Clean Carpets

It never ceased to amaze me how the very people we worked with had so little grasp on what was actually done in the dispatch center. Every six months or so Ogden City would contract to have their carpets cleaned. It didn’t work to run a carpet cleaning machine during the day when everyone was in the office, so they asked the cleaners to come Friday night at 10:00 P.M. That should work great. Everyone is out of the office, and they should be able to work undisturbed by people walking across the wet carpet and tripping over the long hoses. They also wouldn’t disturb anyone with the loud suction of the machines they used.

That would have worked great if 9-1-1 would shut down every Friday at 5:00. Unfortunately people just aren’t willing to wait to report a police/fire/medical emergency until Monday at 8:00. It’s also interesting enough to recognize that the BUSIEST TIMES in a 9-1-1 center are Friday and Saturday nights in the summer.

So one summer evening a couple of carpet cleaners walked into the center and began to lay out hoses and move furniture around. They were obviously annoyed to find a busy office setting with at least 12 of us way too busy to pay much attention to them. They moved furniture around a bit and might have even asked the supervisor if we could move everyone out for a couple of hours or so allowing them to finish. That unfortunately wouldn’t work.

They did their best to get furniture resituated and began work with their extractors. They started in the northwest corner of the room which is mostly staffed by calltakers and were having pretty good success asking the occupier of the workstation to slide out of the desk for a minute while they cleaned the carpet under the desk. This worked well until they got around to the middle of the room where T D was working.

T was on a 9-1-1 call talking to a victim who had just been stabbed. That’s not entirely true – she was talking to a participant/witness of a fight in which his friend was stabbed while the victim of the stabbing screamed in the background that he was going to die. T, a very capable call taker, was doing her best to get information from an adrenaline (and possibly controlled substance) enhanced caller, who was more interested in performing an emotional monologue (full of feigned bravado) about what he was going to do to the suspect when he caught him, than provide information to the 9-1-1 dispatcher.

T eventually got enough information to get the initial call posted and was in the process of updating information when the carpet cleaner arrived at her station to clean under her desk. He waited semi-patiently and then tapped her on the shoulder and mimed a request for her to back up from the desk so he could clean underneath. T covered the microphone on her headset with her hand and in the loud whisper said, “I’ve got a stabbing.”

At that moment the carpet cleaner had a disturbing moment of clarity. He realized what was going on in this room and how his presence was disrupting the process. He ran the emotional gauntlet of shock, horror, understanding, and settled on synergy. We all have a job to do; by the end of the night lives will be saved and the carpet will be clean. The importance of cleaning the carpets systematically from west to east was now much less important than minimizing disruptions. He decided that he would focus on getting under the chairs of those who didn’t look busy and then do the middle of the room when that was done.

D T, working the South Channel, didn’t look very busy at the minute, so he moved his hoses over to her console. D didn’t look busy because she had just dispatched South Ogden on the stabbing that T had sent her and was waiting for an update on the description and location of the suspect and hopefully a little more information about the knife he had been wielding. The appearance of peaceful serenity apparently emanating from her countenance concealed the cacophony of high-revving engines, sirens, and officers screaming for information that was being piped directly into her ear through her headset.

D ignored the charade performance of move-your-chair-so-I-can-clean and yelled across the room to T pleading for a description of the suspect.

“Shhhhhhhhhh!” The carpet cleaner shushed her in a loud whisper. “She’s taking a call on a stabbing!”

Smokers

Mary has previewed this story and given it a stamp of approval. If you find it offensive or lacking in propriety Mary sincerely apologizes.





Most folks are unaware of the debt of gratitude we owe smokers.


There are very few people who go out of the warmth of their homes at 2:00 in the morning and sit on the porch observing the goings-on in the neighborhood. I was amazed how many calls I got from smokers who had witnessed shenanigans in their neighborhoods.


One night I got a call from a woman who was sitting on her front porch for a smoke just about 1:00 A.M. It was a winter night with a heavy, quiet, sleepy snow falling. Most people were home in bed and the shift had been relatively slow.


She related, with oozing disgust in her voice, that a Corvette had pulled up in the middle of her street in front of her house. There emerged a man who walked to the front of his car and proceeded to urinate on the street. She was holding her cordless phone, so she gave me the play-by-play as we talked. I sent the call to the Ogden dispatcher and kept her on the line anticipating that our suspect would get back in his car and drive away.


“He’s looking at me,” my caller suddenly said.


For the next several seconds my caller locked eyes with the perpetrator. Neither moved; neither flinched. I began to worry that he might chase her or come after her and mentioned that she might want to return to the house.


“He’s getting back into his car,” she said. The perp flinched first.


As he hurried back to the driver-side door, our suspect discovered that he had locked the keys in his still running car.


“He can’t get in!” my caller screamed while laughing at him. Their eyes locked again, but this time our suspect began running down the street to get away. Officers were getting pretty close so I relayed a good description of what he was wearing and what direction he was running.


