What's this in reference to?

I am a dispatcher. That means if you call 911, I might talk to you, the officers where I'm from talk to me on the radio, firefighters and medics too. I talk to crazy people, loud people, quiet people, dumb people, smart people, annoying people and people I feel sorry for. I talk to officers I love, officers I can't stand, nice officers, bitch officers, hard working officers and lazy ones. I also have the great pleasure of talking to our fire and ems crews on the radio and phones as well and everybody knows I love those boys and girls! I can't help it, it's in my blood. But anyway the moral 0f the story here is that I have ALOT of interesting stories to tell and at the suggestion of a very smart friend of mine this blog has been created to share some of them and so I can look back and remember 'em when I forget all about it the next month when the next batch of crazy stories roll in! Now a little run down for those of you that don't know how a dispatch center works, there are 3 different sections of the room that we call "boards". There is the fire board, the police board, and the calltaking board. Usually we like to have two people on each one of those boards. Calltaking is where the actual calls come in and then the person back there at that board makes a call screen with the addy and all the pertinent info of the call and sends it to the proper board. If it is a fire or ems call it goes to those dispatchers and if it is a police call it goes to the police dispatchers. Then depending on where in the city the call is the dispatchers sent it to the proper responders, which is another word for officers or firefighters. Now if its a fire call one person tones the station it is going to, meaning we set off a bunch of bells and whistles in their station and open up their speaker systems and start rattlin off the addy and the details of the call, they for the most part ignore all that tho since about that point they are pausing the xbox game and running for their turnout gear. (haha) They get a piece of paper with all the details to tho so they generally just grab that and take off. 

Now if it's a police call the whole deal is different. The police dispatchers get a call screen and read it, decide who and how many need to go and then we send it to computers they have in their cars. Then the police read it, then they call up on the radio and ask us a million pointless questions about it and then they decide to head on over to wherever and start doing some work! :) We only say it over the radio like we do with the firefighters if it is a really high priority call like a shooting, robbing or something like that where they need to be over there like yesterday with half the force. So that gives you a very basic idea of how things roll in there. 

I guess we'll start the story telling with the officers. Now every dispatcher has officers they love.....and officers that make them want to pull their hair out. Usually more of the second type than the first lol. Well we've just gotten a batch of new rookies out on their own and let me tell you: that is a treat. You wanna talk about entertainment, let's talk about giving some poor kid a gun, some handcuffs and a badge and throwin 'em out in the real world after they think they've learned everything they need to know in the academy. HA! Hilarity ensues. Now for the most part the rookies on our shift have it somewhat together. Most of them are on par with how to get us dispatchers to help them when they need it which is , always yes ma'mming us and using their pleases and thank you's, which is more than I can say for a lot of our veteran cops, although there a few and we love them for it! But the poor things are just clueless about a lot of this stuff that gets thrown at them. One in particular is pretty clueless about everything. God love his little soul it just seems like that poor boy can't get a thing right. The other day he was trying to mark out at a location (which just means tell me where he was going to be so we could note it in case anything should go down we know where to send the cavalry) and the first two streets he gave as the intersection of where he was....don't intersect. So of course since he is a rookie and the vets like to make life hard anyway, a couple older cops key up (that's the term for when they start talking on the radio) and ask him if he means such and such streets and about that time the sgt for the area this kid works in keys up and says he'll be out with rookie in a minute and gives a better location. So once sgt and rookie have been on scene for a while rookie apparently found someone to arrest and decides to take him downtown. Now in order to arrest him, rookie asks me to create him a wanted screen. That just means instead of us getting the call and making a screen and sending him on it, he found the crime without any prompting and now needs a screen for documentation. Now all that is fine except poor child asks me to create a wanted screen for: and lists the same two damn streets we had just got done discussing that don't intersect! I mean for goodness sakes it had been 15 mins maybe! So sgt of said clueless rookie had to once again save the day and key up with the corrected streets that do intersect, which is wear they actually were. Pooooor rookie. I know they were making fun for a couple days on that one. Now he's not the only one to jack things up and get teased tho! A different brand new officer managed to wreck his cruiser in his first month. I'd say it's a record but I'm sure it's been done faster. Of course that one was a big fuss. I'm sure they are still bringing that one up every chance they get. Another one chased a suspect down, had him lay on the ground (standard procedure) cuffed him up and when he had to run after the other suspects, told him not to move and left him lying there while he finished the pursuit. Now that might not sound so silly but that's because I haven't yet shared the detail that he left the poor juvenile lying in the middle of the roadway and we he came back cars were swerving around him! That one gave me a good chuckle for months. I have rookie stories for days but I'll save some for a rainy day. So anyway this post was just to give you an idea what the blog is gonna be like and all the crazy stories you'll hear if you take the time to read. I'll keep ya posted on all the juicy ones.

-D