A step in the right direction?

In response to the NBC5 News garbage, administrative personnel were present for roll calls. They say, in no uncertain terms, that they will not be addressing the media regarding the joke of an "expose," and will be taking the issue to the police department brass.

If it's not just a publicity ploy, then we welcome it. It's about time someone in our building took our side in something. We'll be waiting to see if the police department is actually taken to task for their lack of manpower, and what changes they'll make (probably not) to the dispatch policy to reflect more realism.

We still want to know who the %$#& "threw momma from the train." Our eyes are wide open for a male employee who looks to be in the range of 45-65 yoa.

Turncoats

NBC5 News aired a story tonight about RAPS. Second City Cop covers the subject well, with references to how short the districts are.We can thank "one of our own," whose identity we couldn't make out on the video at all (Do you even work the Ops Floor?), for tossing us up the creek without a paddle.

We can also thank Deputy Superintendent Charles Williams for blaming us for not having resources. He says that high-priority jobs should be given to anyone available, be it a tac/gang car or a supervisor.

Hello? What tac/gang cars are available, for example, between 5:45 and 6:30 p.m. in the middle of their shift change? How many supervisors will say "Put me down in the station on reports, squad." How many tac/gang sergeants will call on the PAX or come on the radio and clearly state that their cars are on a detail or mission and won't be answering the radio?

As for the "911 dispatcher" who appeared on the news segment, we won't speculate on your race. But how dare you throw the race card when you know (if you work the Ops Floor) that the districts that have the most RAPS are the districts that have the higher crime rates and worse manpower shortages at the same time? You apparently never work busy zones, and never have any yellow jobs during shift change when you have 5 10-99 units on the street for 45 minutes. We should tip our hats to you for being the greatest thing since sliced bread, the cream of the crop.

We see zones on days, afternoons, and midnights with yellow jobs and RAPs. Are all of those dispatchers "sitting" on the calls? How about the times when tac/gang units do ride on priority calls and there's still a backlog and a half page of jobs?

The citizen interviewed in the segment said that two hours is too long for a "priority one case." We couldn't agree more. We don't try to make citizens wait two hours for the police...when citizens have to wait two hours on a "priority one case" it's because we don't have police to send. Why do the media, a deputy superintendent of police, and one of "our own," choose to blame us for the lacking "resources" within the police department?

Williams would not confirm why so many RAPs seem to occur in minority neighborhoods.

"I'm not going to say (they could use more) resources. I will say that these are areas where, perhaps, you have a lot of gang activity that may be taking place," he said.

Really? Well, if there's that much gang activity in that area, don't you need more resources to handle and squash it? Or are we missing the big picture?

"The more serious a priority, the faster we want it dispatched and the faster we want it responded to," he said.

So do we. We just need someone who's done our job to explain to us how we should provide expedient service to higher-crime districts when an overabundance of your district manpower is allocated to places like 018 and 001 (can we say, at least 30 foot beats combined in addition to a wagon for each sector?). On midnights, many districts don't have wagons at all. Tac/gang cars are done at 0200 hours (officially), and in many districts that leaves a total of 20 or less police officers patrolling the streets in the wee hours of the a.m.

Williams said that dispatchers and their supervisors at the 911 center should immediately draw on other resources for priority one cases, whether a RAP is in effect or not.

Excuse us. A RAP is a situation where there are Radio Assignments Pending and there are no units to assign to those pending assignments. This isn't rocket science. To tell us to "draw on other resources" if "a RAP is in effect" is to tell us to pull cars that don't exist or are not available to assign out of our asses. Does anyone else see the blatant self-contradiction here?

We quote Second City Cop:

Screw this dispatcher and their half assed racial motivations and fuck Channel 5 for running with this bullshit story. WE HAVE NO MANPOWER IN THE DISTRICTS. Write your goddamn story about the unmanned rapid response cars and the 30% down beat cars every single midnight in most districts. Put the blame where it belongs - 5th Floor, City Hall.

We agree wholeheartedly. And we wish that the media would get the whole picture (and that "our own" would paint it insteading being a whore for camera time).

