911’s Own Crisis: Keeping Dispatchers

Susi Thayer closed her eyes tight and exhaled with defeat. The head of Irvine’s 911 emergency phone system learned Tuesday morning that her newest hire quit after only one day on the job.

It had taken Thayer six months and several thousand dollars to recruit the woman. There was the advertisement for the position, a written test, an in-depth medical exam, psychological testing, and polygraph and background checks--which all had to be completed before the woman ever took a seat in front of the switchboard to begin training.

“Now we are back to square one,” sighed Thayer.

Keeping the phones staffed on the front line of America’s emergency response system is a chronic struggle, not only in cities like Los Angeles and Detroit but also in rural areas and suburbs, where tedium and long lulls between calls fray the nerves nearly as much as the frantic moments of crisis.

In Orange County, for example, which boasts some of the safest areas in America, nearly every dispatch center is understaffed, despite flush budgets and aggressive recruiting.

Oscillating Between Boredom and Terror

It is impossible to say if the constant churn of 911 operators compromises public safety. No one keeps such statistics. But the turnover troubles many who say experienced dispatchers can make the difference between life and death in a job where every second counts.

“You are taking calls from people at the worst moments in their lives,” said Gary Allen, editor of the Berkeley-based trade magazine Dispatch Monthly, whose pages often address the stresses dispatchers face. “It is important to have people who know what they are doing.”

For those who have never set foot in a dispatch center, the staffing problems might seem puzzling. After all, a dispatcher’s work is far less dangerous than the job done by the police officers they send out on emergency calls. Dispatchers don’t dodge bullets, but people who do the job say they face a different kind of danger--one more mental than physical.

Nationwide, dispatchers juggle about 250,000 phone calls for assistance each day, in addition to handling radio traffic from their own law enforcement officers. The widespread use of cell phones alone has dramatically boosted the number of calls made to 911 operators from motorists reporting everything from suspicious activity to a car broken down by the side of the road.

Staying alert can be challenging, in part because as much as 80% of all 911 calls are not emergencies. Add to this additional pressures not found in other civilian jobs: An operators’ every conversation is recorded, to be replayed in case of a complaint that a response was botched.

So is it any wonder that law enforcement agencies nationwide say they can’t find people who will do the job, even though starting pay is often two to three times the minimum wage and no college degree is required?

Dispatchers don’t think so. Even those who love the work say there almost always comes a moment when the weight of the job is too much. They stand at the edge of their emotions and decide if they can do it another day.

Many just walk away.

In Huntington Beach, which ranks as one of the safest cities in the United States, six out of 10 who begin training eventually quit or are dismissed; it’s the same with half the recruits in Santa Ana. In Los Angeles, the average dropout rate for first-year dispatchers is 48%. Statewide, 40% of new hires never finish the six-month to yearlong training program.

“It is hard to find people with the will to do the job,” Thayer said. “You could have a potential suicide on one line and someone on the other line reporting a stray dog, and the person reporting the stray dog is more hysterical.”

Some agencies have turned to financial incentives.

In Anaheim, for example, dispatchers will receive $1,000 this July and another $1,000 next July, just for staying on the job. City officials hope the payments will make the agency more competitive for new hires. But even with these incentives, hiring remains a struggle, said Shelley McKerren, who heads the city’s dispatching staff.

In the meantime, dispatchers pick up overtime shifts, and part-timers and police officers pitch in to handle demands for emergency response, which in Anaheim last year totaled nearly 300,000, including more than 171,000 calls from the public.

The cost is “substantial,” McKerren said. The extra help typically means overtime pay.

Those Who Stay Pay for Those Who Leave

Recruiting employees who can stick with it has proved elusive for law enforcement.

In 1991, the California Police Officers Standards and Training Commission identified more than 700 tasks a dispatcher must perform and the skills needed to get them done, ranging from prioritizing all requests for help to drawing out critical information from a frantic caller.

The three-hour test required by many hiring agencies in the state weeds out those likely to fail.

But it is far from foolproof.

Agencies also have resorted to psychological profiling to reduce the countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted each year on unsuccessful candidates.

