News

When life is on line

Dispatchers work in a stressful environment that becomes frenetic ...

By MICHAEL A. MOHAMMED
Published July 8, 2007

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Katie Niedorf, left, and LeAnn McCann prepare to swap duties dispatching calls to Tampa Police officers in the field on Friday, April 27, 2007.
	[Daniel Wallace | Times]

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TAMPA - The man took a bullet to the abdomen, but his voice sounded weirdly calm.

"He was pretty matter-of-fact: 'I'm dying. I'm bleeding out. Send an ambulance,' " remembers Donovan Maginnis, who was in charge the night the man called 911.

One of the dispatchers for the Tampa Police Department kept the wounded man on the phone until paramedics arrived, then moved on to other crises.

They heard later that the shooting victim had died.

"A lot of people here have been the last person somebody ever talked to," Maginnis says.

The single-story Tampa Police and Fire Rescue communications center betrays none of the hectic energy inside. Its radio tower gives the only hint of its critical role in Tampa's emergency network.

Inside, day and night, 17-person teams sift a river of information flowing through their headsets and flat-screen monitors.

There's one in every major city, a wired room that is a world unto itself, with its own cryptic language and frenetic pace, a place where life-and-death decisions are all in a day's work.

"We always get called adrenaline junkies," says Maginnis, who supervises the 3 p.m.-to-11 p.m. shift. "Until five years ago, about half the people here smoked."

Dispatchers answer the public's 911 calls some days, and work the police radio on others. But both tasks require the ability to keep up several conversations at once, remember tiny details and stay calm when others would panic.

"I definitely think it's a very stressful job, and it takes a very special person to do it," says Fred Gennille, a 20-year-old trainee.

Gennille plans to become a Tampa officer like his father. He figures working as a dispatcher will make him a better officer.

Gennille started in December with a three-week class. It was followed by five months of one-on-one training, taking calls with an experienced dispatcher.

The trainer is there as backup, ready to take over if the newbie chokes in the middle of a frantic 911 call or a chaotic situation.

Washouts common

"A lot of people walk off after just one or two weeks of training," Maginnis says. "They'll often say it's the hours, but they knew that when they started."

For every 20 applicants, 10 pass the department's background check, he explains. Of those, about two drop out during the class. Another usually washes out early in training, and one more later. So only about 25 percent make it.

At first, Gennille says, he struggled with the pain and anxiety of the callers.

"When I started here, I used to think my best days were the days I couldn't remember what happened," he says. Driving home, he used to tell himself "If I turn the radio on loud enough, if I sing along, I won't remember."

Maginnis recalls a dispatcher who left after a few months. She had one insurmountable flaw.

"She was just too nice of a person to deal with all the c---, " he says. "She cried at least once a week."

The stress takes a heavy toll. On average, Tamps dispatchers leave the job after about two years, Maginnis says.

LeAnn McCann prefers books on tape during her drive home to Riverview. They take her mind off the strain of her shift.

Still, she says, the pressures of the radio room pale in comparison with her previous career as a theater stage manager. She started out at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, produced Halloween's Howl-O-Scream, and toured with Broadway productions like The Lion King.

"When you have 15 seconds to change someone from a giraffe to a wildebeest, that's stress," and it never lets up, says McCann, 41. "Here, the stress level goes like this," she says, zigzagging her finger up and down.

She explains how her radio position works. Its three flat-screen monitors display maps, a readout of the 40 or more police units in that sector, a car-registration database and a list of active 911 calls.

McCann doesn't stop talking while an officer reads her a license plate over the radio.

"The traffic stops are always the hairiest," McCann says as she runs a check on the plate.

She handles several streams of thought simultaneously, taking in each static-filled radio transmission, typing notes, answering questions and asking new ones.

An officer's call sign blinks on the screen. He pulled someone over a couple of minutes ago, but he hasn't said anything since.

"Ten-34?" McCann says, radio code for 'Are you okay?"

"Ten-4," he confirms.

McCann speaks quickly and grins often. Unless she's typing, hand gestures punctuate her conversation. She prefers the police radio's barrage of information to taking emergency calls.

"I can't stand the 911 position," she says, half-jokingly. "It's a lot of people screaming."

Then her smile vanishes as McCann describes the call that bothered her most.

A young woman told McCann that she had invited a guy over her house, and he had raped her. She said she had been raped once before, as a teenager.

"She kept asking questions I couldn't answer," McCann says. " 'Why does this keep happening to me? Is it my fault because I invited the guy over? Is there something wrong with me?' "

She pauses. "There's times you feel helpless."

Most dispatchers remember moments like that, when they felt the full pressure of the job.

Maginnis calls them wakeup calls. His own came about three weeks after his training ended. He substituted on the radio one evening so another dispatcher could take a break.

An officer saw some kids burglarizing a school. Maginnis sent in a flood of units and found himself nearly overwhelmed by the task of coordinating them.

