By Andrea Grant
noteworthy
Triaging 911 calls is a life-or-death job. Suffolk University Sociology & Criminal Justice Professor Jessica Gillooly studies how the descriptions that dispatchers provide to police sometimes add to the danger.
“For example, call-takers often have seconds to decide between coding a mental health call as a ‘suicidal subject’ (high priority), ‘welfare check’ (lower priority), or ‘emotionally disturbed person’ (even lower priority). How they triage the call will shape the nature of the police response,” says Gillooly, whose research on call-taker alarmism led to a January Los Angeles Times op-ed.
Gillooly herself has worked as a 911 call-taker. She recalls in the op-ed the night a veteran dispatcher stepped in to clarify key details of a report she had taken about a trespasser: “Was I sure that the caller didn’t know the man? Could he have been a maintenance worker? I didn’t ask the caller and I didn’t know.”
Answering those questions set the stage for a less tense encounter. The “suspicious person” turned out to be a member of the cleaning crew.
Dispatchers have a responsibility to distill facts from callers who might be distressed or making assumptions based on bias, Gillooly says. Her work offers best practices to avoid escalating situations.
“Some call-takers are so concerned with maximizing responses that they discount the risks that come from hyping up the situation to police,” she says. “This can be tremendously dangerous.”
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Photography by Getty Images, Michael J. Clarke
