SHARED DISPATCHING
COMMUNICATIONS
Recently I spoke with a police officer in a small New England town who had a beef with his dispatcher. The officer had gotten a radio call of a “suicidal man holed up in his garage.” He asked the dispatcher if there were any weapons involved. Since the dispatcher didn’t know, he tried to call the original party back but received only a busy signal -it seemed the distressed man’s wife was calling friends and relatives for help as well. As a result, the police officer went into the situation with far less information than he would have liked. His assessment of this particular communications problem? “The county has a damned fire dispatcher handling police calls who doesn’t have a clue as to what kinds of questions to ask!”
Had I sought out another jurisdiction where “damned police dispatchers” handle fire calls, I suppose I could have found complaints there as well. I know of cases where police dispatchers have gotten reports of building fires and only taken down the address of the fire and the phone number of the caller. As you know responding fire units like to have some knowledge of occupancy and life hazard.
What’s the problem here? Shared dispatching. Many jurisdictions have successfully combined police, fire, and EMS into a Public Safety Communications System; others have staunchly held onto their service “turf.” But financial considerations are going to force more separate dispatching systems to combine -especially in rural areas.
In the long run, shared dispatching is less expensive than operating parallel services that cover the same jurisdiction. Costs are cut by reducing total staff and sharing capital equipment -including communications equipment and the buildings to house it. Shared dispatch systems also can cover more than one jurisdiction-the most common example being mutualaid dispatch systems.
Chief John S. Marechal is the coordinator for the Southwestern New Hampshire Eire Mutual Aid System. Based in Keene, New Hampshire, this system provides emergency communications service for more than 60 fire departments, 1 I ambulance groups, and 27 police agencies in Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In response to the scenario described earlier, Marechal says of his dispatchers: “We are not thinking as police officers or firefighters when answering a call for help. They have their jobs and we have ours.” While Marechal sees the dispatcher’s job as complementary plementa supportive to police and firefighters, he knows that you do not have to be either in order to carry out the dispatcher’s job effectively.
EDUCATION AND TRAINING
The key to avoiding operational glitches in shared dispatching is education at many levels: for the dispatchers, the dispatch center manager, the various field forces, and the public.
Dispatchers. Traditionally, on-thejob training has been the alma mater of most dispatchers. However, as delivery of field services has become more sophisticated, this approach has proven insufficient. In order to communicate the information necessary to protect both field forces and population, today’s dispatcher needs a much larger chemical vocabulary than he did in the past. Likewise, advances in EMS have demanded that the dispatcher be fluent in medical protocol. Easily utilized written protocols for specific types of calls are essential to mobilize the correct response and protect the responders. The key to easily utilizing such protocol is training.
An important part of dispatcher training is learning to prioritize calls according to urgency. Many police calls are reporting incidents that already have occurred-such as vandalism, burglary, and assault. On the other hand, most fire calls arc reporting incidents in progress-and any response delay will result in bigger fires and greater life hazard. A good dispatcher will have learned through training which calls merit the most immediate attention.
Dispatch center manager. The dispatch center manager frequently comes up from the ranks-another product of on-the-job training. Because he has been there so long and seen so much, he may think that all he needs to do is show up for work and make sure nobody messes up. But there’s a lot more to his job than that!
Besides his dispatching education and training, the dispatch center manager must know the particular concerns of his area of protection. In shared dispatch, this means knowing crime and “quality of life” issues as well as hazard and occupancy concerns.
Being in touch with the world outside the walls of his dispatch center requires more than reading the daily paper. As Chief Marechal notes, “Job descriptions have to meet your area’s needs.” If you’ve had an increase in Spanish-speaking residents in your area, for example, you may need bilingual dispatchers on staff.
Field forces. The manager also has to know the needs of the departments that his center serves. Has there been a recent turnover in personnel in a particular department? Should some of last year’s training he repeated for the benefit of new members? What are the differences among departments?
In shared dispatching each calling unit needs to clearly identify itself and be acknowledged by the dispatcher. A field unit reporting a “fire in the Main Street Pharmacy” has to be more specific in its information if a dispatch center covers more than 60 “Main Streets”!
It is also important for field units to realize that another unit can be calling the same dispatcher at the same time, possibly from 100 miles away. The dispatcher can hear far more than each individual field unit because of remote receivers throughout his area of protection. Shared dispatch covers many more units, so the potential for concurrent calls increases.
The public. Citizens need to be educated about the difference between emergency and administrative calls and the corresponding phone numbers. They must learn to accurately describe their location for responding units, including the town they arc calling from. In shared dispatch such information is essential until enhanced 911 systems are in place.
Public education should touch on the importance of the dispatcher’s job. Too many people think that a dispatch center is a place where people just drink coffee and answer phones. Communities must recognize the need for dispatch operations if there is to be public support for funding.
FUNDING
Of course all of this training costs money. However, once you implement shared dispatching it will save you money in two main ways:
- By getting more mileage out of “sunk” capital costs such as buildings and transmitter towers. The operating area of the Southwestern New Hampshire District Fire Mutual Aid System is approximately 275 square feet, and the dispatchers working there cover a
- protection area of some 2,500 square miles.
- By reducing staffing requirements. Thus all personnel costs- including pensions, workers’ compensation, and health insurance premiums-are significantly reduced.
A shared dispatching operation can even generate revenue. In the Southwestern New Hampshire District, for example, the mutual-aid system supports a radio repair shop that services its members. The shop has no overhead costs associated with advertising and marketing and is located in a city building, which reduces operating costs. Attractive service and repair rates save the participating members money and support technical positions in the system.
Other sources of revenue include operating for a fee as a central station receiving facility for private alarm companies; imposing fines for continued false automatic alarms; and selling data bases accumulated for computerassisted dispatch.
Training doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Some states offer training as part of membership in a municipal association. Many vendors will provide on-site training at no cost to your department. This saves even more money, since you don’t have to worry about coverage while personnel go outside for education and training. This free service also is provided by many chemical companies, hospitals, universities, and others that want local public safety dispatchers to be knowledgeable about their product and needs.
In all but the busiest operations, where sheer volume would overwhelm a wide-ranging system, shared dispatching is workable, affordable, and desirable. Don’t let tradition or “turf’ issues keep your department from looking into the benefits of shared dispatching. Examine the real cost of preserving those traditions. It may be a price that the citizens you protect soon will be no longer willing or able to pay.
