Who's answering that 911 call?

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Hundreds of people call them and many even depend on them to save a life. Yet few know who they are, what their job entails or where they’re located.

 

To answer some of the questions and in recognition of National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, the Townsman talked to two of Wellesley Police Department’s veteran dispatchers, Tim Gover and Kevin Lewis, about their work.

 

Today’s dispatchers are the first line of defense, Gover said. Over the last 20 years, the department has moved from one officer at a desk answering phones to the highly computerized 911 system manned by trained dispatch personnel. Some longtime police officers remember manning the desk “with a one-line phone and a single radio,” and refer to the current setup as “NASA central,” he said.

 

“When I first started, there were only five dispatchers,” Gover said. Now there are at least two dispatchers on duty on each of the three shifts (day, evening and night) and often three on duty for the day (8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.) and evening shifts (4 p.m.-12:30 a.m.).

 

Lewis and Gover said effective dispatchers must be able to multitask, listen and talk at the same time and have the ability to switch gears depending on the urgency of the various calls.

To become a dispatcher, applicants must submit to a background check, pass a preliminary dispatcher’s exam and undergo several interviews at police department headquarters.

 

Once hired, the trainees attend the five-week dispatchers academy conducted by the Statewide Emergency Telecommunications Board, a group that runs the state’s 911 system.

 

After completion of the academy, the new recruits are assigned to Lewis, the department’s training coordinator or Sarah Walsh, the training officer.

In-house training takes eight to 12 weeks, which is followed by a one-year probation.

 

Every dispatcher in Wellesley is certified as an emergency medical dispatcher and trained as first responders. Some of the dispatchers are also trained in the areas of suicide prevention and hostage negotiation.

 

The police department doesn’t “hold back on training if it would improve department performance,” Gover said.

The original 911 system was implemented in Wellesley in 1995, shortly before Gover joined the department. The system identified the caller’s phone number, but was unable to provide the corresponding name and address; cell phone calls could not be identified, nor the caller’s location pinpointed.

 

The enhanced 911 system currently in use gives the dispatchers access to the caller’s name, address and phone number. If you’re using a cell phone, the GPS system in the phone allows dispatchers to “to find out exactly where you are” on a map on the screen, Gover said.

 

The Wellesley Police Department’s emergency communications center is located in the main lobby of police headquarters on Washington Street. Protected by bullet-resistant glass, dispatchers work at three workstations in the center. Each work area has five screens: One for radio calls, two for the internal Computer Aided Dispatch system that logs all incoming calls and two for the 911 system. All 911call information is automatically sent to the CAD system; other calls are typed into the log by the dispatchers.

 

The daytime hours are the busiest because of the volume of phone calls, and Monday is the busiest day of the week, Gover said. On an average 24-hour shift, dispatchers may answer up to 250 emergency, non-emergency and administrative calls. Approximately 100 of those calls will require a response by police, fire or EMTs, and of those, about half will come through the 911 systems. “Because of cell phones, [we get] an enormous amount of calls on each incident,” Lewis said.

 

Illustrating the point, he recalled an incident last week involving a coyote that was struck by a motor vehicle on Oakland Street. “We got 25 calls” reporting that event, he said. Most of the calls coming into the emergency response center are for motor vehicle accidents, medical issues, alarm activations and suspicious activities, Lewis said.

 

Every 911 call gets a response from police, fire personnel or both, even if the caller says the call was made in error. Regardless of the reason for the call, Gover said, if the dispatcher senses the caller is fearful or uneasy, he or she will keep the caller on the line until help arrives on the scene.

 

For the majority of calls, the dispatcher sends the appropriate personnel and equipment for medical, police or fire calls, using preset protocols. However, the dispatcher has the discretion to notify additional responders, such as Medflight, if warranted, Gover said.

 

In addition to monitoring the five screens at their workstations, dispatchers also view screens with images from cameras mounted inside and outside of the police department. Another monitor, the auto vehicle locator, shows the location of the marked cruisers in the town. There are also three panels for firebox alarms that sound whenever a box alarm is activated.

 

In addition to its local responsibilities, the Wellesley Police Department is the designated dispatch center for the Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council Regional SWAT team, a group of 110 members from 40 police departments and two sheriff offices in four counties.

 

Not much fazes Gover or Lewis.

 

“In the 18 years, I’ve heard pretty much everything,” Lewis said, recalling a fire alarm activation that turned out to be coming from a heat detector in a doghouse.

Both men said they originally viewed their dispatching jobs as stepping-stones to the police and fire services, but found they liked the work and have since made it their careers.

 

The job’s lack of predictability appeals to Gover. “You never know what’s going to happen that day,” he said.

 

“It’s definitely not boring,” but it can be emotionally draining, Lewis said.

 

“It’s harder to calm someone down over the phone” than in person and “by the end of the day, you can be spent,” Gover said. However, he added, “you can’t take it home with you, can’t let it eat you up.”

 

Lewis agreed, adding, “You have to let it go. Tomorrow’s another day.”

 

If there is a down side, they said, it is the lack of an automatic follow-up to an incident. “You get the initial panic from the person calling,” Gover said, but rarely hear about the resolution of the call. “We have to take the initiative to find out the conclusion,” Lewis said.

The dispatch team and the equipment are the biggest assets the town has, Gover said. “We all work as a team, we all cover each other.”

 

That teamwork saves precious time and in emergency situations, “Seconds make a difference,” Lewis said. “Dispatchers save seconds and seconds save lives.”

 

Tim Gover

Kevin Lewis

Patrick Goodwin

Sarah Walsh

Robert Rowe

Kelly O'Brien

Therese Sheehan

Kathleen Lameiras

Mike Rizzitello