Protecting Your Responders: A Dispatcher’s Role

This week’s feature was written by PowerPhone’s Director of Training, Captain George Deuchar. Captain Deuchar has taught law enforcement dispatch training courses since 1995, and served as PowerPhone’s Director of Training since 2002.  As leader of PowerPhone’s Instructor Corps, Captain Deuchar has trained approximately 30,000 911 dispatchers in the United States, as well as internationally.  Captain Deuchar has been featured in the HBO production “Suicide”, as well as numerous other features on CNN, A&E, Court TV, TLC, and the Biography Channel. He is the host for the truTV series “Missing Persons Unit” and was recently featured in the History Channel’s Docudrama “The Real Wolfman.”

Today’s telecommunicator wears many hats and has many responsibilities.  However, the single, most important, duty of a 911 dispatcher is protecting their responders.

Dispatchers are the lifeline for a responding officer, and the information conveyed to them through telecommunicator training may be the difference between survival and tragedy.  When responding to an incident, officers will often plan their approach while enroute to the call. That plan acts as a survival movie playing in the responder’s mind, and the telecommunicator is the writer, producer, and director of that script. If the script is inaccurate, the officer may be in great danger.  As a police veteran of 26 years, I can attest to the effort and concern of 911 dispatchers that have saved me on many occasions.  A call dispatched with accuracy seems simple, but paying attention to these small details could reduce fatalities involving officers.

In 2008, 138 officers lost their lives in the line of duty; 67 of those deaths were a direct result of traffic accidents. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial (NLEOM), each year more officers are killed in traffic incidents than from any other single cause; guns come in a close second.

Protecting Law Enforcement Responders: The Dispatcher’s Role^™ (PLER) examines numerous crimes, incidents, and specific groups that may endanger officers.  Interaction between the instructor and the students, includes discussion of vital incidents such as: Motor Vehicle Stops, Domestic Violence, Barricaded Persons (with and without hostage) Active Shooters, Bank Alarm Response, and numerous crimes in progress. Two new areas of learning offered in this course focus on the danger of Meth Labs, and groups that target law enforcement officers; Extremist, Street Gangs, Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Sociopaths, and Psychopaths.  PLER attendees will examine specific identifiers of these groups based upon information from callers, and are taught how to advise responders of potential additional dangers.

PLER also applies several of PowerPhone’s key concepts:

• 300 Call Syndrome^™ – Laxity in call handling and 911 dispatch comes from repetition (299 unfounded incidents, followed by a dangerous incident)
• The Journalistic-Investigative Approach^™ (5W+H+W+H+I)-Trains the 911 dispatcher to question callers
• Pre-Arrival Survival Instructions^™ – simple advice to callers prior to responder arrival geared to improve caller and responder safety
• Victim Focus^™ – identification and descriptions of all involved including victims, witnesses, and suspects
• Inverted Visualization^™ – gathering information from the arriving officer’s perspective through effective dispatching

PLER also includes a new, extensive learning module on Radio Dispatch Procedures, which teaches 911 dispatchers to properly and clearly communicate with law enforcement responders. This module includes broadcasting vehicle and suspect descriptions; procedures for taking descriptive information on suspects; broadcast rules and procedures; and the dispatcher’s role in motor vehicle pursuits.

PowerPhone is proud to present this class nationwide in an effort to improve dispatcher efficiency, reduce law enforcement injuries, and tragic line of duty deaths.  For more information, or to schedule as class in your area, follow this link.

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