Amusingly enough, when you drunkenly run down the middle of the street blanketed by freshly-fallen snow, you are pretty easy to find. Officers just followed the wobbly footprints down the street leading them to a drunk and grumpy suspect.


The suspect was charming enough that instead of using the wrecker’s slim-jim to open the car and retrieve his keys, they just pulled the still-running Corvette onto the wrecker and took it to the tow-yard to run out of gas there.


Suspect apprehended – drunk off the street – midnight smoker to thank.

New Year’s Eve in Cedar City

There were several shifts that competed for the title of “Busiest Shift I ever worked.” There was the time that lightning struck the power substation at the mouth of Ogden Canyon sending a surge that blew every transformer all the way up. Forty grass fires were “sparked” causing hundreds of calls and sending scads of fire trucks scampering to contain them. There were a host of snow days including the one when the car hit the back of the tow truck nearly killing the driver and causing a fatality of a semi truck driver involved in a secondary crash. There were party shifts from the forest service deputies where they went from campsite to campsite quieting campers who had perhaps imbibed a little too much. There was working two Fridays in a row when the computer system failed and we had to document Ogden Police traffic using paper and pencils. But few things stick out in my memory as much as New Year’s Eve as we approached the year 2000.


Y2K had been an Art Bell-enhanced national concern. It was postulated that computer systems based on antiquated architecture would be confused because of the two-digit year. When the year switched to 00, it was worried that they would treat the New Year as if it were 1900 instead of 2000 and shut down. The possible issues ranged from air-traffic control flying planes into mountains, all Coke products spontaneously turning into New Coke, and the power grid completely failing. (I made one of those up)


The concern in the center was two-fold: we weren’t certain that our CAD would function and we weren’t sure that there wouldn’t be widespread panic and rioting. I played a National Guard concert at the tabernacle as part of the SLC First Night Celebration and then quickly got to the Weber Center to send my relief home. I’m not sure who waited for me, but she was awfully nice for doing it.


As I arrived, the center had some decorations and there was some food being laid out. There was a vegetable tray and some deli slices and cheeses. J* M* had brought some hats and noise makers. It was just before 2200hrs, so I settled in my console on the North Channel and began to work.


The night was very manageable similar to any winter weekend. We began to visit and confirmed with each other that we would remind each other to be ready to celebrate the New Year when the red digital clock on the Centracom II consoles read 00:00:00. It is easy to get distracted in the center by little things like emergencies and stuff.


I remember looking at the clock and it read 23:46:15 and thinking that we were just a little over ten minutes away from ringing in the new millennium. I remember thinking about how I had anticipated how old I would be when the year 2000 came as a young boy in school. Twenty-six seemed so old. I’m sure I didn’t imagine ringing in the New Year in a 9-1-1 center wearing a funny hat with a whistle poking out of my mouth.


At that point, all hell broke loose. We began to get calls about a Utah Power and Light service truck going the wrong way on I-84 near Morgan. We got a bunch of calls before it slammed into another vehicle. The driver was trapped, and there were injuries in the other vehicle as well. Emergency after emergency after emergency hit the center until we finally caught our breath several hours later. I looked up at the red digital clock just eighteen inches away from my vision. I had been using that clock to time stamp every radio transmission for the last several hours, but I had apparently been too busy to retain the ability to use it to mark the passage of time. 03:15:23. More than three hours had gone by without any of us blowing our whistles or marking the new millennium. We half-heartedly blew our whistles and spun our rattles. We took off our hats and passed out warm vegetables and slightly stale cold cuts.


Flash forward five years to my first year as a Manager. I was in Cedar City, but I had only been there a couple of months. Mary was still in Ogden working diligently at keeping our home tidy enough for our agent to walk potential buyers through the house.
I told the graveyard shift that I would be in to help them shortly before midnight, and I would stay until the busyness quieted down. I planned on driving home to Ogden after things got slow enough for them to handle comfortably.


About 11:30 I got to the dispatch center. I hopped into the office and grabbed my headset. I went in to the dispatch floor and got myself plugged in and started logging in to the computer. Logging in at a dispatch center is a bit of a process. You need to log in to several systems and it takes a few minutes to get it done. I finally got logged in and settled into the chair. I hadn’t noticed before, but there was something very odd about the shift: the phones weren’t ringing. Not only were the phones silent, but the radio chatter was conspicuously absent too.


I sat for a few minutes and watched my employees patiently man their stations.


“So, when does it start?” I asked.


“When does what start?” Devin asked.


“You know – the New Year revelry.”


“Um – this is pretty much it,” Devin said. “People in Iron County for the most part just go to sleep.”


The thought that Cedar City would be different than Weber County on its New Year’s observances hadn’t occurred to me. I felt more than a little sheepish.


“Why didn’t you guys say anything?” I asked.


“Well, you seemed so excited about coming in to help, we just didn’t have the heart to tell you that we really didn’t need you.”


