As Not Seen On TV

You’re at a party, conference, meet and greet, or other networking event talking with new people who don’t know you and what you do. Someone inevitably asks, “What do you do?” and you respond “911” (with or without a smart-aleck comment).

There’s that second of shock and awe, or sometimes the “did not compute” face, accompanied by the response, “I’m sorry?” You then say, “I work at 911.” They follow up with, “That must be interesting. What’s your wildest call?”

What this person doesn’t understand—and a good number of callers don’t understand—is that the 911 emergency dispatcher is doing multiple jobs at once while on the phone with you. Our technology has advanced so far that there are steps to undertake to verify location, protocols to use, narratives to add, and people to run for wants/warrants if needed.

The way the media portrays 911 has gotten more accurate, but there is still room for growth. We don’t solve crimes, we don’t go out in the field and handle calls ourselves, and some centers don’t take calls and dispatch at the same time. There is an assumption that the person on the phone sends the responders via the radio—all at the same time. Despite efforts to show this often isn’t the case, the assumption remains to be disproven.

Unless your agency tells you about releases of public records, you don’t know that your call is going to be featured in the media. As emergency dispatchers, we don’t know the result of any call unless we ask or someone tells us; we don’t get a neat wrap-up by the end of the shift. One of my co-workers was surprised to find out a motor vehicle collision call she took lead to the first successful face transplant; she found out when she heard her voice on the television playing her call on a major morning show. My advice? Assume EVERY call you take is going to end up on the media at some point, whether in court or otherwise.

Another aspect of the job that could be portrayed more accurately on television is the stress you experience from hearing what’s happening on the other end of the line. Television will show the caller making the call; you may get a split screen or voice-over of the caller or 911 emergency dispatcher. A viewer will understand what is happening from these perspectives. What they don’t understand is that sometimes hearing the trauma at the scene coming through the phone is worse than seeing it. Our imaginations often create worst-case scenarios faster than having a visual of what happened. We get the worst of the caller and are expected to take control and manage the sometimes unmanageable and unimaginable before the responders arrive.

The media often present recordings of calls that went wrong, sometimes highlighting one misspoken sentence that portrays poor customer service when the rest of the call was handled professionally. Context is critical, and without hearing the full call, you might hear a 911 emergency dispatcher snap at a caller without hearing the caller refuse to cooperate.

Sometimes methods of gaining control such as using a stern voice are effective in snapping the caller out of their emotional state. On a domestic, sometimes the caller wants to argue with the other party more than they want to separate from them. The public may not hear how the caller threatened the emergency dispatcher (which happened to one of our employees) with severe physical harm. One moment’s slip in the heat of the moment and the 911 emergency dispatcher becomes a global lesson in what not to do. Memes are made, the clip lives on the internet forever, and the emergency dispatcher must live down one slip-up for the rest of their lives.

As seen on TV doesn’t truly show the emergency dispatcher’s ride home in silence because they need the quiet without any voices or noises. It doesn’t show the exhaustion from staffing shortages creating mandatory overtime or the physical drain from a high-acuity call. It doesn’t show the helpless anger you feel when there’s nothing that can be done. More work is needed for an accurate portrayal. So, when asked what we do, we continue to correct misconceptions, dodge questions, or just smile and say, “It’s interesting.”