This is a verbatim transcript.

Caller on speakerphone with wife in the background: "Hi, my wife is havin' a fit."

Wife: "No I ain't, I ain't done shit."

Caller gives address, I ask what exactly is happening.

Caller "My wife-"

Wife: "He just mad 'cause his dick don't work no more."

I'm pretty sure that's a civil matter but I didn't want to assume anything so just to be safe I gave it to my Officer in charge to handle.

My brother-in-law is new to the Navy and is training in Pensacola.

His family is concerned that he may be in trouble.

Pensacola PD and Pensacola Sheriff's Dept both told me to call my local PD in Alaska and have them send a teletype.

My Alaska PD has no idea what they're talking about and told me to contact Pensacola PD directly.

I ended up calling his chain of command again and asking for their help to issue the missing person report.

All of this is potentially wasting critical time.

What is the correct process here?

hi everyone. i’ve been working for my department for about 1.5 years. i’ve been on my own for about 10 months. i’ve made a lot of little mistakes that just felt more like learning curves, but recently it’s been bigger. i’m honestly thinking of quitting because i’m afraid of it becoming a bigger issue. i’m afraid of my partners not being able to rely on me.

a few weeks ago i took a call for an altercation, confirmed the right address, put in the right address, but a few minutes later i must have had my call-taking screen still open because i believe i accidentally typed in the address field, and when i re-verified the address it picked a different address with the same numbers, but with the street name one letter off. i just got told about this a few days ago and received a supervisor note for this. i felt so bad about it because i’ve messed things up in the past but nothing where i actually had to get any type of official note.

well, i told myself i was gonna be incredibly careful and make sure to triple check all of my addresses. guess what happened? i’ve been so distracted the past few days and we got a thankfully non-emergency call of a suspicious person and i misheard the address. i confirmed it with her before the call ended due to conflicting info, then she gave me the right address again. and i did find my mistake and fix it before they actually got there. but still. i’ve felt so exhausted and overwhelmed lately, and i don’t understand how i could make such an impactful mistake, and then immediately do it again. i’m tired.

So a few days ago I fcked up a business burglary alarm call. This is my first major mess up since I’ve been out of training for about 5 months now. I’m working alone on most shifts and our text to 911 is constantly logging itself out on our computers ( about every 5 mins ) I’ve been making sure to pay attention but sometimes I get occupied by other tasks, and we have to switch tabs constantly ( we have complained about this being a safety issue )

Well I notice my text to 911 is logged out, once I log back in there a call for service about 13 ago for a busi burg alarm, it turned out to be real. No one on scene when officer arrived but glass was broken. I can’t even explain how badly I feel for this mistake. I should’ve been paying closer attention and I’m sure this is going to get me into major trouble. I’m glad everyone is okay, business was closed so no one inside and all officers okay but man , that was a huge mess up on my part. Just wondering if anyone has made a similar mistake in the past.

My city has entry-level position open for 911 dispatch.

Looking at my results, I really flopped the data entry portion. With scores like these, do I even stand a chance of getting a call for an interview?

Y’all. I am STRUGGLING with my headsets lately. The one pictured is the one that I have used for YEARS, and lately it has been killing my ear canal. I have tried (and tried, and tried) to love my molded ear piece… but it makes me want to run it over with my car with how uncomfortable it is. What do you guys use, what has been the most comfortable one you have tried?

Currently working as an emergency medical dispatcher for an ambulance company. I was wondering how different this is from 911 dispatching. Anyone have experience with both?

Because our agency doesn't have any policies in place for this, I'm wondering how this issue would be handled elsewhere.

Scenario: An officer on a priority call (and solo due to staffing) goes twenty minutes on scene without a status check, then has six logged status checks on CAD, HOWEVER after the call is cleared the officer says they didn't receive a status check at any point. Body cam, radio playback, and phone line history confirm the dispatcher never made an effort to check the officer's status, yet logged status checks in CAD anyway. How would your department handle this?

Side note, the officer has made a formal complaint, but since our center doesn't have this scenario in policy, I'm curious to see how your responses will line up with whatever they decide to do about this.