Hmmm.

Cupcake

Graveyards in the winter are fun. Things tend to slow down when it gets cold. The bad guys aren’t interested in being out, and the weather tends to discourage the good guys, or mostly good guys, from doing much very late.


We were working a graveyard shift one night when the Newgate Mall Security called in. They were reporting a younger couple trying to sleep in their car. It was a frigid night with temperatures into the single digits. Apparently their car had broken down, and they didn’t have any way of getting home. They lived in Wyoming, so it wasn’t a matter of someone just running them down the street. The security guard was worried that they would freeze to death in the car. People freezing to death is apparently bad for business.


Because it was getting towards the end of swing shift, one of the officers thought it would be a good idea to drive them to the police station and leave them there – this was a strict violation of the “you catch it – you clean it” rule. Once they were found by a graveyard car sleeping on the couch in the lobby, we began to try to make arrangements to do something with them.


Poor K* L* was on the Ogden channel. Usually you would ask the Service Channel to do the phone calling for you, but either service was shut down for the night, or it wasn’t busy enough to justify moving them over.


It was already after 3:00 AM, and the homeless shelter kicks people out at 5:00 AM. The officer asked the young couple if there was anyone who could come pick them up. They gave a list of names and K* started calling people. It seemed like she’d made about a dozen phone calls, and every one of those people either didn’t answer the phone or said they wouldn’t come pick them up. Eventually the stranded couple said that they knew a woman who drove from Evanston to Ogden every morning on some type of delivery route. They weren’t exactly sure what her name was, but everyone called her "Cupcake."


They suggested some ideas on last names for Cupcake, and K* started looking up numbers. By this time, I’d wandered over to where K* was and started laughing at her every time she left a message.


“Hi, this is K* with the Ogden Police Department. I’m looking for a woman named Cupcake. If this is Cupcake, could you please call me back as soon as possible at 801-629-8221.”


The thought of calling someone at 3:30 AM and asking to speak with “Cupcake” was hilarious to me, and as K* called person after person I laughed harder and harder.


The incoming line rang, so I scampered back to my seat to pick it up.


“Public Safety this is Scott.” I settled into my regular dispatch salutation.


“Hi,” came a sweet voice on the other end of the line.


“Someone named K* just called looking for me.”


I immediately knew who this must be. “What was your name Ma’am?”


“Cupcake”


I planned on asking her to hold for just a minute while I put K* on the line. What came over the phone was simply uncontrolled laughter. Whoops.


While Cupcake is a pretty funny name, I was honestly laughing more because I was pretty sure Cupcake didn't really exist. It was like K* was on a snipe hunt. I'm sure Cupcake didn't realize that I'd been teasing Karen for the better part of the last hour.


So embarrassingly enough, Cupcake was one of the sweetest people I have ever come across. She got right out of bed, drove to Ogden, picked up this couple, and took them home. Furthermore when I got back to work three days later, the audio file of me laughing at this sweet woman was still being passed around the dispatch center.


I’m an idiot.

Blue Canaries

Hazardous Material calls are potentially terrifying. They're like a real-life iocane powder which are colorless, odorless, and dissolve instantly in water. Unfortunately there are many nasties out there that have the potential to kill the unsuspecting. Firefighters often call police officers “blue canaries.” Back in the preindustrial days of mining, miners would carry a canary in a small cage with them. Canaries were more susceptible to the methane gas in the mine. If the canary died, it was time to get out. If the police officer drives right up to an accident and falls over unconscious, it’s time to put the HAZMAT protective equipment on.


I don’t know that dispatch training in HAZMAT calls is fantastic, but the emphasis on situational awareness is very good. Those situations in which people could be exposed to deadly chemicals are most often identified by dispatchers and mitigated before responders arrive on scene. Having this situational awareness, I have the tendency to overreact just a little. 


When working my Monday night at the Chevron station, there were always custodial duties to do at night. I had finished emptying garbages and was walking across the parking lot to clean the trucker showers. Truckers can be filthy, disgusting people, but the overwhelming majority of them are considerate and pick up after themselves. Cleaning the showers was far more pleasant than cleaning the restrooms used by the general public.


As I walked across the parking lot, I noticed white foam pouring out of the top of a tanker truck. It was oozing down the side of the truck trailer and pooling on the ground. There was already a fair amount under the trailer.


I panicked. I was only standing about thirty feet away from that foam. I couldn’t smell anything; I didn’t feel funny; I wasn’t light-headed; I couldn’t see a cloud of gas emanating from the pool. I backed away slowly (you know – like avoiding a bear) and then ran back into the store.


I quickly called 9-1-1 and told the call-taker, my good friend T* D*, that we had a HAZMAT spill at the Chevron. She asked all the right questions and told me she would send the responders.


