SHARED DISPATCHING REVISITED
In the November 1990 issue of Fire Engineering, “Shared Dispatching” took a look at what is becoming an increasingly frequent phenomenon in U.S. emergency service delivery. The article focused on the Southwestern New Hampshire Fire Mutual Aid District, which is based in Keene, New Hampshire, and covers parts of three states. It concluded: “In all but the busiest operations, where sheer volume would overwhelm a wide-ranging system, shared dispatching is workable, affordable, and desirable.”
Responses to the article ranged from impassioned pleas for keeping sworn personnel in dispatching positions to inquiries from jurisdictions looking to set up systems similar to the one profiled. One reader objected to the term “shared” dispatching, saying that it was a less-threatening name for “consolidated” dispatching. Some were concerned that personal prejudices were showing in the article and the responses (actually, 1 favor separate dispatch systems—the opposite of my conclusions in the article, which I felt were inescapable, given the facts). Some people wrote of positive experiences with shared dispatching; in at least one city, the shared system ended in a “divorce.”
I was invited to visit many communications centers—sometimes just to see the operation, other times specifically to help dispatchers deal with the stress that resulted from switching to a combined operation. All in all, although I have been writing for fire service publications for more than a decade, I had never seen such reader response. Following is what other people in the field have been experiencing.
POLICE VS. FIRE “MINDSET”
Stockton, California, with a population of 215,000, also provides fire protection for an additional 50,000 in three adjacent fire districts. In 1980, after years of preparation, Stockton consolidated its public safety communications. It had a shared dispatch system for almost five years; but in 1985, the system split, separating law enforcement operations from those of fire and rescue.
Deputy Fire Chief Tim Delaney is quick to point out that the local law enforcement personnel are professional and competent. However, he says, “Our needs are different.” Reflecting comments heard from fire chiefs in many larger cities, Delaney notes that these differing needs create dissimilar mindsets. “The police communications people need to conserve resources for emergencies, using ‘stacking’ and queues. The fire department philosphy is ‘handle it now and don’t worry’ about holding back.’ ” Deputy Chief Delaney notes that in a shared operation, preparation for all positions requires “a tremendous commitment to training.”
Delaney also points out a statistical profile of 911 calls received suggests why police dispatchers might worry more about conserving resources. Citing an Associated Public-Safety Communications Officers study, Chief Delaney says that typically’ 85 percent of all 911 calls are police-related. However, emergencies (defined as something happening now, while the call is in progress, which will get worse if not attended to immediately) were equally distributed among police, fire, and HMS. Closer examination of these numbers shows that twothirds of all emergency calls—those for EMS and fire —are contained in 15 percent of all 911 calls, those not related to law enforcement. This causes some concern among fire chiefs who worry that repeated exposure of emergency communications personnel to routine calls will result in an insidious alteration of attitude. These subtle influences, some argue, lead to a decreased sense of urgency at appropriate times and a tendency to prioritize fire calls incorrectly.
This sentiment is echoed in other parts of the country. Steve Gregory’, assistant commissioner of communications for the City of New York Fire Department, clearly notes “a difference in response philosophy” as a primary concern when contemplating combining police and fire dispatching operations. Supervising Fire Dispatcher Abe Weisberg of the Philadelphia (PA) Fire Department went further to illustrate his concerns: He sent me audiotapes, made from a scanner, of a few hours of Philadelphia fire traffic and a few of Philadelphia police traffic on a random weeknight. The tapes strongly supported Weisberg’s contention that combined dispatching was not a workable option for a big city. There was just too much going on at the same time, with a greater number of fire calls having significantly more time value than the preponderance of police calls.
In Chicago, Administrator of Fire Communications Greg Bishop reports that his city is about four years away from consolidation. However, it appears that what is in the works is a geographical consolidation rather than an operational one. Police and fire dispatchers and telecommunicators will be located in the same building, but as of this writing it does not appear that they will be switching seats.
In another example of the police vs. fire “mindset,” Deputy Chief Delaney talks about utilization of experienced emergency communications personnel: “We want to have our best and most experienced people talking on the phone to the mother of that choking baby. The police want their most experienced people to be working the police radio. This would leave the newest people to work with the public.” This, argues Delaney, shortchanges responders to medical calls in particular—and it is another reason that Stockton ultimately returned to separate dispatch operations.
