Police dispatcher of the Year award.

[Honda]

I'm sure some of you have had time to listen to the 911 call that Paul pelosi made to the San Francisco Police department. My God the man was under duress he was trying every way he could to tell this clueless dispatcher get me some help. But she just didn't get it.

[UTAH]

My brother married a Police Dispatcher. She ended up retiring from it at the top of her field. She has tales about some of her dishearting failures, which served as a school of hard knocks. In my experience, dispatchers deal with people who are going through major life problems. Frankly, I wouldn't want to do it.

Hunter

[Mike]

Dispatchers, contrary to common belief, are not mind readers, although they seemingly do that often enough for it to be expected of them.

In this case, it seemed for somewhere around the first half of the call that Pelosi gave the call taker little to guess that there was a problem requiring emergency response. But the second half of the call was clear enough to me to warrant dispatching patrol units. And I am not going to factor name recognition in here because lots of people have no idea who Nancy Pelosi is, much less her husband.

Did the call taker fail? No, she got patrol dispatched. Could she have done it faster? Possibly, but I would like to see the timeline before deciding that.

I have a little knowledge of how call centers function, I was in charge of ours for around 5 years. I always take the side of the dispatcher unless it is obvious that they screwed the pooch. They are the least appreciated, most abused, lowest paid, most stressed people in law enforcement.

[Honda]

Dispatchers, contrary to common belief, are not mind readers, although they seemingly do that often enough for it to be expected of them.

In this case, it seemed for somewhere around the first half of the call that Pelosi gave the call taker little to guess that there was a problem requiring emergency response. But the second half of the call was clear enough to me to warrant dispatching patrol units. And I am not going to factor name recognition in here because lots of people have no idea who Nancy Pelosi is, much less her husband.

Did the call taker fail? No, she got patrol dispatched. Could she have done it faster? Possibly, but I would like to see the timeline before deciding that.

I have a little knowledge of how call centers function, I was in charge of ours for around 5 years. I always take the side of the dispatcher unless it is obvious that they screwed the pooch. They are the least appreciated, most abused, lowest paid, most stressed people in law enforcement.

And I completely agree with what you have said Mike. And I want to make it clear my intention was not to attack dispatchers in general. However in this particular case it seems like it was certainly more to it than meets the eye and certainly more serious than a 911 hang up call which they will always dispatch. But you know what hindsight's 2020.

[Mike]

I agree, Tom. The second half of the call was enough to trip an alarm in any dispatcher worthy of the job. How long was the response delayed? I don't think we know at this point. Maybe the time line will be released. I really don't think it was more than several seconds.

[TriGuy]

We had a late night Cal Fire dispatcher named Deb. She sounded like your grandma that smoked too much. She was awesome
She knew every inch of her territory. She had a sixth sense about calls. We were down in a radio hole in a canyon for a bad wreck. We couldn't reach out on the radio and missed a par check. She sent a second engine and law enforcement code 3 to us. We welcomed the help but didn't need them code 3 but damn if she didn't have everyone's back.