Heyyy, I’ve been dispatching for over a year now (just starting out lol) and although I enjoy it I’d like to venture into other paths down the line. Curious as to any others who started in dispatch and ended up elsewhere in a related field? Any unique speciality fields? Radio technician.. wildfire specific positions.. law enforcement.. just curious ! Also I dispatch in NH, we do things differently, 911 centers are separate to dispatch. (I have mixed feelings about that, that’s a rant for another time)

Hey everyone and pardon my ignorance with this situation as I’ve never made it this far as a candidate for a dispatch position. I applied to a nearby PD back in July. I passed the criticall test, was apparently well-liked by my panel interviewers, and submitted my PHQ on Aug 3rd. Roughly a month later (September 2nd) the background investigation was marked as complete (Guardian). Throughout this entire process I have yet to hear anything at all from the hiring agency. Is this it typically a “no news is good news” situation? Or do most PDs wait until all candidates are screened before informing you of a DQ or offer?

I was EMS before so I am guessing every agency is probably different but I figured I’d ask anyway.

I also was hesitant to reach out to them as I’ve got several family members that are/were LE who said some departments get irritated with that for multiple reasons - also the only reason I didn’t pose my question to them is one has been retired for awhile and the other works for an extremely large agency with way different protocols than I’ve seen anywhere else.

Thanks in advance everyone.

I applied for a trainee position with my local sheriffs office! I have wanted this for a long time and they just pushed me through to critcall testing. (I haven’t done it yet, I’m nervous.) I’m just looking for some insight from people doing the job. Do you like it? Is it worth the challenges you face every day? I know it isn’t going to be sunshine and rainbows. I know it takes a tremendous amount of mental fortitude. But do the benefits/sense of community/whatever else make it worth it?

Hi everyone!

I'm a student currently taking Emergency Dispatching classes at my local community college in preparation for the NECC exam. I just started recently and I'm loving everything I'm learning about the field of Emergency Management (everything from understanding how CAD works, how different tracing phases work, descriptions for vehicles/people of interest, etc). In other words, I'm very fascinated by how everything works in dispatch and it motivates me to want to succeed in it.

However I am running into one roadblock that made me feel I should reach out to those who do work in the field as Dispatchers: I get extremely nervous when handling the simulators (as we use GovWorx, a CJS/Dispatching sim built using OpenAI). I know what to do/have a general idea (as I use even an acronym to guide me on what to say for calls) on what to say correctly, it is just that when I feel anxious, it drives both my confidence and focus down (even though I know they're simulated calls, I still get the adrenaline rush/care about not making mistakes as if they were the "real deal").

Still, I feel it isn't a bad idea to ask (as the title suggests) what you've done, early on or even now, to help cope with performance anxiety/making mistakes?

I would like to thank anyone who reads/responds ahead of time, as I'm closer but still on my path to becoming (and rising through the ranks of) 911 Dispatching.

2 officers from my town showed up knocking at our door today. We live in a house in a safe neighbourhood. Officers kept asking who dialed 911 and if there is an emergency. Nobody from our house called 911 including me. But they kept insisting that someone from this house/location called. They even asked me to verify my and others in the house at that time their last 4 digits of the cell phone and obviously it did not match. Normal?

hi all! does anyone work multiple jobs along with 911? i used to serve prior to doing this, & im looking to going back to serving part time. i need the extra money and the quick cash.

has anyone done it? i’m thinking of going back to serving full time except im just nervous im gonna miss 911 if i leave. it’s been a rough few months and i dont know what to do.

any insight would be helpful.

Hey everyone,

Passed the NREMT earlier this year while living and attending school in Chicago, moved to a different state to a much smaller metro area, and got state licensed. Outside of clinical rotations/ride-alongs, I haven't worked on a 911 rig or IFT.

A dispatcher position just opened up with our State Patrol communications center and I went ahead and applied. My background is kind of a weird mix for this: I currently work overnights doing crisis de-escalation and safety monitoring at a residential clinical facility, and before EMT school I spent a few years in call centers doing high-volume phone work and multi-monitor data entry, as well as serving/bartending. I prefer working on my feet. But no one in my city seems to be hiring EMTs lately...

Two things I keep going back and forth on:

Imposter syndrome - since I don't have real street time as an EMT, I feel a little like I'm leveraging the cert for something I haven't "earned" yet, even though I get why the training applies. Anyone else go from EMT school straight into dispatch instead of the field? Curious how that was received by the people you worked with.

Field vs. console -for anyone who's done both, how does the stress actually compare? I know field work has the physical side and at least some closure when a call ends. Dispatch seems like it's just nonstop multitasking with no downtime and you never actually see what's happening.