Joanne Miles, chief dispatcher at the shared emergency dispatch center of the Willimantic Fire Chiefs’ Switchboard Association in Willimantic, Connecticut, offers another variation on the “different mindsets” theme. Willimantic’s dispatchers are all civilians. The dispatch center covers one paid and nine volunteer fire departments and one city police department.
Prior to consolidation, which took place 3½ years ago, these dispatchers worked for the fire department. Part of their successful adjustment to dispatching police calls involved taking a look at not only how the police worked but also how the dispatchers viewed various incidents.
“When we did strictly fire and ambulance, we had different ideas about the police,” says Miles. “We didn’t really understand how they worked and we thought differently. Once you worked with them, you realized their way of thinking in responding to calls. For instance, for violent incidents: If you were on the fire department side and got a call that there was a fight going on and someone’s hurt, your first priority was getting that ambulance there right away. But when you’re on the police side, you’re thinking about getting an officer there to stabilize the situation first and calm everybody down and then get the medical personnel in there. You think differently when you’re working with the police department. Your ambulance crew is now not walking into the middle of a violent situation.”
As far as who gets notified first in an incident that requires the response of both police and fire units, Miles says that this is where it is useful to have a shared dispatch operation. Since each agency’s dispatcher is aware of what the other is doing, the incidents essentially are dispatched simultaneously, resulting in more complete coverage faster than would be achieved by making a radio or telephone call between agencies for assistance.
Crossing over into the other service’s mindset is made easier if that service makes a concerted effort to introduce the dispatchers to their world. In Willimantic, dispatchers are taken for rides in a police cruiser. They also are exposed to limited aspects of police training such as “shoot/don’t shoot” films.
Says Miles, “I sat down there one day watching these films for a couple of hours. It gave me a better appreciation of the cop’s perspective. One thing that used to annoy me was repeating suspect descriptions over and over. I used to think, ‘Why don’t you listen? 1 already said it to you a couple of times!’ But after seeing the training films, I realize that the officer’s mind is going through so many things that he’s not always hearing everything the dispatcher is telling him. Now I don’t get upset when they ask. Because I put myself in their situation, 1 understand why. In one training instance, the dispatcher in the film gave a partial of a nonsuspect as well as a suspect, and I was concentrating on whether or not to use the gun in the situation. Then I realized that I had only caught hits and pieces of the message and I didn’t even know what the cop was looking for!”
While those involved in Wiltimantic will he the first to tell you that their system isn’t perfect, they also say it works because they work at it. Training, keeping an open mind, and committing to service excellence have helped smooth out most of the expected bumps that came with consolidation.
SWORN VS. CIVILIAN PERSONNEL
There are those who argue that only somebody “who has done the job on the street” can have a true enough understanding of what is going on to be an effective dispatcher. I wonder how the people who feel this way act when they are taken from a fire to an emergency room with a fractured leg. Do they stop the gurney and ask the attending surgeon if he or she has ever broken a leg on a fireground? More likely, they are interested in knowing if the surgeon can do the job that needs to be done at the moment —fixing broken legs. Similarly. the relevant question to ask a dispatcher is, “Can you do the job that needs to be done now?”
All of the fire service leaders 1 spoke with in preparing this article made it clear that they felt it was not a matter of “sworn vs. civilian” but rather “competence vs. incompetence.” As Chief John Marechal of the Southwestern New Hampshire Fire Mutual Aid District was quoted in the November 1990 article: “We are not thinking as police officers or firefighters when answering a call for help. They have their jobs and we have ours.”
This sentiment is echoed by Jim Blesso, Connecticut’s director of the Bureau of Statewide Emergency Telecommunications: “Police officers and firefighters, just by virtue of the fact that they are police officers or firefighters, do not automatically make good telecommunicators. They might be a hell of a firefighter at the scene of a fire, but that does not necessarily make them competent at the other end of a telephone line.”
1 have encountered sworn dispatch personnel who were not suited for the job and civilians who were outstanding dispatchers, and vice versa. Since this seems to be congruent with the experiences of many chiefs and administrators, you might ask, “Why isn’t this obvious to everybody in the field?”
