”Hallooo?” The high-pitched male voice came over the two-way police radio sometime after 3 a.m.
Dispatcher Jim North heard the voice as he sat in the communications center at police headquarters. To North, whose job it is to answer emergency calls to police and assign patrol officers via the radio to respond to them, it sounded like a bored cop fooling around.
North had been savoring Chicago`s predawn, those rare hours when the city and the sprawling, dimly lighted room where he works were relatively calm. In a few hours the police communications center`s telephone console lights would begin blinking like swarms of agitated fireflies. The squawk of police radios would fill dispatchers` ears and . . .
”Hallooo, is anybody there?”
There it was again. The voice used no identifying beat number, no police radio jargon. A less-experienced communications man might have been tempted to ignore it. But, North said, ”something told me I`d better say hello back.”
Seconds after he spoke into his headset microphone, North found himself facing every dispatcher`s nightmare. The voice said a cop had just been shot on the corner of 46th Street and Drexel Avenue. The man on the radio claimed to be a passerby who had grabbed the wounded officer`s radio to get help.
”I didn`t know what to believe,” North remembered. ”The guy might have been playing. I never got his name.” But the burly dispatcher couldn`t take a chance, so he sent help. ”Thank God, I did,” he said. ”It all turned out to be true. The police officer died. But at least I did what I could.”
Experiences like that are routine for the 265 police dispatchers who work ”the room,” the department`s nerve center at police headquarters into which pour all 911 emergency calls and any other requests, including those via radio from other police officers, that an officer on the street be sent to investigate the scene a potential crime or a turbulent situation.
Law enforcement officials agree that dispatching is one of a big city police force`s most stressful jobs. Dispatchers calm more hysterical crime victims, coordinate more street chases, handle more cranks and make more split-second decisions in a single eight-hour shift than most street patrol officers do in a month.
Most Chicago police dispatchers are experienced street cops who hold the rank of patrol officer but earn slightly more than their counterparts on the street. The extra pay is compensation for the extra wear on their nerves.
The dispatchers` system tends to get public notice only when it malfunctions, as it did last May when a 31-year-old woman died in her burning high-rise office building despite her repeated, desperate telephone calls to 911. An investigation found that poor communications between a police dispatcher who forwarded the call to a fire dispatcher and firefighters was partly to blame for the ineffective rescue.
Depending on a dispatcher`s temperament, the communications room can be either a torture chamber or a refuge. It`s a rare kind of cop who can evaluate the constant barrage of hysterical calls, coordinate assignments for as many as 60 squad cars, and above all, remain cool.
Chicago Police Deputy Supt. Matt Rodriguez puts it this way: ”An air traffic controller`s vision, a social worker`s patience, a psychic`s intuition, tempered by a street cop`s savvy: That`s what it takes to make a good dispatcher.”
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On her lunch break, she walks. A mile or two to the Loop, along the lakefront, any place where the strides of her long legs can begin to loosen her nerves and quiet the fearful, angry, tense voices that echo in her mind.
At first, dispatcher Marie Mann, a 36-year-old former Playboy Bunny, said she maintains her figure by walking. She later confided that it`s also the way she maintains her sanity.
”There are days you have to make some hard choices,” said Mann, who has spent seven years in the communications room. ”Say you`ve got three complaints for three domestic disturbances that sound identical and only one squad (car) available to respond. Or every other call is about a man with a gun. On those days, the sweat`s rolling off you for eight hours and you feel real beat up inside.”
Mann sipped iced tea in a coffee shop next to police headquarters. She had sacrificed her lunch time walk to talk about her job.
”Dispatching makes me feel effective,” Mann said. ”When a citizen calls and gives me information that I can pass on to a street officer and that officer uses it to make an arrest, I feel really good, like, we got `em!”
Looking up from her glass, she grinned. ”That`s a much better feeling than you get from being a Playboy bunny. I really got tired of faking smiles and working for tips.”
