The Work
I pray this post finds you well.
When you are in distress the operator who answers your call will send the help you need, I pray. I hope this gives you some insight into the people who are on the other end of the line.
A call drops in. Screams are heard. Shots are being fired. Someone may or may not be on the other end of the line. 9-1-1 operators are the first contact. Contrary to popular belief, most 9-1-1 centers do not have state of the art equipment with holographic maps and technology that pinpoints the exact location where help is needed. The operator must utilize whatever sub par computer aided dispatch system their agency no doubt purchased without considering the efficacy of utility, but rather only considering the price tag or quite frankly the monetary kick back potential.
The 9-1-1 operator must use whatever workaround they have personally constructed to figure out where help is needed, which usually includes: what may or may not show up on the map; intensive questioning of the person who called (if they are able to speak); and the power of human connection. It takes skilled interview techniques to ensure resources are dispatched to you, the public, who are crying out for help. Creating a path from an answered call to a police officer arriving to the correct location to render aid is oftentimes an extremely convoluted and challenging process.
Even when being forced to use unreliable equipment, most 9-1-1 operators worth their salt will do everything in their power to determine where you are so that they can send help. If not for the ingenuity of the operator in the course of interviewing the public, the police officer would not know that you needed help, nor where to go to provide it. 9-1-1 operators often hear beatings, sexual assaults, shootings, people being chased, windows breaking. They summarize and transcribe the conversations heard in the background that contain full confessions of crimes or a person’s intent to harm someone else. They hear the accounts of domestic violence and in many cases convince victims to pursue assistance. They calm distraught parents who are frantic over their child who is missing so that they can extract the information that might save them. They answer first. They respond to the cry for help first. All of this is done by an actual human being, with trauma of their own.
9-1-1 operators are parents, sons, daughters, grandparents, foster parents. They are victims of violence, dealing with loss, going through struggles in their home life, witnesses to violent crimes. They are also part of the public. They live in society just as you do and are subject to all of the same issues that plague you. 9-1-1 operators are making choices within the course of their employment, which have life or death consequences. The job is weighty and 9-1-1 operators are weighed down with emotional weights of their own.
Emergency 9-1-1 call center infrastructures are, in many cases, fraught with leadership insufficiency. The centers are understaffed and its operators overworked. In many cases, operators are clocking upwards of 20 hours a week or more of overtime under compulsion. Doing this work under the best of circumstances is admirable, but doing it under the aforementioned conditions is valiant.