Somewhere in the realm of Public Safety there exists a fully staffed Communications Center.
Or so I've been led to believe over the years. I can imagine two groups of co-workers debating staffing issues...
"Come now," the pessimists spit out, shaking their heads as they laugh at me between answering radio traffic and sipping bottles of over-priced mineral water, "it's not true. Never heard of a single dispatch center that has ever been full. And, even if one has all the people allowed, it's a safe bet there's a couple off on work comp or FMLA. We can't get a day off without calling in sick."
"You folks are so depressing." the optimists retort. "Of course there are decent, fully staffed centers in the USA. We know from networking there are decent departments that take care of their dispatchers. The turnover rates are almost nothing. And, really, if you'd quit calling in sick, we'd be able to request a day off once in a while. Mandatory overtime was created because of peope like you." They open a bag of grapes and sip on a metal container of tap water between answering calls.
The one voice of reason speaks up. "Maybe if you lot met halfway, life in Dispatch would get better? This place is not so bad. The job is what you make it. Be miserable and the job is terrible. Come to work anticipating a decent shift, and chances are it won't be too bad - barring a major incident or field person going down."
Okay...a little far out there...
Sure, we all want to retire with our pensions, bodies, and sanities intact. Asking this isn't too much, or is it? Reading the headlines, more municipalities are declaring bankruptcies. What happens to the pensions of the employees? We've all heard about the one city who cut salaries of all employees to the minimum wage. In addition to hitting the wallet hard, how would that impact your retirement should you find yourself in that same scenario?
I know I'd be hurting. At least I have other avenues for income should I get desperate.
Why don't we see more dispatchers retire from our profession? Part of the research I've been doing for my book has been very eye-opening. Back in the 1920's, when radio's came out, dispatchers were sworn officers (for the most part). As civillians gradually replaced sworn personnel, the duties were varied; and because of this, there wasn't the concern on repetitive stress injuries. As women started taking the dispatcher slots, many stayed on until they had their family. After all, a woman's first priority was to her husband and children. Thankfully, that mindset changed. A fwe veteran dispatchers retured. Many took advantage of their schedules and went to school, getting decent educations. Others transferred to field positions or moved to other departments, eventually retiring with enough culmative service credits earned in multiple agencies.
As departments and technology advanced with the changing times, veteran dispatchers began to disappear. Who would have guessed the computers the society had come to depend on could do so much damage? At first it was the teletype writers, then the computer-aided dispatch systems. Soon the cellular telephones came on board. the computerized telephone systems, and finally the computerized radios. With sicial networking, folks want to send text messages and GPS data.
Will the typing madness never stop?
We were kidding around today, my co-workers and I. One said that it will come to a point when disaptchers will almost become redundant. The ony saving grace is that when an officer says a explicative then a code, the computer may not react. The problem with computers is that they only do what the program tells them to do. There is no 'thinking' for a computer and even programmers can only write a program to what they know.
What do I mean by that? Without naming the system, our CAD program doesn't allow an assigned event to drop to a 'suspended' status when a field unit to reassigned to a higher priority call, or calls in on a self-initiated (on-viewed) event such as a traffic stop or accident. The call goes back to unassigned calls, even if it was assigned a case number to the handling officer. When asked why we couldn't get a third status (suspended), we were told it is not possible to do that. Funny, three other CAD systems I've worked with could do that. The traffic stop procedure is too cumbersome to mention and once again, we've been told it can't be changed. Instead of a quick code/unit/location/plate<enter> it is a long process that often ends up getting cleared almost about the time the call is entered.
Why don't CAD programmers get input from dispatchers before hand? Because they can't.
No wonder dispatchers burnout before their 30 years are up.
Next time, I think I'll write on the dirtiest word in the English language.
In case you're curious, that word is can't.