To whoever in our adminstration declined to comment and interview with the media: We don't know if your intentions were good or bad. But at least we can appreciate the fact that you didn't draw-and-quarter us and make us "fall guys" on citywide television like our own coworker did.

And to our faithful "coworker": Thanks for proving how we can't stick together and for setting us back 10 years, you puke. Dispatch on Zone 6, 8, 10, or 12 on any watch for a while and go back to the media when you can go 8 hours with nary a yellow job.

Management picks

The police department has "meritorious promotions" and "management picks" to complain about: We just have management picks.

Many people (dispatchers especially) are up-in-arms about who got which watch by "management." It's a never-ending cycle that we can track back many years. Many a PCO has gotten 1st Watch or 2nd Watch by "management" and stayed there until he/she had enough seniority to get the watch by bid. In years past (we're not sure about this year), there were people who got certain watches by "management" when they had enough seniority to get them by successful bid.

Now, if there's a watch to discuss, you can bet that a lot of people have their noses turned up because they didn't get it by bid or management, and someone with less seniority got it by management.

People, it's called a "management pick" for a reason. Management picks it, and no PCO has any direct say-so in the matter. We'd suggest that if you think it's unfair, ensure to have it written out of the next contract that should be effective on 01Jul07 that won't be ratified until 2009. But too many people would complain about not having chances to get watches by "management" because of their low seniority.

Cameras and microphones in squad cars

We knew it was coming. A SecondCityCop reader expands on the virtues of the cameras and microphones in squad cars.

Seems that there is now widespread use, so Big Brother is on the move. Their traffic stops are going to be recorded (this means you), their in-car conversations are going to be recorded, and anything else personal that the public doesn't need to know will now be on audio and video record that is property of the Chicago Police Department (this means them). P.O.s, beware. Dispatchers, too. If you get pulled over and try to sweet-talk and flirt your way out of a ticket as you tend to do (it usually isn't necessary), you're probably being recorded.

At least you're being recorded when the things work. There were plenty of units held down in the station at the end of last week, on events like "GOIN: CAMERA NOT WORKING."

New dispatchers

There were supposed to be new dispatchers hired in November, what happened to them?

That idea seems to have fallen by the wayside. The city, whose eyes stay on the bottom line, is saving a lot of money having people work overtime (anywhere from time and a half to double-time and a half rates) until they run themselves into early graves. Costs a lot more in the long run to more bodies and pay them for weeks of training with benefits to boot, only to still be extremely short and continue to pay out overtime money.

Best excerpt we've read in the Sun-Times since

Well, since the last time we read this excerpt:

MARY MITCHELL is
taking the day off.

Watch selections posted

2007 Watch selections are now posted on the south wall of the roll call room. That's the wall directly across the room from the mailboxes, if you aren't good with directions.

There were plenty of surprises, and plenty of complaints, as is the OEMC way. All 5 watches will see plenty of new faces at the beginning of the year, as is the OEMC way.

We have a pretty good idea about which new faces are going to cause the most new frowns from coworkers. But put your frowns down for a minute, and take heed. Don't say we never tried to help.

Furlough selection forms are due on 08Dec06. Furlough picks will take place in the roll call room on 15Dec06.

5th Watch furlough picks will be held at 0400 hours.
1st Watch furlough picks will be held at 0600 hours.
4th Watch furlough picks will be held at 0900 hours.
3rd Watch furlough picks will be held at 1100 hours.
2nd Watch furlough picks will be held at 1400 hours.

Be there. We cannot stress this enough. Be present for the furlough picks. Bright and early. The process will not pause 15 minutes for your precious arrival. You may be surprised by what furlough you can get if you're present to see what's still available when you're called. If you're not there by the time your name is called, then you're stuck with what you get.

Furlough picks will be posted on 18Dec06. That is all.

HBT

It's over now, but it will still be the hot topic around work for days to come. We won't speculate on why it happened or why who did what (we obviously weren't there if we were dispatching), so we'll just say it's a tragedy, a Thanksgiving that changed Thanksgiving for many family members for the rest of their lives.