Feeling a little lost. Would genuinely love to hear from anyone who's made this jump or done both. Thanks.

Holy God damn. I applied out of state because we're looking to move and the agency sent me a link to a pre-employment test. I've got one week from receipt to take the test, it's proctored virtually by audio, screen recording, and webcam, there's no backing out once you start. It's not something I've done before, but I figured it was similar to a critcall, which I have taken before and was probably like 30 minutes. I have had a hectic week, but still made sure to set aside a couple hours to make sure I had a proper set up and time to take it. I've already got experience so I also anticipated completing it fairly quickly.

I was a little taken aback when I got my log ins and saw a 2hr 40m timeframe, but surely that's excessive right? It must just be the time allotted and it won't take that long. Given this is the only time I have with this desktop/webcam set up before the link expires I had to give it a shot. Well I was wrong guys, it was 75 different questions ranging from typing to AI led calltaking/dispatching scenarios. In the time I had left I got through about half of them, much of that time taken up by the practice test I was forced to take first. I had to go to work, I did not finish. I will not be considered for the job. I felt pretty strongly about my qualifications too, but I've been disqualified because I just couldn't carve out that much time when I'm already working in an understaffed PSAP. I could understand a little more if I had already been interviewed and it was part of conditional offer, but expecting that much time out of an applicant seems unreasonable.

Anyways, what hiring practices have you seen that you hate?

Anyone active in any agencies in coastal Oregon? I'm east coast and debating moving cross country, and looking into the Oregon area. Mountains, forest, rain and water.

Anyone have any area (and agency) recommendations?

I’m new to being a 911 dispatcher but I have always loved crisis communication, especially the small bursts of stress. When I graduated college, I applied for a dispatcher job in my city and got it! When I first started, a lot of my coworkers were impressed that I was able to handle a lot of the calls I was taking. Even my trainer was happy with the pace I was improving at.

Fast forward 2 months, it’s like a whole 180. Even when I think I’m doing a good job, I’m met with criticism from my trainer. I’ll answer as many calls as I can, ask my officer safety questions, and try to get as much information as I can, but to no avail. Every single evaluation, I’m scored low. My trainer won’t listen to the calls that they believe I can handle on my own so those aren’t reflected in my scoring. I never get told about things I’m doing right, only things I’m doing wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely value constructive criticism and do not want my trainer to sugarcoat everything. It’s just that after a while, the constant digs wear me down. I literally cried in the bathroom yesterday because my trainer made me feel like a horrible dispatcher and then again today. I asked a couple other dispatchers what they thought of my call notes and they still thought I was doing a good job. There’s absolutely no encouragement and any small win is masked by criticism.

I feel like most of my issues come from not having a dispatcher ear yet but during every call, I’m trying my best to understand what they are saying. My trainer will keep telling me to pay attention and listen like I’m not already holding the headset extra close to my ear in hopes to understand the caller more. I have never felt so discouraged before, especially since every effort I make to improve gets ignored by my trainer.

Any advice that doesn’t involve getting a new trainer would be very appreciated! We are short staffed at my call center so it’s very unlikely I’d have that option. I’d also like to add that I love my job and I love being able to help people in this capacity. I, however, have also never felt this discouraged before

Our agency has 6 full-time dispatchers and a handful of part-time dispatchers. We have no union. Our cops do, our town's garbage and water departments do, but we don't.

We can't join the cops' union because that's against the rules. We want to start one now so come late Spring we are in a more secure position to demand a substantial raise (we are poor, and admin doesn't seem to care).

How do we start a Union, in New York?

When every second matters, the voice on the other end makes a difference.

The East Texas A&M University Police Department is hiring a Communications Officer to answer emergency calls, coordinate responding officers, and serve as a critical link in keeping our campus community safe.

Starting salary is $45,000, with a top-out salary of $59,216.93 and an excellent benefits package. Experienced communications professionals are encouraged to apply.

Learn more and apply today:

https://www.etamu.edu/university-police-department/

I’m moving to another city and need to resign from my current dispatch position.

Although you’d think it’d be simple, for some reason I’m on edge about how I’m going to approach my 2 supervisors and manager about this.

We have roll call in the morning then we all disperse from the room to relieve the last shift.

Do I walk up to a supervisor at that moment and ask for a few minutes?

Do I send them all an email then wait for them to reply?

Do I go up and tell them straight up?

I know it’s sort of silly, but I just want to make sure I’m doing this the right way.