I stayed in the store not wanting to risk further exposure. I started to feel bad for the driver of the truck. He probably was overcome by noxious fumes and died right there in the cab. I worried that the fumes might have spread to the other trucks and we may have a full-blown mass casualty incident. I went through a checklist in my mind of all the people that would have to be notified from the Sheriff to the Health Department.


A deputy’s truck sped past the pumps and I cautiously walked out the door to watch him. As if on cue, he ran right up to the cab of the truck and pounded on it standing just inches away from the edge of the pool of white foam.


“Hey!” he yelled. “Wake up!”


Emboldened by his lack of being dead, I inched closer to the spill. At last a groggy trucker opened the passenger door to his cab.


“Hey! You’re leaking something out of your truck! You’ve got to get out of there!” yelled the deputy.


“Uh, what?” replied the groggy trucker. A slightly less urgent explanation of the situation occurred with the driver still not seeming to understanding. At last he climbed out of the truck and realized what was happening.


“Uh, it’s just yogurt,” the driver offered. “It won’t hurt anything.”


Yogurt?!? How could yogurt come burbling up out of the top of a trailer that was shaped like it should be full of nerve agent?


The deputy keyed his radio and cancelled the other two rings of the circus. As he walked past me he mumbled something about gosh darn dispatch not knowing the difference between anhydrous ammonia and yogurt.

Whose Yer Buddy

Paperwork is not my strong suit. As I succumbed to the temptation of ignoring the finance secretary's repeated requests to flip-flop on the way forms needed to be filled out, the siren’s call of the dispatch floor became harder and harder to resist. Snow days in Box Elder could effectively eliminate managerial tasks for days.


One of the snow days that was especially memorable happened fairly late in the year. It was mid March and this particular snow storm behaved differently that the norm. The storm would dump a ton of snow in one area and then leave clear spots several miles long before dumping a whole lot more snow. We had crazy amounts of accidents between South Willard and the rest area and then nothing for miles. The other bad spots were on SR30 just past Beaver Dam, I-15 outside of Plymouth, and I-84 just west of Tremonton. The troopers were all over the place and everybody pitched in to help.


I had come on to the floor to help take calls. I basically tried to do all of the support functions to keep the other two organizing officers and paging medical. The calls would come in waves with brief moments of respite allowing us to catch up on wreckers. In one of the slow spells I got a call from a man involved in one of the many accidents on I-15 in South Willard.


“I called before - I’ve been involved in an accident,” he said.


“Is anyone hurt?” I asked.


“No – I think we’re all okay.”


I went into a well-rehearsed explanation about the ratio of accidents to available troopers. I told him that we would get someone there as quickly as possible, but it could be quite a wait on a day like this. Some people get grumpy over this, but folks who are out in the thick of craziness are usually pretty understanding. This guy sounded like he was pretty even-keeled and patient.


“I don’t mean to be a bother, but we slid into the median and when the other car slid into us, it broke out our rear windshield. It’s really cold in our car and I have kids."


This really changed everything for me. I’m all about prioritizing. Injured folks would still go ahead of him, but I was bumping his call in front of everyone else. I do this guilt-free. Oftentimes folks that slide off the freeway are simply victims of bad weather and bad road conditions, but very rarely were they traveling at a speed safe for conditions. One of the unfortunate consequences of driving too fast in a snowstorm is having to wait in the median for a trooper to take a report and call you a wrecker. You might even get bumped down if someone else is exposed to the elements. 


I said something like we need to get someone out to you as quickly as possible and busied myself trying to figure out how to do that. First I pulled up the call and added an explanation in the notes. I then changed the priority from a 3 to a 2 and went to the address line to put the color of his car after a semi colon so it would appear on the status screen. I had kind of forgotten that he was still on the phone as I sat back to appreciate a pretty fine job of documentation on a pretty busy day.


“Whose yer buddy,” I said punctuating the comment by hitting the key that reposted the call. I turned my chair and was just about to tell the radio dispatcher what the situation was when a low, sad voice from the other end of the phone answered, “You are.”


That’s right – I’m yer buddy.

One Man Campaign

 There is nothing quite so dangerous as a single-man campaign to educate the public one at a time. When I first started at the DPS Weber Center, our phone greeting was, “9-1-1, What is your emergency?” The answer often came, “This isn’t an emergency, but . . .” with an explanation of a non-emergency issue.

Veteran dispatchers came to tolerate the misuse of emergency lines for non-emergency calls, but as a new dispatcher filled with idealism and righteous indignation, I was disgusted with the blatant and careless abuse of the 9-1-1 system. I immediately initiated my campaign to identify and correct the wrong-doers.

“9-1-1, What is your emergency?” I said in my most noble superhero type voice.

“Well, this isn’t an emergency, but . . .” came the reply.

"Sir,” I said – cutting him off. “These are emergency lines, and they need to be reserved for emergency calls.”

I gave him the non-emergency number three times as he broke the pencil lead, had a pen that ran out of ink, and then used a crayon.

The non-emergency line rang. As the only calltaker, I picked it up. It was of course the same caller.

