A lot of people said...

Ruiz is a good guy, he used to work here, he won't screw us over.

What are those people saying now? Either he's not all they said he is, or he's grossly misinformed and has no idea what we really do or deal with on a daily basis. The people who talked about how the place was looking up with him coming here have gone amazingly mute.

Speaking of Executive Directors,

When the hell are we actually going to get one who knows or cares to find out exactly what we do? Maybe much of police brass has forgotten what it's like to be a PO on the street, but at least they - okay, more than half of them - actually were POs on the street before. And look at the problems they have on the other side of the radio from bosses who've "forgotten where they came from." At least there are ranks that they came from to forget. We're just slapped with E.D. after another with no clue. And each one seems to be farther removed from our reality than the last.

Problem is, these people have degrees (we believe, or so it's claimed), and they've majored in business administration or basket-weaving and such, but have never put on a headset to talk to a PO or a citizen.

Oh, what are we thinking, they don't put headsets on to do that, they go to community meetings and give us up like a drug habit.

Keep your damned criticism.

Well, the media's in our asses again. At least it's not the front page, but it's the editorial page of the Sun-Times. As usual, shock value and half-stories prevail. For those of you who are starting refusals to patronize media outlets (Good man/woman), we'll dice the editorial up into misinformed excerpts here. And they can take this information and print it in their rag.

It took an appalling 26 minutes for dispatchers to direct police to a bloody brawl.

Okay, that's already a known fact. What's not widely known is the reason(s) why. The investigation just began this week. You've printed that officials say it should be done within 30 days. Jumping the gun, perhaps?

Officials said the response time...should be 2 to 3 minutes.

Right, in spite of police department general orders that allow for 10 minutes to dispatch Priority 1 calls. In spite of the general citizen belief that in a city of 3,000,000+ citizens, there are enough police to address everyone's "issue" immediately. Keep believing misinformed "officials" who can't decide whether we take 57 million or 2 billion calls a year.

...Not everyone left adrift of the 911 system is so lucky. In 2002, [Ronyale White] call 911 four times before she was shot to death by her estranged husband.

And it was determined that the call was dispatched within the established time parameters. There was effectively no delay in the dispatch of that initial call, and it was officially determined that the officers who were dispatched within those time parameters did not respond in a timely manner. But all that information detracts from the mud-slinging aimed at us. [PCOs: We TELL you that if they can pin it on you, they will. Even if it's NOT your fault.]

Hundreds of 911 calls are made a day.

Really? Try thousands. On a busy day in the summer, we can easily surpass 20 thousand 911 calls in a 24-hour period. And on the best of days, there are less than 40 people assigned per hour to handle up to 1,200 calls in that hour.

Not to mention, what about your quotes of "57 million" and "2 billion" per year? 57 million calls a year is 156,000+ calls per day. But saying "hundreds" minimizes our jobs instead of acknowledging how much work we do well. Now that something's gone wrong, we're just pieces of shit to blame things on.

It would be unreasonable to expect a flawless performance by dispatchers and police. But there is no room for error when lives are at risk.

Then hire robots. You can't put stipulations on what should and shouldn't be flawless. Either you expect flawlessness or you don't. How can you admit unreasonable expectations, and in the next sentence say the opposite? Self-contradictory statements hold no water.

At the very least, there should be no second chances for dispatchers and police who compromise or undermine this system.

So then the policy should be "Revolving Door." You keep your job until you *allegedly* fuck up once. Then you're out the door to make room for the next sucker to hang around until he/she "fucks up" and gets thrown to the wolves. The 3rd Floor Atrium might as well have an alligator pit dug out in the middle of it.

We recall a time a couple of years back when CPD had a "Media Day" of sorts. When the media laid weeks of hell on the department for police shootings, CPD invited the media to do simulations at the range, and they found out that the job they were criticizing wasn't the simple task they assumed it to be.

And we think that OEC Administration should do the same. Invite the media to sit in with 911 calltakers and dispatchers and find out firsthand what a stressful, daunting job we undertake every day.

But that's a pipe dream. We'd have to be backed and not get "thrown under the bus." We'd have to be *believed in* and have someone on our side.

