"Operators in the Downtown 911 call center helm $60,000 workstations. The city receives 3.3 million emergency calls a year, half of which go through the Downtown center. Photo by Gary Leonard."

Copyright 2005 LA Downtown News. All rights reserved. http://www.ladowntownnews.com

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J.R. Snyder comments:

The photo of the workstation of the 9-1-1 operator in Los Angeles is pretty much like the kind of workstations at the Pima County Sheriff's Office Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). Generally a PSAP is referred to as a 9-1-1 center for short. We have a saying, though, that goes like this: "I'm not an 'operator' nor am I '9-1-1.' 9-1-1 is equipment and an operator only operates equipment; I'm a human being who makes quick, fast and hopefully smart decisions." Some people think that's being hypersensitive but I dare them to work in a 9-1-1 center for a day

I can tell you that although those work stations in L.A. may have temperature controls, lighting controls and other creature companies, most of us would consider that a waste of taxpayer's money and unnecessary. Adjustable workstations are a necessity and at the PCSO a station can adjust one keyboard tray and the other keyboard sits on top of the desk. The station can be adjusted to go so high to allow you to stand up or sit on a chair as high as a barstool.

In comparison the PCSO is a small center, all positions are equipped for everything -- radio dispatch and call taking. Generally though, one side of the room, which has two pods of three positions is where call-takers sit. In the middle of the room is the supervisor's station.

The supervisors are "working supervisors" and they basically direct what's going on in the room but also answer 9-1-1 calls to keep them from overflowing to the City of Tucson's 9-1-1, give each dispatcher their breaks and work their frequency while they are gone and answer the non-emergency lines when call-takers are tied up with 9-1-1 calls or a high priority situation on a radio frequency. They are the real heroes of that center, underpaid, under appreciated by their management and peers who do other tasks, as well as taken for granted by a lot of the 9-1-1 Telecommunicators.

On the other side of the room are also six positions. Three are dedicated to a specific radio frequency each and primarily dispatch is done there. As sophisticated as the equipment may be, when it comes down to a very high priority call a rude rudimentary form of communication is resorted to and the dispatcher and call-taker yell information across the room to each other. Some situations are too fluid to keeping typing into CAD information that may be wrong. In my opinion that is inexcusable with current technology since it is a totally unprofessional; but is accepted by management and not likely to change. Introducing technology such as "Sametime", an Instant Messaging system, is out of the scope of some government employees thinking.

On that side of the room is also one position that has national emergency systems on it, and some one always sits there in case some major emergency happens. It’s called the "EDS" position for Emergency Dispatch System. Truthfully it's usually the National Weather Alert notifying of severe weather in the area or Amber alerts. This position answers 9-1-1 calls, relieves other agencies dispatchers such as Animal Control, County Water Control and County Park Service Rangers. They also monitor, coordinate and assist with other things. The other position in this side of the room is used for when the SWAT team is in action or the DUI Task force is out on the streets and other types of special action activities.

The four monitors are for these functions. The far left is the radio frequency monitor of all the radio channels and is how each frequency is accessed and used. The next, which is usual, placed as close to the center of the 9-1-1 Telecommunicator's direct line of site is the CAD (computer aided dispatch) system. It is where all the calls are entered, statused, prioritized, dispatched and so on. It is the focus of everyone for information on what is going on as far as calls and situations in the room. To the right of the CAD CRT is the phone screen. How this works depends on the center but ours is a "soft phone" Vespa system and is not on a call distributor for some good reasons. Each call is manually clicked into by right clicking on the mouse. The farthest right CRT is the mapping system, which technically pinpoints where the call is located and where other calls for service are. It's not depended on but is used. The arrangement of these monitors is different in some stations.

The reason why the PCSO PSAP does not have an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is because they answer Pima County 9-1-1 calls, the City of Tucson 9-1--1 calls that overflow when all their lines are busy, the non-emergency lines, after hours Animal Control, Wastewater, Water and Parks calls. Additionally there are hot lines to and from three other very small (one is a one person operation) PSAPs in our county and fire and medical, so we may communicate with them especially when there are incidents that are multi-jurisdictional or require several emergency service agencies to respond. Then there is the Highway Patrol, since wireless companies and PSAPs are not even close to meeting the FCC location based requirement. Mobile phone calls land, when someone dials 9-1-1, in the closest PSAP of the cell phone tower where the call hit. In any case, all PSAPs in the area answer those calls first on their 9-1-1 lines and then have to redirect to the Highway Patrol if the incident is on a Federal or State highway.

So a Telecommunicator has to make a decision which call has priority and in most cases -- it's the 9-1-1 call of that center's jurisdiction and not another jurisdictions or a non-emergency line. An ACD wouldn’t really work in that environment. Sometimes it's the City of Tucson's 9-1-1 incoming cell phone lines, it just depends on the day, the time and what is going on in general in the entire region.

I mentioned non-emergency lines. These are the lines that people are supposed to call non-emergency calls in but just as in L.A., a good 70% or 80% of 9-1-1 calls are not true emergencies. A citizen may think that their mailbox was hit by a car or vandalized hours ago, but it's not. Neither is second finger "flipping off" by another driver who you annoyed somehow an emergency. Losing your cell phone is definitely not an emergency. When someone calls for the electric companies number because the power is out "this is 9-1-1, call 4-1-1."

Too many calls to 9-1-1 are emergencies in the sense that people and property are in danger but it is a result of their own irresponsibility. An example may be the non-custodial father calling 9-1-1 because it is his weekend to have the children by picking them up at school. He stupidly sends his current wife to pick them up, the children refuse to go with her for good reason, the mother is absent because she is not supposed to be there and the school is not the enforcer of court ordered custodial arrangements. These situations can escalate and requires law enforcement intervention.

The workstations displayed in L.A. and being used more and more, are making the old consoles a thing of the past. There are exceptionally good and if a center chooses to use them wisely and utilize all of the technology they can provide, will improve government provided emergency services greatly.

J.R. Snyder Jr.

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