"It had air service, canines, lots of units, foot chases, everything," he says.

The more experienced dispatcher returned and offered to take over, but he turned her down. It would take precious time to figure out what was going on. Soon it was over, and he had survived.

"From that moment on, I was no longer afraid of the radio."

Off the job

Donovan Maginnis' wife, Karen Maginnis, started with the Tampa police, but now she supervises the Florida Highway Patrol's dispatch center, and they drive home together.

On their commute, Karen Maginnis likes to talk about her shift. Her husband listens, but he rarely talks about his day.

They also avoid slipping into radio jargon at home. It is concise and clear if you know the code, and some dispatchers inadvertently sprinkle it into their conversation.

But not the Maginnises.

"I just have this hangup about trying to keep work at work," he says.

When they get home, their German shepherd, Sascha, greets them. They usually relax with her for a while, then Donovan Maginnis heads for the Xbox 360, links up with fellow supervisors and spends some time racing sports cars and prowling World War II battlefields.

Some of the other dispatchers like to decompress with a workout at the police gym.

The constant strain and high expectations can fray nerves.

"Pretty frequently, you'll get people shouting angrily at each other across the room if someone makes a mistake," Maginnis says. "They don't want to get caught with each other's slack. Everybody makes mistakes, but our mistakes could cost a life."

Good supervisors help dissipate that nervous energy, says Eddy Durkin, 37, who works alongside Maginnis. He recounts the time a caller said her husband was threatening to kill her and himself. He shot himself with the dispatcher on the line.

"That's when they start second-guessing," and where a supervisor becomes important, Durkin says. "You listen to the tape with them. You have to show them that they've done enough."

When 15-year-old Charles Bishop crashed a stolen Cessna into Tampa's Bank of America tower in 2002, Durkin supervised the three dispatchers who coordinated emergency workers as they shut the city down.

"There was a palpable energy in the room," he says. "We weren't sure if it was a terrorist attack or not."

Nothing, though, compares to the shock of hearing 10-33, code for officer in peril. "It's the worst -- you never want to hear it," Durkin says. "It becomes completely silent in here."

"10-33"

Near dawn on May 12, three officers and a bail bondsman went to serve a warrant at a house near Busch Gardens.

Officer John Armao, 40, had gone into the house alone. The wanted man shot him twice. Armao staggered out with gaping wounds in his face and shoulder. The man fired again, then shot himself in the head.

Richard Parsons had an hour left in the 11 p.m.-to-7 a.m. radio shift when the channel flooded with fragments of panic.

"All three of them started talking on the radio at the same time," Parsons, 25, says. "Bits and pieces off 'officer down,' click."

In seconds, Parsons became the crux of the dispatch team. The others tuned into his frequency to learn the situation and alert other agencies and the police tactical response team.

Parsons called out Tampa Fire Rescue and focused on extracting useful information from the mounting chaos in his ear.

He tried to scribble notes, but couldn't. "I couldn't write -- I could only type, because I was shaking that bad," he says, extending a trembling hand.

Soon, voices from over fifty units crowded his headset.

"They all end up talking at the same time. You have to hear bits and pieces of everybody's little statement and put it all together," he says.

The first 10-33 came over at 6:12 a.m. At 7:40 a.m., Parsons rose from his chair after spending an hour and a half with his mind racing.

On the drive home, he says, "I played it over in my head five to six times, asking if I acted fast enough, if there was anything I missed. It was the worst."

Still, Parsons says he is grateful it was an overtime shift, so he wasn't familiar with the officers involved.

The emotional strain would have been far worse if it had been one of the officers he deals with daily. He knows them so well, he says, "I can pick out their voices in my dreams."

Despite the grind, Parsons sounds awed by the experience.

"It seems like there is never a second lost, like we have an unspoken, unplanned rhythm we all follow to make it all run so smoothly," he says.

Michael A. Mohammed can be reached at 813 226-3404 or mmohammed@sptimes.com.

Fast Facts:

The language

Law enforcement radio transmissions are peppered with cryptic numbers. These codes let officers and dispatchers communicate clearly and concisely, understand each other through static, and keep the frequency clear for emergency traffic.

Ten-Codes: Used for commonly transmitted messages

10-0: Suspect is armed.

10-3: Stop transmitting; used to clear the frequency for urgent radio traffic.

10-4: Acknowledgment.

10-18: As soon as possible.

10-33: Officer in peril.

10-51: En route.

10-54: Negative.

Signals: Used to identify crimes or incidents

Signal 5: Homicide.

Signal 7: Dead body.

Signal 22: Sex crime.

Signal 33: Emergency/send help.

Signal 45: Fire.

Signal 73: Domestic dispute.

Signal 89: Natural disaster.

 

[Last modified July 7, 2007, 23:51:49]

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