Durkin Park

If you haven't heard about the Durkin Park incident then you're either been asleep in roll call or you seclude yourself from the lot of your coworkers. And it also means you haven't paid attention to the news.

You can see the Executive Director's official OEMC press conference on the matter at CLTV if you scroll down through the video panel. It's entitled "OEMC Durkin Park press conference."

You can also see an article in the Daily Southtown, yesterday's front page of which said very boldly that two 911 dispatchers have been suspended, which was incorrect. They've been placed on administrative leave with pay. At least we can say that they weren't stripped of their due process and immediately placed on suspension, the prospect of which had several people on the Ops Floor up in arms.

And of course NBC 5 joined in, since they're always the quickest to report on OEMC wrongdoings. You can read their latest article here, and see a video snippet here.

We don't know what else was or wasn't going on on the zone during the time of the incident, but we've worked Zone 6 and were amazed at just how busy it is, and how many things are going on at one time. It includes Districts 007 and 008. 007 is an absolute hellhole, and 008 is questionably the largest (geographically speaking) district in the city. 008 is so big that 10-sector cars don't respond to 30-sector jobs because the sectors are literally several miles apart.

It takes a certain skill level to work Zone 6 on a regular basis, and as with everything else in a public safety job, it's not recognized publicly. In fact, in the 12-year history of OEC, we have yet to see a news story where an employee was lauded for the job he/she did. Noone in public safety (except for the fire department and, occasionally, the police department) gets any kind of recognition in the public eye until something goes wrong. And unfortunately in this situation, things went horribly wrong.

We won't comment on the ongoing investigation, and we won't speculate on why the job didn't get put out, and we won't mention who the dispatchers are who were involved (and you won't either, not even by initials this time, no matter how poignant the rest of your comment is). But we ourselves are waiting to find out what was going on that kept the call from going out before it did. We're hoping that the PCO IIs will have solid reasoning for their sake (and for the sake of all of us, indirectly). But we're honestly befuddled.

And we ALL know that they're going to be used as examples. So are the supervisors who are being investigated (you won't name or initial them, either). In the NBC 5 video snippet from the community meeting following the incident, the executive director is quoted as saying:

I'm very unhappy with the way the dispatchers handled the situation.

Huh? Excuse us? We must have missed the whole part about how the situation is under investigation, and no determination is being made until the investigation is completed. We must have also missed the whole "apparently handled" disclaimer that would give an indication that "No, we haven't already decided that you're fucked."

The crowd broke into applause immediately following that statement by the E.D. Of course they're going to love it when even the boss of the people they're blaming sides with them. We imagined the whole huge crowd turning into vampires lusting after the blood of the PCO IIs, and breaking through the ceiling to fly across the city to find them. Maybe that's why NBC cut the scene so abruptly.

We also believe we missed the outrage over these teens who run rampant through the neighborhood wreaking havoc, and the explanation for where the hell their parents were and why they didn't know that their children were involved an what's been described as a riot at 10:15 at night. That could be because the news focused on hanging dispatchers, but who knows.

Where the hell were the parents? How long has this problem been going on? How aware/unaware of it were district personnel? Are we too stupid/too naive/too quick to sweep things under the rug, to face the apparent racial motivation for the attack here? Why the hell, when sergeants can (and do) monitor pending events as they're supposed to, they can tell dispatchers "Event number such&such is a 19P/5P" but were just nowhere to be heard when all of these calls came in about 8445 S. Kolin? It smacks of traffic pursuits where we almost had to redline sergeants because noone would answer up for the notification thereof.

But we digress. We're not trying to render the PCOs blameless, but we are trying to touch on points that the media neglects to keep the shock value of their story.

Also quoted from the E.D.:

When these investigations are concluded, we will issue appropriate discipline, possible termination.