“Public Safety this is Scott,” I answered in a more congenial, less intense voice.

“I think my wife is having a heart attack.”

“. . .”

Abandoning the campaign at this point seemed like a pretty good idea.
 
 

"This Is the Grandpa"

One of the nifty little features of the 9-1-1 system is that you don’t have to dial 9-1-1 to be connected to an emergency dispatcher. If you just dial random numbers eventually it will ring through to 9-1-1. I’m sure the architects of the system envisioned the farmer that had both arms ripped off in a combine, and his only hope to dial for help rests on his ability to accurately dial a number with nothing but two bloody stumps. (Too graphic?)

Unfortunately for those of us manning the front lines of this system, a small child's overwhelming fascination with a device that makes noises when you push buttons is much more likely than the plea for help from a double-amputee farmer. Thousands if not tens of thousands of calls were placed to the center every year by small children. Initially our practice was to try to ascertain if there was an emergency. If it sounded like trouble, or there was a level of uncertainty, officers were dispatched. If everything sounded fine, the calltaker could clear out the call with no action taken. As a 9-1-1 drop was classified as a priority 1 call, sending very many of these to the Ogden radio dispatcher was a quick way to become the most hated person in the room. Trying to clear a board full of calls in Ogden was hard enough without someone piling on extras. There was a strong motivation to try to vet these calls very closely.

So my good friend K* L* picks up one of these lines and it becomes immediately apparent that it is a child on the phone. There is a myth that small children make excellent 9-1-1 callers, and there are times when the young ones do an excellent job, but most of the time trying to get answers out of a small child is like herding cats.

“Is your mom home?” asked K*. 

This was usually a great question. If the child had any experience with attending telephone calls, this should trigger a conditioned response that would connect an adult who could verify the lack of an emergency in the home. Unfortunately in the case of a child knowingly doing something wrong, it also conditioned a “hide the evidence” response.

“My mom’s not home,” came back a very guarded reply from a young girl that was in the 5-6 year-old range.

“How about your dad – is he home?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe a babysitter?”

“No.”

This child caller was not going to be forthright with information, but there was a real possibility that she had been left home alone. This would trigger a police response on a child neglect type call.

“Well is there anyone home with you?” K* asked.

“Just my grandpa,” she answered.

“Oh – well can I talk to your grandpa?” There was hope of vetting this call after all.

The young lady put the phone down momentarily, then picked it back up and summoning her gruffest voice possible answered, “This is the grandpa.”

Noisy Neighbors

I spent a great amount of time working graveyards at both the Weber and the consolidated center. One of my frequent callers for several months was a man named J* E*. He had a thick accent and always called with the same complaint.

“My neighbors make too much noise,” he would say. 


I hadn’t been home from the mission that long, so I never pressed him for more detail. I had a great deal of empathy for people trying to communicate in a different language. I would confirm his address, and apartment number, and then inform him that I would send an officer over right away. This process repeated itself at least twice a week for quite a few months. The officers would always respond and clear without seemingly doing anything. It was unclear to me if the offending neighbors were silenced or had quieted themselves before the officer arrived.

One night I decided that I would press J* for a little more information.

“What is it that your neighbors are doing?” I asked.

In broken English he explained that the sewer pipe from the neighbor’s bathroom drains in the wall at the head of his bed. Every night when they use the bathroom the sound of the flush and descending sewage wakes him up.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to say to him. I’m pretty sure I can’t explain that to an officer in a way that would encourage much action on his part.

“I’m not sure that officers can forbid your neighbor from using the bathroom at night,” I told Javier. “Maybe you should talk to your apartment manager about it.”

“Okay,” he replied. And he never called again.

Strangest Car Thieves Ever

I took a call from the Newgate Mall security guard on duty one evening in December. In the background I could hear a very distraught young lady. The officer told me that they needed an Ogden City officer to come take a report on a stolen vehicle in the west parking lot. I’m a strong believer in first-party callers whenever possible, so I asked to speak with the vehicle owner. The security guard was hesitant. 


“She’s pretty emotional,” he said. 


I’m not sure what I answered, but it was probably something to the effect that I am a trained professional, and emotional callers are nothing new to me. (It probably really wasn’t much like that at all, but regardless he put her on the phone.) 


“Ma’am,” I said, “When was the last time you saw your car?” 


“Well,” she said between sobs, “it’s kinda funny. My car is still here, but someone has stolen my seat covers and steering wheel cozy and changed the locks so my key doesn’t work.”


“Someone changed the locks on your car?” I asked incredulously. 


 “Yes,” she whimpered. 


I channeled all the understanding niceness I could as I began the next question. “Are you sure that you didn't park somewhere else and this is somebody else’s car?” 


 “No – this is my car.” She mustered as much defiance as she could between weepy breaths. 


 “I’ll send them right over.” 