Attracted by a minority-recruitment drive, Mann joined the police department in 1977. ”The academy was fine,” she said. ”But then I got assigned to 51st and Wentworth (a tough high-crime South Side district that includes Robert Taylor Homes). Some women officers may be able to pull it out,” Mann continued, ”but I quickly realized that I couldn`t be effective on the street and keep my femininity.”
Mann toughed it out for three years in her district before she became a dispatcher. Now the wife of a police sergeant and the mother of two children, she says dispatching is a perfect job. ”It puts me on the cutting edge without exposing me to the streets.”
Dispatching is a little like playing Russian roulette, she said, because
”you never know for sure which call is going to be really bad.”
About one third of the calls to 911 are not emergencies, estimated Assistant Deputy Robert Fitzsimmons, who heads the communications section. These calls tie up dispatchers and the system`s telephone lines.
The police themselves are partly to blame for such calls, according to Capt. Robert Mulcahy, Fitzsimmons` deputy in the communications section. If a citizen calls his district office to report a nonemergency, those police officers sometimes refer the caller to 911, according to Mulcahy. He said the district officers are supposed to refer the caller to the City Hall switchboard, at 744-4000, whose operators will refer the caller to the communications section`s ”police screening unit.” Established last year, the unit is manned by officers who have the time to talk to troubled citizens.
Mulcahy said of the misrouted nonemergency calls: ”Like in every other large bureaucratic organization, the word doesn`t always get down to the people, in this case the police officers dealing with the public.”
Other nonemergency calls are simply crank calls. ”Once school lets out,” Mann said, ”a lot of kids call fooling around. We get callers who expect us to give them directions or to assign officers to fix their overflowing toilets. And we get crazies who`ll say almost anything. We can`t send the police every time someone calls 911. We don`t have the manpower. It`s up to us to screen calls and respond to them in order of their importance.”
Although Mann tries to help everyone she talks to, she says her prime responsibility is to the cops on the street. ”When you assign an officer to a potentially dangerous call, like a complaint about shots fired, your mind can`t help playing out what could happen. You hear his sirens go on. You know his heart`s pounding.
”You try to give the guy on the street every bit of information you have about the call because he`s depending on you,” she said. ”You never know when a seemingly unimportant detail could end up saving a life.”
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The two communications rooms on the second and third floors of police headquarters are quieter than you might think. Incoming calls are signaled only by blinking lights, and dispatchers handle most of their business through headsets equipped with cords long enough to allow them to stretch their legs. But if you listen, snippets of dispatchers` sides of conversations like these can be heard around the room:
”You say your last name is Pizza ?”
”How do you know the man at the door has a gun? Did you see it?”
”Apartment 3? Thank you, ma`am, we`ll get right on it.”
About 265 police dispatchers and 110 civilian aides man the communications division around the clock. They work in teams of three. Each team is assigned to one of 13 radio frequencies that reach 13 sections, or zones, of the city. In each team, the dispatcher in the middle position occupies the hot seat. Only sworn police officers are allowed to sit there. They assign jobs to patrol officers in their zones and keep track of their activities.
The civilian and the police dispatcher who flank the hot seat answer citizens` 911 calls. They jot relevant facts on buff-colored cards and pass them to the officer in the middle. That officer assigns the cops on the street to respond. Every team includes at least two police officers who take turns in the hot seat to reduce stress.
The officer in the hot seat must make the critical draw if several similar calls have come in and only one car is available. Often the officer simply will be dispatched to the closest site, according to Mulcahy. An ”in- progress” call-reporting that a crime is being committed while the call is made-always takes precedence over other complaints, he said.
He added that a call may be upgraded to a more serious classification as additional information comes in. For example, if a dispatcher has three reports of a domestic disturbance-the most common emergency call-and a new report comes in of a beating in one case, that case will be upgraded to a
”battery,” and the only available car probably will be dispatched there, he said.
If no cars are available and an ”in-progress” call comes in, the dispatchers may broadcast over an all-city frequency requesting that any officer of any rank or assignment respond.
