A Night With New York’s 911 Lifeline, Where Time Is the Thief : Emergencies: Ivey Bruce, Police Operator 1784, is reassuring as she handles problems ranging from assault to children left home alone.

“You want the police to come your house, because your mother didn’t come home?”

It’s nearly 7 p.m. on a Wednesday in the weeks before Christmas and somewhere in New York City, two scared young girls watch the clock, more frightened by the minute. They call 911 and reach Ivey Bruce.

Her voice is soothing, and steady.

“OK, what apartment are you in? And what’s the telephone number? And how old are you and your sister?”

As she speaks, Bruce types on a battered gray computer. The figures 10 and 11 appear on her screen, then “home alone.” Another tap of a key speeds the girls’ plea for help to a police dispatcher in a nearby room.

Bruce, a 45-year-old mother of two sons, nods as if to reassure the unseen child and then tells her police will be there soon.

Like a novel half-read, a mystery never solved, this story has no end for Bruce. After 14 years on the job, she knows that’s as it must be.

It’s only supper time in New York and by the end of her 3:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. shift, this 911 operator will have heard accounts of panic and terror by the score.

Systems vary widely, from the hectic and gargantuan New York operation that will have fielded an estimated 10.1 million calls in 1994 to rural systems where response time is measured in hours, not seconds.

But everywhere, this nearly ubiquitous lifeline--a 1993 Federal Communications Commission report found 911 service available in 89% of the country--rests on individuals like Ivey Bruce, police operator 1784. To spend a shift with Bruce is to wonder at her capacity to absorb the seemingly endless desperation of strangers.

Her workplace is a hive of cramped cubicles and glassed-in rooms where computer screens jump with near-disaster and certain tragedy. Despite the dingy atmosphere, the welfare of 7.3 million New Yorkers and the tens of thousands of visitors passing through any given day feels cherished here, something precious and fragile.

To call 911 for help is to reach a disembodied voice, but these operators are very real. Most are women and most, like Bruce, are black.

They know that every screaming siren, every ambulance streaking past, every rude blare of a fire engine horn, even the scratchy barking of a police officer’s walkie-talkie, probably started with 911.

The New York Police Department, which runs the city’s 911 system, invoked privacy rules to deny a reporter permission to listen in on calls or transcribe everything Bruce typed on her screen. This report is based on hearing her answer calls and on later interviews:

“Police operator 1784. What’s your emergency?

“Con Edison turned your lights off? And you paid that bill? And they didn’t turn the lights back on? Let me give you an emergency number . . . “

Throughout the night, she will take calls about a stolen television set, a squirrel trapped in a bedroom, a motel assault, several reports of armed teen-agers, a couple of car accidents, civic-minded neighbors reporting couples fighting in the next apartment, people who couldn’t breathe, a man found lying on a street corner, an unhappy soul who drank kerosene and a woman who feared the underworld was after her.

One man calls to say his landlord locked him in an apartment. Another is locked out of his car. Private alarm companies report devices going off. A Chinese grocer cries that thieves are stealing from her.

Bruce, who was born in Alabama and grew up in Brooklyn, worked in accounting for 12 years before she took this job, finding it far more interesting and less stressful than worrying if her numbers added up.

Dressed in comfortable navy slacks and a blouse in a swirling blue-on-white print, she tugs on her ponytail when pensive. But during most calls, she leans forward as she speaks and listens with an attentiveness that creases her brow.

“Police operator 1784. What’s your emergency?”

A woman feeling faint wants police to drive her home, all of one block. “Yes. Hello, ma’am. So you want an ambulance? The police is not a taxi service, ma’am. We can send you an ambulance.”

Besides the computer before her, Bruce works from an elaborate black telephone with tiny screens and several rows of buttons linked to Emergency Medical Services, fire dispatchers and a Spanish-speaking operator. Other interpreters are on call.

Behind the phone, a green-gray box the size of a small refrigerator contains a tape machine that records every call. At her left elbow sits another phone with a tiny built-in typewriter for calls from the hearing-impaired.

“Police operator 1784. What’s your emergency?

A woman’s shrieking leaks through Bruce’s black headset. Her mother has passed out and might be dead.

“Listen to me, babe,” Bruce says, lowering her voice. “Listen to me. What’s wrong? She passed out or what? Listen to me, listen to me. I want you to calm down. All right?