Ten minutes later the security officer called back saying that the young lady had located her real car just a few spots away from the car that apparently wasn’t really hers. 

True Love

True Love never involves a drunken fight with your girlfriend in the middle of the street at three in the morning where you find yourself trying to explain how reasonable you are while holding a fistful of her hair.

This is not true love; this is a catalyst for a protective order being filed against you.

The funny thing about protective orders is that love tends to be blind and these couples find themselves circling the seemingly endless loop of fight, jail, reconciliation, true love, consumption of adult spirits, and back to fight. The actual fight portion of the phone calls is relatively easy to handle. Send the police; one or both of them go to jail. (In this case it isn't usually who hits first: it's who hits best that wins the trip to jail.) The subsequent phone calls dealing with the protective orders themselves can be more challenging and frustrating. Fortunately for me, I spent a fair number of years working in the Ogden Center. Everyone knows that no weekend is complete in Ogden unless you get a few thumps in on the girlfriend.

We would get frequent calls from women whose significant others are in violation of the protective order. We would get frequent calls from women whose significant other would be in violation if the order had been properly served. We would also get frequent calls from men who wanted the order to be reciprocal. It seemed to them that if she called him on the phone, she would be in violation of the order which prohibits any contact. (Why would a woman so in fear for her life and safety that she would petition the court to forbid her former lover from having any contact with her call him on the phone? It's all part of the circle of dysfunctional life.)

It was an infuriating call for these men to find out that law enforcement wouldn't do anything to the petitioner of a protective order. Oftentimes there wasn't time to explain to these poor unfortunate souls the one-way nature of the protective order. When there was time, I always enjoyed taking a minute to discuss the absence of any type of fairness in the issuance of this order. Most of the time the call ended with the caller considering me part of the uncaring bureaucracy dedicated to destroying his happiness. Sometimes I seemingly got through to a few of these guys. It probably didn't break the loop, but at least they knew full well why they were spending nights in jail and paying huge fines after that.

One of my favorite calls involved a less-than-chance encounter at the Perry Walmart.

“I'd like to report my girlfriend for breaking our protective order,” the call began. I'd heard variations of this before. The goal was to quickly cut through all of the emotional fluff and get to the meat of the call.

“Are you the respondent or the petitioner of the order?” I asked.

“The respondent,” he replied. This wasn't good for his claim.

“Are there reciprocating orders?” I asked.

“No.”

Hmmm. Strike two. I changed the nature code on the screen from “Violation of a Protective Order” to “Phone Call” because this game only has two strikes.

“It sounds like this isn't an order that she can violate,” I told him. “The order only applies one way. If you had taken an order against her, then she could be in violation. As you haven't, she's not.”

What ensued was an expected complaint about how unfair that was. The concept of fairness has been debunked by every mother to every child since Adam and Eve. If one party thinks something is fair, the other party most assuredly does not. If both parties think it is unfair, you are probably a lot closer. “Just as lousy for one as the other” takes too long to say, so we settled on the word “fair.”

I'd been down this road before. If it were busy, I would apologize that I didn't have time to discuss it further and direct him to contact his attorney. As it was a relatively slow shift, I took a minute to see if I could explain it to him.

“Look, you have to consider why the law works this way. Let's imagine the worst possible scenario where a jilted boyfriend stalks his girlfriend making her life miserable. He drives past her house. He calls her at work. He sends threats through her friends. He shows up at her kids' schools. The protective order is designed to protect her from him. If it were reciprocal, he could follow her to the library and then say that she followed him and have her arrested.”

Usually at this point, a resumption of fairness doctrine debate would resume, but this particular fellow got through that.

“What if she calls me on the phone? Can't she be arrested?” he asked.

“If she calls you on the phone, hang up. If she follows you to the store, drop your cart and leave. If she comes to church and wants to reconcile, walk away. Don't speak one word to her. If she wants to reconcile, she will drop the protective order. Until that happens, the only way to keep yourself out of jail is to move on as if she never existed.”

At this point, something happened that rarely happens. This man had an epiphany. He let out a long sigh signifying that he now understood all his “fairness” arguments really didn't matter. He thanked me for my time, told me that he understood, and hung up the phone.

I don't know what happened to this man. I don't know if he successfully broke the chain or resumed his regularly scheduled check-in at the Box Elder County Jail Hilton. But maybe, just maybe, he got it figured out.

Civil Problems

Civil problems were frustrating for people. Frustrated people are frustrating for dispatchers. I found that by being understanding and referring folks to someone to help them, I could help minimize the emotional scars on those tangled in civil issues. It could be a protective order issue, or stalking injunction, or child visitation that was messy, but the one that seemed to cause frustration more often than the others was the relationship between landlord and tenant.

The law sometimes seems funny to me. The oppressor is almost victimized by the law, because he’s, well, the oppressor. The victim is empowered by the law because, you know, he’s the victim. That role reversal makes the oppresor-victim more than a little crazy.

