Dispatcher life full of multitasking and chaos
The headset police scanner is loud in her ear with an officer calling for additional help on a traffic stop and two of the 25 911-lines are ringing as well. Shelley Peterson must decide which is most important. She knows the 911 call should be answered first.
Multitasking is a required talent for all who are working in the Logan City Police Department’s Communications Division.
“911, what is the address of your emergency?” Peterson says calmly into the telephone, not knowing what kind of situation to expect.
She sits in a desk with five monitors staring back into her face; types into the main computer, which contacts the officers; and quickly types the contact information of the incident.
In the office are three to four other dispatchers who, along with 20 other dispatchers, switch between eight-hour shifts that are split into day shifts, swing shifts and graveyard shifts, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.
“We have to be able to multitask and do several things at a time,” Peterson said.
A few of those things include answering multiple phone lines, talking to a victim or on the radio, updating the ambulance crew and giving medical instructions.
“There’s definitely a lot that’s going on. Sometimes it’s slow, and sometimes it’s really chaotic,” she said.
Peterson and her coworkers wear uniforms all week long but are able to dress down on weekends. The dispatchers are required to be emergency medical dispatchers certified. The certification includes a three-day class and subsequent training on things such as CPR, childbirth and choking, she said.
Peterson said a smaller percentage of their calls are actual true emergencies, where they instruct them on what they should or should not do.
In 2006, the 911 center received and average of 616 calls per day and 111 incidents per day. For the entire year, they processed 225,000 phone calls and created 41,631 incident reports.
Petersen said it’s not uncommon to get prank calls. She shared an example of kids calling in and saying, “Someone is beating me up.”
“You can hear them laughing and you can tell that they are not really being beat up,” Peterson said.
Dispatchers have also found out many other incidents were bogus reports that never happened, she said.
“The shift that you’re working depends on what kind of calls you get sometimes,” she said.
She said there is no preparation for the worst calls.
“You don’t know they’re coming. There’s no forewarning,” she said.
For herself, Peterson said her hardest calls are seizures and suicides.
“A lot of the seizure victims are young babies that have a fever and they end up luckily being OK, but a lot of times it’s very stressful because the parent’s don’t understand what’s going on,” Peterson said. “They’re very traumatic, and there’s not a lot you can do for them while they are seizing.”
Law enforcement runs in Peterson’s family, as both her father and her grandfather were sheriff’s deputies, which she said helps with dealing with difficult calls.
“Sometimes people will get into this field and not really realize what stuff you will hear and see,” Peterson said. “But growing up around it, I think you understand what’s going on before you get into the business.”
When she’s home, she said she is able to share her stories of the day and relate with her husband Jake Peterson, a sheriff for Cache County.
The couple have been married for seven years, and she said it helps having someone to talk to.
“It’s good to know sometimes that if there’s a really stressful call, I think he probably understands. And dealing with a stressful situation, I understand when he’s been out dealing with something,” she said.
Peterson said she lets some of the calls she gets just pass by, but with others, she said she wonders what happened to the victims, especially on medical-related calls.
“Sometimes you only hear the first part and you wonder what happened with this or what happened with that,” Peterson said.
Finding out what happened to certain victims depends on their location, she said.
“It’s just split. Sometimes we find out or sometimes ask around to find out, and sometimes we never do,” Peterson said.
If the dispatchers see the officers who went on the call and talk to them, or if they look up the file, the dispatchers may hear about certain victims, but generally they don’t do that, she said.
“Even though we can’t prepare for emergencies, it’s kind of a fun job. No two days are alike, and it’s always something different,” Peterson said. “I like helping people, and it’s a good way to do that.”
-Ranae.bang@aggiemail.usu.edu