The dropout rate places the burden squarely on the shoulders of the dispatchers who stay. The result, say those who have worked in the field for years, is tired and overworked dispatchers doing a job that requires speed and precision.

“It’s a never-ending cycle,” Allen said. “The burnout rate just gets higher.”

Marie Black knows how bad it can get. Ten years ago, on the worst day in her career, the dispatcher for the Los Angeles Police Department yanked off her headset and sat waiting in her cubicle for someone, anyone, to say something to her. She was looking for the slightest excuse to quit.

In half an hour’s time, Black had taken three terrible calls back to back.

The first came from a psychologist who went to a suicidal patient’s home and found him dead, shot in the head. The second was from weeping parents, their words coming out in gulps. Their 22-year-old son overdosed. They had gone to ask him to turn his music down and found him dead, a needle still in his arm.

The third call was from a woman who opened the door to the garage and found her husband hanging from a rope.

Black could hear the distraught woman pleading with her husband to be alive: “Honey, are you OK?”

And it was this last call that did Black in.

In her mind she could see the woman trying too late to save her husband, trying to lift him in her arms. She could picture it and the image made her heart sink.

“You’ve got to have that something,” the 12-year dispatching veteran said of that day. “It’s a feeling in the pit of your stomach, whether it’s fear or concern or adrenaline or whatever, you need it there to do the job. When you lose it, you’re done.”

Eric Gruver, a psychologist who helps Orange County’s law enforcement agencies choose candidates to hire, agrees.

And it’s this hard-to-define trait for which he searches. It’s a quality that is difficult to judge except over time, and after dispatchers have been thrust into a crisis that can’t be simulated by any testing model.

Among the stresses unique to the work, he says, is the fact that dispatchers are “forgotten people, doing a forgotten job in forgotten places.”

“Officers get accolades, but no one remembers the work a dispatcher does,” Gruver said. “You have to be someone who finds a way to get satisfaction from the job on your own. But how many people can you have die at the end of a call? How many people can call up and unleash their frustrations of life on you before you are affected?”

Frantic Voices That Threaten to Haunt

Even an ordinary day can be a balancing act. Dispatchers need to have a passion for the work. But if they took every call to heart, they wouldn’t be able to keep picking up the phone.

Finding the balance is easier said than done.

Cristine Gaiennie still can’t forget the little boy’s voice.

Daddy has a gun, he told her. He’s going to shoot Mommy. He’s going to kill himself. Can I help my little brother? I need to get him out of that room.

“He couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7,” recalls the eight-year veteran of Irvine’s police dispatch unit.

The call made three years ago still haunts Gaiennie, even though everyone was all right in the end. Gaiennie originally had plans to enter the police academy, but stayed in dispatching because she felt she could be more useful there. “I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she said. She refuses to let anything from the outside affect her job. A bad day, a bad mood, could cost a life, she said.

Sometimes, the worst does happen: A police officer down in the line of duty, a dispatcher’s error ends in tragedy.

Almost anyone who does the job can recall the chilling 911 tapes made public in the wake of the North Hollywood shootout between bank robbers and Los Angeles police. They identify with the dispatcher heard desperately urging a wounded officer to hang on.

They all hope not to repeat the mistake made in a well-publicized 1994 incident, in which a teenage boy in Philadelphia was beaten to death in a church doorway despite dozens of 911 calls. The operator gave the incident low priority, leading to a 47-minute delay before police were dispatched.

And the battle isn’t only in coping with the crises or the numbing lulls in between. It’s also against frivolous or prank calls. Too many in a row and your sense of urgency can be dulled.

Kids call from pay phones and yell dirty words. Neighbors call to complain about noise. One elderly woman regularly called Irvine dispatchers asking for help paying her bills. And then there are the hang-ups, often kids fooling around or 411 misdials. But each one must be returned.

You never know when it may be a real emergency.

In Irvine, Thayer said she is already starting the process of hiring a replacement for the woman who decided one day on the job was all she could take. Thayer said it has happened so many times before, resignation has set in.

There was a time when Thayer thought she could predict which candidates would excel, only to watch them wash out. She has had doubts about others, who turned out to have distinguished careers.

“I’ve learned that I just never know,” she said. “But usually they last longer than a day.”