Landlord/tenant laws are messy for the foolish landlord. I think everyone who decides that purchasing rental properties is a great way to make some easy money should have his head examined. When a renter stops paying the rent, there is significant cost and time involved in removing that person from the property During that time, the renter changes roles to that of a non-paying occupant. Oftentimes it is easier to try to buffalo the renter into just leaving. I heard of a guy who shut the water off to the property for two weeks before the person left. He was trying to find time to "fix the pipes."  It’s also kind of fun (illegal) to hold property ransom for past rent.

I got a call one night from a gentleman who was upset that his renter hadn’t paid rent for a few months and was fixing to get out of Dodge in the middle of the night. I told him that this was a civil issue, and there wasn’t a whole lot that law enforcement could do. The appropriate venue for resolution of civil issues was the court system.

That just wasn’t fast enough, so as soon as the caller got off the phone with me, he ran right over to the Home Depot, purchased new locks, and changed all the locks on the property.

He called back informing me of what he had done. His voice oozed with defiance.

“Let me make sure I understand,” I said. “You changed the locks on the property before properly evicting the tenant and are now holding his possessions as collateral.”

“Well it’s MY property!” the gentleman said. He tried to keep the bravado in his voice, but I could detect a waiver of uncertainty.

I told him that I would have a desk officer call him to discuss the situation, and he sheepishly asked what I thought about his actions.

“I’m not an attorney,” I said. “And I don’t dispense legal advice. But if it were me, I’d make very nice with the tenant right now.”

“But what if he leaves without paying rent?” he asked.

“That’s why you have a healthy deposit,” I responded. “You did get a deposit didn’t you?”

“Well, we were kind of working with them on that,” he said in a voice now betraying defeat.

I let that statement linger for several moments.

In a very quiet and sincerely sympathetic voice I replied, “It sounds like this is going to be very expensive lesson for you.”

“Yeah – I guess it is.”

Robbery - Burglary - Theft - Breach of Trust

One of my high-and-mighty pet peeves as a new dispatcher was the mislabeling of crimes. Armed with new knowledge of the difference between a robbery and burglary, I briefly succumbed to the temptation of demonstrating my superior intellect to the minions that dared call me with inappropriately labeled complaints.

“I’ve been robbed!” was a frequent complaint.

Robbery, it turns out, has to be something stolen from a person by force or threat of force. It is most often accompanied by a weapon – except in the case of Chuck Norris in which he is the weapon.

In order to quickly sift through this error, I discovered that if I asked the person what weapon was used, it immediately lead to the quick discovery of what the complaint actually was.

“There wasn’t a weapon. I loaned my car to a friend three weeks ago, and now he won’t give it back.”

That went all the way from a felony crime to a civil breach of trust.

This technique served me very well for months until I took a call from a fabric store.

“We’ve been robbed!” came the panicked plea for help.

Calmly and condescendingly I replied, “What kind of weapon was used?”

“A gun!” she gasped.

At this point I was stumped. Apparently she didn’t know how this game worked. I would ask about the weapon, and she would in turn tell me that something happened that really wasn’t a big deal. An armed robbery with a gun is a really big deal!

I decided right then that it made more sense to pursue the worst-case scenario rather than assume everything was no big deal.

How To Call Ogden

When I began my career as a dispatcher there were three 9-1-1 centers in Weber County: Ogden City, Roy City, and the DPS Weber Center where I worked. Municipal boundaries are confusing to people, and it doesn’t help when they frequently change because of cities annexing county land. It also doesn’t help that the Post Office is pretty good about getting mail to the right place even if you mislabel the city. People in Washington Terrace swear that if they list their city as Ogden the mail comes a day faster. Sounds like something the Mythbusters should handle, but I digress.

When 9-1-1 calls were received that should have gone to one of the other cities, it was a one button transfer to send the call to the right place. When business lines came in, it was a little bit more of a process. You would hit the flash button, listen for a dial tone, dial the other center’s seven-digit number, hit the flash again, and listen for one of the other dispatchers to pick up. When receiving a call that should have gone to a different center, there was the moment of indecision considering whether it would be easier to give them the number (which they would have to write down (correctly)) or transfer them to Ogden or Roy. I even eventually resorted to asking people to get a crayon to write down the number because pens were always out of ink and pencils always had broken lead.

Through the hundreds of calls I found some trends the foremost of which was that lots of people would do anything to move out of Ogden to the point of even being dishonest about their physical address.

“My car was stolen.”

Looking at the display that shows the address I asked, “What city do you live in?”

“North Ogden.”

“What’s your address?”

“15** North Monroe Boulevard.”

“Oh,” I replied, “you live in Ogden City.”

“No! I live in NORTH Ogden.”

“Who do you pay your water bill to?” I asked.

“Ogden City.”

I usually let this one sit for a few seconds.

“You really live in Ogden. Monroe Boulevard doesn’t go to North Ogden.”