Hidden agendas are part of the reason. Some fire service managers may see a decrease in the number of sworn personnel as a decrease in their power. Others, mistakenly altruistic, may think that the dispatch center is a good place to put light-duty firefighters to extend their careers. When 1 was president of the Fire Alarm Dispatchers’ Benevolent Association (the union that represents City of New York Fire Department dispatchers and dispatch supervisors), I received a phone call from a firefighters’ union official in another state. His department, with his union’s blessing, regularly had been assigning limitedduty firefighters to the dispatch center. However, he was receiving complaints from those firefighters: They worried that the enormous stress levels caused by working in the communications center would create a whole new set of problems (and rightly so — see “Dispatchers’ Hidden Critical Incidents,” Fire Engineering, November 1989) and set back their recovery.
Another argument is that civilian dispatchers present a problem because they are not answerable to the fire chief. This is an organizational problem that can be remedied by clearly including a line of responsibility from the dispatching personnel to the chief. In fact, if your table of organization set up the dispatch center as an isolated entity, it would present a problem no matter who staffed it—sworn or civilian personnel. In many cases, a combined dispatch center manager is responsible to both police and fire chiefs. This is not an unworkable situation and certainly is preferable to being answerable to neither!
Further, advocates of using only sworn personnel as dispatchers claim there is an advantage in cases where a commanding officer is not available on the fireground. In these cases, they argue, sworn personnel who are dispatching can make command decisions. This runs counter to everything 1 have ever heard about the dangers of “fighting the fire from the office.” If there is a company at the fire, there is a commander at the fire until somebody of higher rank arrives and assumes command. Failure to make provision for this invites confusion. Any chaos that may ensue should be recognized as secondary to a tactical planning failure for which having sworn personnel in the dispatch center will not compensate.
A major argument for using civilian dispatch personnel is that they cost less: Whether they should cost less is not the issue; they, in fact, do. Sworn personnel traditionally are better organized and well-represented than are civilians. They tend to have much greater numbers and thus more “clout” in local and department politics.
There also are viable arguments for the suggestion that field personnel compensation should in some way reflect the demands of the position (supported by actuarial tables and line-of-duty injury statistics, among other things). This in no way argues that civilian dispatchers represent “emergency communications on the cheap.” It does, however. recognu_ the reality that civilian dispatchers are cheaper than sworn personnel in the same function.
Savings are realized not only in salary differences but also in benefits—especially pensions. When I represented more than 200 dispatchers in collective bargaining, I did my best to close the salary gap between dispatchers and firefighters. I did to some degree, but 1 knew that gap always would be there. Municipal managers who advocate taking advantage of these realities are doing what they are paid to do—get the most bang for the taxpayers’ buck. It is possible to do this without creating economically untenable situations for dispatchers.
CONCLUSIONS
- There are significant and clearly definable differences between the traditional dispatching philosophies of law enforcement and fire/rescue organizations. It is possible to overcome
- them and effect a workable shared, combined, consolidated, or public safety dispatch system in many jurisdictions. Keene has done it; Willimantic is in the process. It takes time and effort, but it clearly can be done.
- It appears that a major impediment to successful shared dispatching operations is volume. This is an especially important point to be aware of in areas where population and building permits are increasing, leading to changes in service demand.
- There does not seem to be any doubt that civilians can do the job. It is possible to staff emergency communications centers with less-expensive civilians without driving them out the door. Much of the savings is realized because of differences in pension plans and sick-leave policies. Keep in mind, however, that combining dispatch operations often leads to a need for fewer supervisory staff. This decreases the number of career paths for civilian dispatchers, whose promotion ladder is limited to begin with. Combine this with poor salaries, and you are unlikely to attract the kind of personnel you want to do this critical job.
- Lack of clear lines of accountability will invite operational problems whether your dispatchers are sworn or civilian.
- A commitment to training is a key element in a successful emergency communications operation.
Field experience does not a good dispatcher make.
Fire sendee leaders will continue to be challenged by conflicts whose solutions they often deem less than optimal and that may be offered by nonfire service managers. Perhaps the biggest challenge under these trying circumstances will be making the distinction between knowing when to hold your ground and knowing when to go along and try a proffered solution. The Stockton experience suggests that you can change courses when the system you choose clearly is not working.
