Tonight we toured Waltham’s 911 center. They told us to take the elevator up, so all 14-ish of us climbed in. The doors shut behind us, and then… Nothing happened. At all. We started joking about how funny it would be if we had to call 911 to tell them we were stuck in an elevator… in their office. But as the time passed, the joking gave way to a fearful realization that nothing was happening.

A minute later the doors randomly opened and we decided it would be best to take the stairs.

They showed us their dispatch interface… It looks like it’s Java-based, although it didn’t have the stereotypical ugly Swing GUI. The interface was modeled a lot like a mail application: a “tree” on the left, and two panes on the right. The left tree had three categories: Unassigned calls, Active calls, and Closed calls. It’s kind of neat, though: they have a dedicated calltaker, and a couple dispatchers (who answer calls if the primary calltaker is busy). So as he talked to us about how the system worked, we’d watch stuff pop up in the Unassigned category, and a timer would start. With any luck, it’d get moved into the active category in a matter of seconds, denoting that units had been dispatched. They had about half a dozen actives at any given time. Some lasted a few minutes: a traffic stop would pop up and close a few minutes later. Others were much longer-lasting. A call to check the well-being came in as he was talking, so he clicked on it to show us how things worked.

It opened the details up in the main two panes. It showed the address, written directions, and other various stuff. Below that was a scroll list with all sorts of entries, essentially notes each person entered. A few lines from the call-taker: “[Name] hasn’t been seen since Friday” and stuff of that nature. Some of the notes are automatically added. One looks up gun permits at the address. This one was an apartment complex, and we saw the classic message, “Too many gun permits to list.” (But clicking on the address pops up a web browser page listing every single one.) Another note adds, “3 prior calls at this address” or something of the sort.

Below that was a list of every officer dispatched, color-coded to show their current status. We visited an ‘older’ call to show more, and it showed an ambulance and fire engine which had cleared, and a couple officers still on scene. We didn’t go into it, but the buttons suggest that the system will permit the dispatcher to automatically determine which units to dispatch. (There’s also a “Roster” menu item he showed, which lists every single officer, the sector they’re patrolling, and their current status.)

I’m also impressed at how advanced some of their other stuff is. It’s nothing new for every call to be logged, along with all radio traffic. But what is new, at least to me, is for it all to be stored on a computer with a little GUI. The other day I was at Campus Police researching police log entries, and the dispatcher took a (very low-priority) call. An officer was asking about some specific detail, so he just clicked a few things on the computer and played back the call. On the radio side of things, in addition to displaying unit IDs, everything gets logged to disk, too.

He also talked about the psychological aspect of the job, which was actually quite interesting. He had some training material which consisted of past calls (not sure whether they’re from the department or not?). In one, he plays back a female caller who’s screaming and wailing. You hear a passing allusion to a gun, and then get an insanely detailed description of a car, and then more screaming. Thirty seconds into the call, he paused it. “So what’s this call about?” We collectively shrugged our shoulders. He kept playing, and the dispatcher finally asks if someone is hurt. We get a no, and more information about the car. Two minutes go by, and we’re still not clear what’s going on. He stops the clip at that point, and talks about how one of the most important things they do is taking charge of the call.

Then he switches to another one. It starts off the same way–screaming. But the dispatcher here is much better. “Calm down, I need you to tell me what happened.” We get that someone was stabbed, and more screaming. “Just send the police! Send the police!” “Ma’am, they’re already on the way. Who is stabbed? Who else is there?” The victim is named (not that the name is what they needed right then, but I digress). The dispatcher prods a little more about the woman’s condition, and then adds, “Can you go check? Is anyone else there?” “Yes, her husband. He’s screaming.” “Are you going to be in danger if you go check on her?” “Yes. He has a knife!” It’s a neat example, because it really changes things. It starts off sounding like a simple medical call, and the caller utterly fails to mention the guy running around with a knife until the dispatcher prods him for enough details. The first officers arrived about 90 seconds after the call came in, and they show up already knowing exactly what they’re facing.

I’m left thinking that some of these skills are things that could probably be applied elsewhere. All too often we rely on what other people say and do, when it’d really be better to take control over the situation. As a mundane example, this type of thing happened all the time at work, when people would come up to me with rambling stories and questions. So rather than directly answering their questions, you take control of the call. “Do you have a waiting list?” lead me to ask about the size of the group. And from there, I’d either tell them we had no list and make a mental note that we had a group coming in, or I’d tell them we did have a list, but the fact that I’d already asked about the size of their group somehow made them seem more receptive to me taking putting them on our waiting list, as opposed to them not coming in.

The whole dispatching thing is vaguely reminiscent of games, though. Rather than deciding where to place a teleporter and sentry gun in TF2, they’re deciding what police cars and fire trucks to send to a given location. (He described it as something vaguely like chess.) Rather than being a “shoot ’em up” game, it’s a strategy game.