“We’re going to the Bronx.” She’s got EMS on the line. Now, Bruce listens and coaches the caller. “Hello? Tell them your cross streets. Tell them your cross streets. . . . OK, they’re gonna be there. Hello? Hello, ma’am? You can call up now if her condition’s changed.”

Going home at night, Bruce says, “I have no problem leaving the job here.” Yet some calls haunt her.

“Many, many years ago, this woman was screaming.” She throws her head back and shakes it as if hearing it again. “That was the kind of scream that you never want to hear in your life.”

The woman lived in a building where the elevators didn’t work properly. Her son had been decapitated by the doors “and his head went riding up and down in the elevator,” Bruce said. “My heart jumped and my adrenaline went to pumping. I calmed myself down. I sent one ambulance for her, and one for her son.”

She strives not to get too involved, but after upsetting calls, she often has to take a walk or get a drink of water.

Asked what qualities enable her to do her job, she grins and responds, “I’m basically a humanitarian. I like helping people.”

New York’s 911 system occupies the eighth floor of police headquarters, a 14-story red-brick tower overlooking a wind-swept plaza at the foot of Manhattan.

Capacity and staffing vary, but during the summer, major holidays and emergencies such as plane crashes, all 74 terminals on the main floor and the 20 more usually designated for training can be in use. The usual staffing is 50 to 65 operators.

The operators occupy clusters of desks and cubicles barely wider than the swivel of an office chair.

Time is the thief here, and the taskmaster. Every word spoken, every second on the phone, is monitored, by computer and eavesdropping supervisors. The NYPD can respond to 99.5% of calls within four telephone rings, and dispatch in two to three minutes, Platoon Commander Denise Marbury says.

If New York’s system has a flaw, it’s the inability to weed out crank calls, but the operators’ phones will disclose callers’ numbers and locations with Enhanced 911 under upgrading expected to be completed in 1995.

Applicants for the job--which offers an annual starting salary of $24,198, rising to $27,461 after three years--must survive a civil service test, an interview and scrutiny of their mental and physical fitness before receiving seven weeks of training capped by a crucial final exam.

Once on The Floor, they’re assigned to a senior operator who guides them through the first couple of months.

“Police operator 1784. What’s your emergency? . . . You were what? You were in the movies and you were attacked? Who’s at home with you? All right. Let me speak to your mother.”

Bruce chuckles. A small boy has called saying he is stuck in the moon and can’t get out. When Bruce asks for his mother and he tells his mom it’s the police, the woman slams down the phone.

“We get a lot of calls from children,” Bruce says. “But we have to take them seriously.” They may be giggling as they report a friend just broke his neck skateboarding, she says.

“Police operator 1784. What’s your emergency?”

“OK, now what time are they selling these drugs? Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? Do you know the person? OK. Do you know what one of them looks like? OK. What color are they? Black or Hispanic, or what?”

She coaxes out descriptions of two men--their height, build, weight.

“So tell me, is there a password or something? No password. So what do they do, just knock on the door? To get the drugs. Do they have weapons there?

“So listen to me. Do you want to leave your name and telephone number?” The caller does. “Thank you, sir. Someone will be there as soon as possible to check it out.”

Sometimes, calls rush in one after the other, barely allowing a breath before the soft, high beep indicates another is on the line.

Throughout, Ivey Bruce displays a prize-worthy calm.

A woman sobs into the phone. Her husband had been hitting her. He’s upstairs. Bruce begins as she always does, by getting the address and telephone number, enough to summon police with one press of a button while she takes more information.

“All right. Listen. Take a couple of deep breaths. You relaxed? I’m going to send the police over. Don’t go upstairs. Stay downstairs. And relax. I’m going to get the police over.”

In 1968, Haleyville, Ala., became the first city with 911 emergency service; later that same year, New York City got it, too.

After a quarter-century, despite their more sophisticated equipment and training, 911 operators still require the special mix of endurance and compassion witnessed in Ivey Bruce.

She offers a simpler explanation: “I don’t find this stressful because I like what I’m doing.”

By night’s end that Wednesday, she has taken 138 calls. A light night, she remarks, almost ruefully. Then, her brown eyes brighten with a forecast. “And tomorrow, all hell breaks loose!”

Then, Ivey Bruce taps a key and signs off.