Caller: Domestic violence!
Dispatcher: What is your address?
Caller: 123 Easy Street. Just get the cops out here!
Dispatcher: Is anyone injured?
Caller: No! Stop asking me questions, I need the f***ing cops NOW!
Click … dial tone …
This scenario plays out hundreds of times a day all over the United States. People with a legitimate need for domestic violence intervention call their local police department and inadvertently frustrate the efforts people charged with assisting them in moments of crisis.
In the last five years in my position as a sheriff's office dispatcher, I have been on the receiving end of many of these calls. This is what I’d like to tell everyone who calls for help, but I don’t have the time or the opportunity while we're on the line during the emergency.
Last year a close friend of mine who is a police officer was shot during a domestic dispute. He survived but it was still scary for everyone involved – especially the girlfriend of the aggressor, whose ear was grazed by a bullet, and the officer's wife, a dispatcher who was working at the time of the shooting.
I need some important information from you. I don’t want you or anyone else to be hurt or killed.
I know you are in a dangerous situation when you pick up the phone. But I cannot send my officers into a dangerous situation unprepared. If you hang up on me, I will call you back until my questions are answered unless you have said something that makes me believe I would endanger you by calling back.
Sometimes your need for help seems to be in direct conflict with my need to supply accurate information to the responders. You want the problem solved; I want to prevent problems for my officers.
Sometimes you regard my questions as nosy. I don’t mean to be that way, but there are some things I need to know when you call for help.
If someone involved in the incident is drinking or on drugs, I need to know about it. Alcohol and drugs increase the potential for violence against the responding officers because the person under the influence is not fully in control of themselves. If they have threatened violence or already been violent toward you or your child, they won’t hesitate to go after a police officer who they sense is interfering in a personal affair. Our homes are our castles and most of us will take steps to defend what we believe belongs to us.