This was a sad realization to folks; I tried to be compassionate. As a lifelong resident of Ogden and an alumnus of Ogden High (and Weber State, Weber State, great, Great, GREAT!), I could sympathize with the strong desire to flee even if you had to resort to addressing hijinx.

One of the other trends was that people hated waiting hours for an officer to come to take care of the noisy problem next door when there were South Ogden officers who could be there in seconds. I found myself coaching folks on some buzzwords to say to help them speed up the process. After the consolidation I realized that I was really bamboozling folks who had been waiting their turns, but I still don’t feel bad. Fifteen hours is way too long to wait for an officer.

“My neighbors have been playing loud music for the last four hours and we can’t sleep.”

This almost always followed by a description about all the things the caller had to do tomorrow and at what time s/he had to wake up to do them.

Knowing that the caller lived in Ogden (because I was looking at the address) I would confirm it and begin the coaching session.

“You live in Ogden, so you have to call the Ogden City Dispatch Center. I’m going to give you a few pointers on how to get an officer there quickly. Parties are low on the priority list, but fights are high.”

“Does it sound like they might be fighting?” I continued.

“Um, no.”

“Well then it will probably take several hours for an officer to get there.”

“Well, I guess they MIGHT be fighting,” came the reply.

“You’d better call Ogden quickly, so as to stop all that fighting.”

There were times I was tempted to coach them with the phrase “they MIGHT have weapons,” but I restrained myself.

Good luck, citizen!

Vehicle Burglary

Vehicle burglaries are unfortunately a frequent complaint in the 9-1-1 center. I worked in the era of CDs. The things cost about $20 a piece, and if you had a Case Logic book with 50-100 of those things in there, the loss added right up. Couple that with the frustration of losing a car stereo, having your car window smashed, and a big muddy boot print on your driver seat, and callers are often pretty hot when we pick up the phone. In fact one of the deciding factors in buying our van was that I couldn’t remember a single time I’d taken a report about a van being broken into.

“My car has been broken into again, and this is the third time this week!” yelled a young man. “The cops haven’t done anything, and now all my CDs are gone!”

I find the best way to diffuse a hostile caller is to jump right into the nuts and bolts of the call – it’s called “gap theory” according to the National Academy of Emergency Dispatch. I got his address, phone number, location of the vehicle, and his best guess of what time the burglary would have occurred.

“What type of vehicle is it?” I asked.

“A Suzuki Samurai,” he disdainfully answered.

“A soft top?” I asked incredulously.

“Uh, yeah.” There was now a sheepish edge to his voice.

“So your vehicle has been broken into two times already, but you left your CD case in a vehicle that can be accessed simply by cutting the canvas.” I confirmed.

“Yeah,” he replied. His indignation was pretty much all the way deflated by now.

“I’ll send them right over.”

Dispatch Memories

As excited as I am about the new job (and I am awfully excited) one could accurately say that I have been deeply saddened by ending my career as a dispatcher. My phone doesn't ring at night anymore; I don't get calls on the weekend; no one ever asks my opinion about anything that could cause lives to hang in the balance.

Mary suggested that as a salve for my soul I should probably take time to write some of them down. That seemed like one of those great ideas that I'd just never get around to. I've spent some time recollecting about some memories, and I've typed out twenty-seven pages so far. As these stories are not meant for sharing, I've not been careful about maintaining anonymity. As I've recorded them though, I've found that maybe I'd like to post one or two up here. (Or three or four).

I want to say up front that many times answering 9-1-1 lines puts you in touch with folks at moments when they aren't necessarily at their best. People aren't that dumb; people aren't that mean; people aren't that clueless -- we all get a moment or two in life that we'd like to have a do-over. That includes the caller, my peers, and especially myself. I won't share anything here that could cause someone (even someone I don't know) any angst. I also will remove enough detail that identities will remain safely shrouded in secrecy (except for maybe a coworker or two as a partcipant in the story.)


Let's start with my first night as a dispatcher. (Any naughty words are direct quotes and I use them only if necessary to clarify the situation - there won't be any really naughty words. Just a little bit naughty.)

That Vacuum Really Sucks

My first trainer was C.A.. The first night on graveyard I can remember her telling me that we had some custodial duties to accomplish. After the terrifying experience of trying to talk on the radio and the frustration of trying to figure out the CIS CAD system, custodial duties were something I quickly jumped all over. The center had a central vacuum system which meant that rather than moving a little vacuum and dragging a cord, we had a 20-foot hose that we had to drag out of a closet.

“That vacuum really sucks,” C said to me as I laid the hose across the floor.

“Okay, thanks,” I said. I fully expected the vacuum to start pulling the carpet right off the floor. That warning must mean I should keep my hands and feet away from the nozzle at all times lest I lose a digit.

I plugged one end of the hose into the wall socket right after I made sure that the business end wasn’t in position to destroy furniture or kill small children. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that by saying that vacuum really sucks, she meant that it really doesn’t suck.