We will speculate that since Dana Starks said "At no time did the Chicago Police Department fire a weapon," it won't take long for some of the family members to decide they're going to sue the city and police department for "inaction."

Training

A visitor posted on the "HBT" thread and mentioned that we need to be trained, as dispatchers, on how to handle HBT incidents on our end. We agree.

We have no in-service training at all. Once we're passed (many undeservedly) and put out on the floor after our two to three months of training, we'll never be formally trained on anything again, unless we go on leave and get retrained before getting put back on the floor. Aside from roll call training, all we have to rely on are "Training Notices." Who really benefits from them?

By the way, we also wonder how some people made it through training. There are certain people who don't seem to know their heads from holes in the wall, but have been dispatchers for many years and stressed almost every last person who's worked with them.



Update: In light of the first comment, allow us to say this. We did not mean, in any way, to slight the people who worked the back Citywides and handled the HBT over the course of 24 hours. Our take was that we're not trained for such, and if the slightest thing goes wrong on the Citywide end, the dispatchers are left to hang the blame on, due to lack of formal instruction. We believe there's a years-old SOP on HBTs that's practically dry-rotted.

Publicity

Now that we're "back with a vengeance," as SecondCityCop mentioned, we're on a publicity campaign. It would be senseless to update for a small audience. So tell a friend or five about the site. Tell a co-worker, too. We'll do our part.

cpddispatchblog@yahoo.com

Civilian dress

Civilian dress was allowed for Thanksgiving. No blue jeans were allowed (although we did see a select few pairs), but we're proud. Everyone [we saw] who dressed out of uniform did so tastefully. Even if you weren't matching all that well, your outfits weren't too tight, or too tacky looking. And for that, we thank you. We all do.

HBT

69th and Jeffery Blvd. It's been on Citywide 5 for going on 24 hours now, and beat cars from the north side are being sent there on detail.

Isn't it time to end this one way or another?

Red-light cameras

Just a passing thought, a passing a red light thought, actually. Surely many of us have gotten tickets in the mail advising us of red light cameras that took our pictures at intersections we didn't realize had cameras at times when we blew through red lights because we never do such a thing.

But did anyone ever notice that the ticket displays your exact speed at the time the picture was taken? We hope we aren't opening a can of worms (not many people browse the site as of late anyway), but can speeding tickets be far behind? We know the city loves to milk its citizens of more money than it already gets from them (Read: tax rates higher than most of the rest of the country). We wouldn't be surprised if the city started mailing speeding tickets with pictures taken from red-light cameras (a-la State Police). They wouldn't be able to put a ticket on your driving record (they can't do it with red-light violations now) because they can't prove who was driving.

But the city doesn't really care about that anyway. It cares about the bottom line. Cash money. Dollar bills, y'all.

Same watch?

We have 5 watches to choose from now, or at least some of us do. Are there going to be a lot of new faces on each watch? Or are people pretty much staying on their respective current watches? We know you love the job and where you are and wouldn't change a thing.

We have influence.

Even in our absence...maybe due to our absence...another Chicago 911 Employee blog has been started. We begrudge the coworker not, we feel no petty competitiveness, and we wish him or her the best of luck. You can even see a link for it over <---------- there.

But here's another one. It's at http://letstalkchitown911.blogspot.com. We're honored to have at least played a minor part in the inspiration...even if it was because we fell off of the face of the earth for a while.

Are we really missed that sorely?

We're touched, and not just by virtue of being OEMC employees. But there aren't a hell of a lot of new topics to discuss. We have a rather mundane job, without media coverage...and without a lot of out-of-the-ordinary happenings at the workplace. And, with only 400 of us in one centralized location, it is much more difficult for us to address topics and maintain the same anonymity that SecondCityCop can with, say, over 10,000 employees spread from one end of the city to the other.

But, if you want a new board for discussions, then here it is...at 55 comments, the last one is kind of burned out. If a topic that comes up needs its own post, we'll post our thoughts on it.

By the way, thanks a million to the person who decided to add our e-mail address to a spam list. Bastard.