Every time the phone rings, John Marshall usually deals with a crisis. It could be a child`s stolen bicycle, a loss of power, a parking complaint, or a more serious situation like an auto accident or a break-in.
”It`s amazing (how) sometimes people will call and be very calm,” says Marshall, who is a dispatcher for the Winnetka Police Department. ”They will start off like they`re telling you a story, and before you know it, they tell you something serious has happened. They don`t give you an inkling of what they`re calling about. You almost have to draw it out of them.”
Marshall says he believes his unflappable demeanor helps him in a job that puts him constantly in touch with the community. ”A dispatcher is like a middleman,” says Marshall, who has worked at that job for 21 years. ”He is the nerve center, the first contact people have with the Police Department. We have to take the initial information and decide what the response should be, whether to dispatch a police car or an ambulance.
”Some calls can be trying,” he adds. ”Sometimes people only want to vent their anger, and I can`t respond in kind. I am here to help them.”
Helping them sometimes is just listening, he finds.
The job, Marshall says, demands a feel for the unexpected. ”There is an average day, and then there isn`t. You could be confronted with something you have never seen before, but other things are relatively routine. You never know what will happen when you pick up the phone or when the next person walks in off the street.”
Once early in his career, on a quiet New Year`s Day, two children came in and said they had found a broken window at the town pharmacy. ”It didn`t seem real serious,” Marshall remembers. ”But when the officers got there, they found a burglary in progress. One of the burglars was wounded trying to escape. The afternoon was turned upside down.”
Another event that sticks in his mind is the Laurie Dann incident, when the disturbed woman shot and killed a pupil in an elementary school and wounded several others. She later shot and killed herself.
Marshall wasn`t on duty when the first frantic calls came in, but he took a flood of calls in the days that followed-from all over the country and abroad. ”It was an intense period of time,” he says. ”It was hard not to be affected.”
Marshall, 45, came to be a dispatcher via an unusual route. A native of Glencoe, he graduated from New Trier High School East, Winnetka in 1965 and went to Illinois State University, Normal, where he received a bachelor`s degree in education in 1969.
He wanted to become a teacher, but there were few openings at the time, so, in 1970, he accepted a position with the Glencoe Police Department as a dispatcher.
”Three months into the job, I received an offer from a high school in Sycamore, Ill., and thought since it was something I had gone to school for, I should give it a try,” Marshall says. He taught economics and American history for a year, then returned to Glencoe in 1971 with the intention of working toward a master`s degree in education.
However, things didn`t work out the way he planned. He received another offer to work as a dispatcher in Glencoe and accepted the job. ”Because of my shifts,” he says, ”I found it very hard to find the time (for college). Eventually it got to a point where I enjoyed what I was doing.”
He worked in Glencoe for eight years, then joined the Winnetka department, 410 Green Bay Rd., in 1979. He learned of a job opening at the Winnetka department and applied.
Marshall and his wife, Nancy, have been married three years. She is a respiratory therapist who works with newborns at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. They live in Mt. Prospect.
”Officer Marshall has a commitment to service that is very important in communities like ours,” Chief Herbert Timm says. ”I can`t say enough about the way he talks to people, takes the time to help them and put them at ease.”
Timm recalls an incident when Marshall received a call from an elderly woman concerned about her friend, who wasn`t answering the phone. Marshall sent an officer to the friend`s home.
He found that everything was all right, but the phone was off the hook.
”Then Marshall took the time to call the lady back and assure her that all was well,” Timm says. ”He goes one step beyond his job on an everyday basis.”
Marshall says he believes the most important thing he can do is make the caller feel comfortable.
”A lot of people are embarrassed to call. We always try to tell them that we would rather they call when they see or hear something suspicious than think about it and call us the next day. We`d much rather respond at the time and find out it`s nothing than find out the next day it was something.”
He always tries to remind himself that although he may have heard the complaint hundreds of times before, it may be the first time the caller is interacting with law enforcement. ”I never want (people) to feel that they shouldn`t call us because they feel the police are not going to pay any attention,” Marshall says.
Once, he remembers, a little boy reported that his bicycle had been stolen. ”I had to call back and speak to the mother to get some details, and she thanked me for making her son feel very comfortable,” he says. The boy had told his mother that if ever he had to call the police, he would not be afraid to do so.
”When things get out of hand or a crisis breaks, Officer Marshall has a tenacity that is difficult to find,” says Lt. William Gallagher, who is one of Marshall`s supervisors. ”He will work till he drops.”
Gallagher recalls an evening in June when a ”hellacious storm” struck Winnetka and other parts of the Chicago area, prompting a flood of phone calls. Marshall, who was working in the records department that day, was to have left at 3 p.m.
”But he just pitched right in and stayed late till (the storm) blew over,” Gallagher says. ”He will go the extra mile even if it means going beyond his comfort zone.”
After 21 years in his job, Marshall is not complaining.
”A dispatcher`s job can be challenging, draining and exhausting. But it`s a nice feeling when I am able to help someone or when a call comes to a good conclusion.”
He has one regret though: ”When I work night shifts, I can only see my wife on weekends.”
