By Kelley Anderson
Collaboration is the key to any good partnership. As a public safety telecommunicator or a responder, the radio can become just a voice on the other end of the line, and not a real person. As our small, law enforcement-run agency expanded in rural South Dakota, we wanted to maintain our connection to field responders with whom we interacted daily.
The Watertown South Dakota 9-1-1 Center had great partnerships with our law enforcement officers. However, we struggled with communicating our dispatch procedures to our area ambulance and fire departments. In a few years, we had grown from dispatching for two counties to six, and taken on dozens of fire and ambulance agencies. We began losing touch with the members of the departments, all of which were rural, volunteer agencies, many miles from our emergency communications center (ECC). Most of the department members had no contact with our ECC beyond the occasional radio transmission. We decided to improve these partnerships and meet individual members who we hadn’t gotten a chance to know.
The first step in our plan was to host an open house. We recently moved to a newly constructed building and wanted to show off our new center where we had more room and new equipment. We also wanted the fire and ambulance members to know that the public safety telecommunicators responsible for them were professional, knowledgeable and caring. We sent out invitations, bought matching polo shirts, and prepared coffee and cookies. To kick off the evening, we had our supervising captain go over the main areas of the ECC and the budget.
Telecommunicators volunteered to give presentations on medical and fire protocol, technology used (like CAD and text paging), what people experience when they call 9-1-1 and give building tours. While turnout was strong the first couple of years, the third year we hosted the event we went from 125 attendees the year prior to just 30, so we decided to rework our plan.
We knew there was interest from the responders in meeting with our ECC, but the open house idea was not sustainable for several reasons. The responders of South Dakota are busy people — good weather meant volunteers needed to be out in the field, they had monthly fire or EMS meetings to attend, bad weather meant they couldn’t make it into town for an open house, family obligations and more. On top of these scheduling conflicts, we realized that even if we had different topics, it was still an open house year after year. They had just attended one last year so how was this year different? So we came up with a different idea. If they can’t come to us, we can go to them.
The police department has several travel vehicles for employees to use for training and presentations. What if we took two telecommunicators to one of their monthly meetings and made a presentation. That way, we get to meet most of the members of a department and can tailor the information to their needs. For example, why do we require firefighters to answer us back on the radio when we’ve paged them out? We can bring our fire protocol with us and show them where we send out the fire page and that we don’t continue questioning until we know they have received the page. Waiting for an acknowledgment is holding us up and keeping the citizen on the line.
Once we had this plan in place, I printed a calendar for the year, took the information we had gathered from the open house, and started contacting all of the fire chiefs and ambulance directors. I found out when their next three monthly meetings were and asked to send a couple of telecommunicators to talk about what we do and answer questions. Our supervisor approved overtime for anyone willing to go to a meeting and once I had two telecommunicators signed up to go, I sent a confirmation email to the fire or EMS agency. After the meeting, we required the telecommunicators who attended to email their colleagues with a summary of the questions that were asked and answered. Finally, we also sent a thank you card.
The response was overwhelming. Every agency welcomed us with open arms. Some ordered pizza, some stood and gave us rounds of applause. All were curious and had great questions that we were happy to answer. Even our telecommunicators enjoyed themselves after some initial hesitation.
We worked on our “Site Visit” program for two years, not including winters. During the 18 months we sent out telecommunicators, we reached over two-thirds of the responding agencies, and we have noticed an increase in the cooperation of all those we have visited. We have a faster acknowledgement of our pages and a much more professional tone on radio transmissions. After all, when it is just a voice on the other end of the radio, it isn’t personal. But when you may have met and talked to that person and you understand each other, that’s a partnership you can work with.
Kelley Anderson has been a Public Safety Telecommunicator with the Watertown South Dakota 9-1-1 center for 16 years.
Field Unit and Telecommunicator Ride-Alongs
A mutual appreciation meeting of the minds on the road together
By CJ Nash
One of the best ways to promote understanding, enhance accord and improve esprit de corps between telecommunicators and field units is to use ride-alongs.Ride-alongs can help mitigate any potential or present rivalry, or worse, hostility, between field units and telecommunicators. These negative feelings can be caused by a less than positive culture, general misunderstandings, or a lack of full awareness of what the other deals with.
Regardless of the cause, the remedy lies in both sides having a better understanding of each other’s roles — and the reality that both roles are critical and interdependent for public safety.
Ride-alongs are possibly the best solution to any potential or actual problem. They create a necessary dialogue that enhances communication, understanding, efficiency, function and morale of the two entities. The goal is to convert any “us” versus “them” perception to a “we” or “all of us” reality.
As a telecommunicator, my imagination had to provide pictures of the appearance of incident scenes. But after one brief ride-along, I had a much better understanding of what some locations presented: residential areas, buildings and other structures, parks and streams, other bodies of water, density of tree-covering and shrubbery.
Just as important as your visits to locations is your conversation drawing out what is unique about responding units approaching a given location; what is important for them to know?
Consider that your awareness of these things may one day help a rookie or less-experienced field unit — not to mention fellow telecom- municators — with their response. So listen and focus on what your field unit is telling you. Shared knowledge, experience and training are truly “the gifts that keep on giving.”
On more than one ride-along, I recall veteran field units advising how they approach a location, which side streets they would access and why, what types of incidents were common or uncommon there, and any unusual aspects of the location and past incidents.
I remember one very professional, highly-informative and engaged unit providing critical tips such as, “this is a high crime area because…;” “this is how we approach …;” “this is where subjects congregate;” “this is highly critical for us to know when we respond here;” “always ensure there’s a backup, even on what seem to be less serious calls,” etc.
A variety of routine patrols, traffic stops and calls for service allowed us to have other conversations — work-related and not — to get to know each other better. Sometimes you and your field unit might share a cup of coffee or, on a slow shift, you might even share a meal. If the opportunity presents itself, I highly encourage it (even if you have a meal waiting back in the refrigerator).
Some downsides to ride-alongs are insufficient staff available/ coverage, workloads, operational issues and lack of buy-in. But they can have long-term positive tangible and intangible benefits to areas like performance and morale that negate short-term inconvenience.
Finally, at least consider the advantages of field unit “ride-alongs” inside the center. My agency was progressive and found that the benefits, advantages and improvements flow both ways.
CJ Nash retired in 2010 after 32 years with the MD Natl Cap Park PD, Mont Co Div COMMSEC. He is a member of the Mid-Eastern Chapter.