You hear that, people? You're being watched (moreso than you know, more on that later). You're being scrutinized. You're in a position where you can play a major role in whether or not someone lives or dies. You're in a position where if something goes wrong and police/fire/OEC administration can pin the blame on you, you're up the creek without a paddle. We tend to get complacent with the day-in-day-outs of the job, and forget all of these things. It's the same thing every day, the same calls, the same people calling. And we get tired and frustrated. And our Giving-A-Damn meter falls into limbo. Complacency kills. It could kill a citizen, which in turn would kill your career.

We're not saying to internalize the job, and take it home with you. Not by any means, it would be hypocritical (you'll notice this is the first blog update in weeks, because we try to leave the job at the job). What we're saying is cover/watch your ass. Those PCOs we're all feeling worried for? It's going to be one of us next time.

And there WILL be a next time. Trust us.

And head over to Second City Cop. Lot of comments on their post about the topic.

Also amazing?

According to the comments section, CG is also gone.

Any truth to this one, or is it just another false rumor?

Amazing.

Apparently, today is Our Former Fearless Leader's last day at OEC. She's rumored to be leaving for the Water Department.

Anyone else up for some time in the OC on 2nd Watch now?

Oh, and take a good look at your next water bill, lest you end up paying upwards of $1,000.

Someone asked for a new post, here's one.

Anonymous said...

* NEWS FLASH * New Executive Director of OEMC* NEWS FLASH *

Bryan Murphy. Currently 1st Deputy Chief of Staff in Mayor Office

Already?

From the comments section:

Anonymous said...
BREAKING NEWS

AV III IS GONE

That was quicker than we expected. Anyone else got any confirmation of this? And, does anyone have any speculation on who the replacement will be?

UPDATE: We confirmed it for ourselves, thanks to presumably the same poster who gave the information in the first place. Find the first stories at Channel 2 and the Chicago Tribune.

Hope you're happy

Permanent Watch Manager assignments have been announced.

H.C. will be assigned to 1st Watch.
R.D. will be assigned to 2nd Watch.
C.T. will be assigned to 3rd Watch.
M.D. will be assigned to Administration.

Be happy with what you have, it could've been a lot worse. A certain person could have been put back on the Ops Floor after demotion, instead of across the hall. Would you rather have had her as your Watch Manager instead?

More changes on the way?

The end of an era? According Sneed's column in yesterday's Sun-Times:

Gov. Blagojevich is this/close to hiring Andrew Velasquez, the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications chief, in an effort to beef up the state's homeland security.

• • Addendum: But it won't happen until after the mayoral election Tuesday.

The winds of change are blowing. We wonder if we should "be afraid, be very afraid" of who'll take his place, and how clueless that person might be about what it takes to do our jobs. We're sure that it will be someone else who's never worked Communications a day in his life.

A reader at Let's Talk Chi Town 911 has a different take, though, and ponders whether "Our Fearless Leader" who just got demoted and sent across the hall could be up for the spot next. OldSchoolCOS, the blogmaster there, asks:

Does anyone else really think there is a chance "she" left one spot to take the bigger spot? Is this the 'ol saying, the joke is on us?

We truly hope not. Even if for the sake of the city because of the sudden spike in resignations within 6 months of that appointment. People aren't sticking around for that.

You think we were miserable when she was Acting Deputy Director?????? We don't advocate job action (it's disallowed by our contract). But if she were to get that job, PCOs at the side door would be like a herd of cattle busting out of the gates.

Hallelujah

Yesterday marked the end of an era. "Our Fearless Leader" has been moved across the hall, replaced by a former watch manager, and shall bother us minimally, if at all anymore. The title of that position is no longer "Acting Deputy Director," it is now simply Deputy Director of Police Dispatch Operations. No "Acting" capacity.

We predicted this change months ago, and are glad to see it finally became reality. Maybe now we won't get ramrodded by the office "around the corner."

We wish the best to our new Deputy Director, and we hope that he will make a lot of strides in righting the multitude of wrongs and chaotic decisions that stemmed from his predecessor. That takes a lot of work, but he surely can't have our interests at heart any less than the "Fearless Leader" of the last three years.

We also hope that this change will allow administration to see at least a couple of things from the point-of-view of the working stiffs. We've forgotten what it was like to not have someone in the corner office who smiled in our faces and canned us to upper administration.