Dispatchers work under muted track lights at long tables. They each face their own 4-foot-high, block-by-block maps of their assigned zones. Each map is sprinkled with tiny lights, and when the lights are on, they represent squad cars that are ”up,” or available for assignment.
Dispatchers try to answer every 911 telephone call within 12 seconds or six rings. If a call rings more than 30 seconds, a red alarm light goes on in a supervisors` office, and whenever possible, the supervisor sees that it is answered immediately. Usually each dispatcher proceeds directly from one call to the next; there is little or no down time, especially during the peak 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift.
The system was establised 11 years ago. Before that, citizens were asked to call PO5-1313 to report emergencies. The new, computerized system produces much more specific information than the old centralized system: Each call now automatically is routed to the dispatcher assigned to the zone from which the call originates. Also, when a call comes in, the name, address and phone number of the person to whom that telephone bill goes immediately flashes on a screen.
Mann recalls one case in which a police officer investigating a crime was shot, along with one of the perpetrators. The man`s accomplice called 911 to report a shooting, and police were able to track the accomplice to the apartment address from which he made the call.
The system sounds pretty simple until you discover the potential for complications. In addition to the patrol squads in each zone are untold hidden roving cars-tactical units, undercover vice cops and detectives who occasionally surface, make radio contact and demand dispatchers` attention.
Electronically, 911 is limited. Too many calls to the exchange-police officials would rather not specify how many-can crash the entire system and result in lost and delayed calls. This is most likely to occur during a bombardment of calls after a major accident such as a plane crash or a shooting in which there were many witnesses (or people who heard shots).
Although it does little to ease the horror of the system`s malfunctions, the fact is that ”the room” works pretty well. The system handles about 3 million calls each year and receives surprisingly few complaints from citizen callers. In 1986, 3,197,730 emergency telephone calls-the highest volume in five years-were made to the 911 exchange. Police records show that 288 complaints were filed against dispatchers during that year and that just 60 of them were sustained after investigation. The most frequent complaints are that the police did not respond or that the dispatchers were rude to citizens, officials say.
Since 1983, the ratio of complaints to calls has fallen steadily, officials say.
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The elderly gentleman called 911 on a weekday afternoon regarding an elephant that he said was munching grass in his back yard.
Thirteen-year veteran dispatcher James Cadge didn`t blink an eye.
”Sir,” he replied into his headset microphone, ”what color is the elephant?”
”I figured if he answered pink or blue, he was drunk,” Cadge said, smiling as he remembered. ”But instead, the old man said, `Well, I don`t know, officer, what is the customary color of elephants?`
”I said, `Somewhat of a grayish color.`
” `Well,` he snapped, `That`s the color the elephant is.` ”
Cadge assigned a squad car. He prudently avoided mentioning the word elephant over the air and instead instructed a patrol officer to ”see the complainant about a suspicious object,” he said.
Later Cadge learned from the officer that there had been an elephant-of sorts-in the old fellow`s yard. It turned out that the man had been waging a battle with some neighborhood kids who broke his windows when they played ball. The kids knew he had a bad heart and even poorer vision, so they sculpted a crude-looking elephant`s head and draped it over his fence to frighten him.
”Handling that call taught me something,” Cadge said. ”Even though what a person calls about may not be a police emergency, it`s an emergency to them.”
The officers staffing the new nonemergency screening unit are recovering from physical ailments and restricted to limited duty. They try to provide callers with referrals and common-sense advice. With the push of a button dispatchers themselves can refer nonemergency calls to the unit. Such calls may involve longstanding neighbhorhood disputes, families who want to know which lockup arrested relatives are in, people who need help navigating the court system or people with family problems who need referrals for counseling. Even with the system`s improvements, Assistant Deputy Fitzsimmons says dispatching remains the most emotionally and mentally demanding police job.
”But to me and the people who work here,” he added, ”it`s also the most rewarding.”
