize the public may not understand why anyone, given today’s economy, would turn down overtime, the letter says “we have been expected to give of ourselves past the point of pain. We give until we are catatonic.”

The added hours, the dispatchers said, “tire a person out. Your safety, your crisis, your need should not be met by an employee who is fatigued often to the point of exhaustion. How clearly can a dispatcher be thinking when they are on their second or third mandatory day of overtime? Is this the employee you want making life and death decisions that directly effect you in the face of crisis?”

The letter made a plea to the public to press county supervisors and Sheriff Jim Roache to come up with more money.

“The county Board of Supervisors and the sheriff of this county are elected officials,” dispatchers wrote. “They work for you, the taxpayer. Tell them where you want your dollars to go. If your baby stops breathing or someone breaks into your home, who is going to answer your cry for help? Will it be a politician?”

County administrators and Roache have repeatedly said there is no money to increase salaries for dispatchers although the county has recently offered seven new dispatcher positions. Dispatchers say they don’t need the extra bodies but the ability to keep those they already have.

Harker said that she’s stayed with the Sheriff’s Department for 10 1/2 years “because I’ve always felt it would get better, but it’s only gotten worse. My personal goal this year has been for the county to notice our plight.”