Morons.

Life is full of them, right?

With my new job I seem to hear a lot of stupid things.. Things that would make you want to reach across the phone lines and smack the other person up-side their head.

Take, for example, the moron who called 911 a few nights ago and I happened to answer his plea for help.

It went something like this:
Me: 911 where is your emergency?
Moron: Ya down here a' XX n' YY ther' is some mob actin' goin' on
Me: What do you mean by 'Mob Action'
Moron: Uh well der' is abunch of people gangin' up ova' here
Me: How many is a bunch and what are they doing? [I can now hear my partner taking a large fight call next to me near the intersection Moron gave me]
Moron: Well a bunch and they fighting
Me: Sir my officers are en route, but I need to let my officers know how many, can you give me a number?
Moron: Uh like 20
Me: Now are any of them armed and who are they fighting?
Moron: I already told ya naw' get tha po-lice here quick!
[click]
Me: heeellloooo?

A little while later after the police got on scene and cleared it as 10-8 (available) just a group of juveniles walking down the street.. no problem.. the moron calls 911 to complain that he was asked too many questions.
After speaking with my partner and her having telling him twice that it's not an emergency to complain he will have to call 123-1234 to complain he was given to my supervisor who basically told him that he was going to be arrested for misuse of 911 (hoorah) if he doesn't hang up and call back in the morning.

I never did get pulled into the office, I guess I didn't ask enough questions..



Just to throw out there to anyone else looking into 911 dispatch as a job the training will probably vary from center to center.. We got a few weeks of in class training than was sent out with another dispatcher for a few weeks.. I do have to say that you will need to know how to use computers and not be nervous over the phones, that was a big downfall for some of the new people that started with and after me is they weren't familiar with computers and weren't comfortable with them. That and I have heard stories of some past dispatchers that would refuse to answer 911 lines (who were than let get due to that fact). But it's been great, I knew a lot about the police side of things due to my classes I was taking and the fact that I was able to do a couple of ride-alongs with my city and county police so I became more familiar with their basics (beats, 10 codes, call signs, etc)

Monster

Anyone try Monster.. No, I'm not talking about the thing that lives under your bed.. The I'm talking about the 'energy' drink Monster (I guess there are multiple flavors and whatnot..)

Last night I worked for almost 24 hours straight.. woohoo.. It started Saturday morning getting up at 6 for my other job to be there at 7.. I got off that at 1 pm and I saw I had a message to come in for a few hours (only 4) so I took it.. While I was there there was a call off for the midnight shift, and at the time I passed on it..

I went home, 'chilled' for a bit and than ran out to grab some oh so delicious Chicken Ring Sandwiches from White Castle (It's going to be the death of me.. I make food runs almost nightly there now, gosh) and decide what the heck, I will take the midnight shift I am feeling up to it..

So I get there for my shift and we start the night off with what came in as a pursuit..
Woohoo indeed..
So what we thought was really a pursuit that State had on the highway turned out to be a caller on the phone following some dude that stole some stuff and NO police had got to the vehicle to pull it over.. Whoops that's not what I was told! I put out the 10-80 (code for pursuit) and had 4 Tac units and a couple County guys going up to help.. The catch up to the guy and wait for State to pull the guy over since we were now traveling in another county and didn't want to be the ones who started something..
They arrested the bad guy..

After that my channel was pretty quiet for the most part for a Saturday night..
So, lets get to my Monster story..

One of the other dispatchers ran out for a bit for a break out back, one of her friends stopped by that works for the County, and also for the same company that distributes Monster.. She came back in with two BIG cans (like two and a half pop cans, ha) of Monster, one for me and one for another guy in there but he didn't want it..
So I got both.. Lemme tell you they taste pretty good but have a strange after taste.. but I don't think that they work.. I was really tired (we all were) and I didn't feel it make me untired, I felt hyper but tired.. make sense?

Anyhow, they are pretty good but I should try them next time before my body starts to shut down and fall alseep.. By the time I got home I was running on hour 24 of up and running.. and I was half tempted to turn around and take another shift in the afternoon, but I decided I was too crazy.

I love the money though..

Now what should I spend it on.. :) I am looking at buying a Nikon D40 .. I've spotted a couple of good buyers on eBay that have them with a few lenses and a few other items for a decent price.. I've always had a likeing in photography, just never had a decent camera to do anything with.. now that I have this monster of a PC that is capable of doing some really cool after effects with Photoshop I am having fun with what my camera that I have can do..


Hmm .. I guess I picked a good blog title because I just realized I truley am rambling! Sorry!

Work...

Haven't been around for a while.. I've been working, working, sleeping, working.. That's about it!

It's been pretty crazy.. Talk to my first suicidal (well.. eh, he wasn't that extreme since the police didn't send him to the loony bin) on the phone.. I could-a done better and the rest of the room let me know what I did wrong and what to do next time..

You would figure since Summer has come and is gone and since kids are now in school that they would be less prevalent to getting hit by cars.. Well for some odd reason the last few nights have had a handful of kids on bikes getting hit by cars. And kids running into the side of a car at that..

The remnants of Ike dumped on us and flooded a good part of the county, but didn't do any really sever damage.. but, moron after moron decided it would be a good idea to disobey the sign that says "water on pavement road closed" and try and get through. Not a good idea.
And on top of it, the officers that are now having to break away to deal with your stupid 'I was running late' excuse will now spend time writing you citations and inform you that you will have to get your own tow truck and get yourself out of the water.
And to all of the lucky people that got the many citations dished out by a few officers sitting on the other side of those really nifty big orange signs I have no sympathy. You see the signs, then the police cars, and maybe even another moron that has already been pulled over, yet you still try and go through the barricades to try and go through the 3 feet of water..
God help us all.

Really? Thanks for letting me know..

I get a call the other day on the 911 line... it went something like this
"Hurry there's a dog chasing and biting people"
"Okay.. where are you and what does the dog look like"
"We are at the corner of xxx/yyy street and it's a big black dog, it has big teeth, a tail and fur"
"....... I have the police on the way"
I hang up and am 10% stupider thanks to this caller, damn.


To the anon caller about the vicious attack dog, I thank you for letting me know that dogs have teeth, tails and fur.. without you I would not know where I stood in life.. I salute you.


Aside from that idiot, we have dealt with a vast range of idiots in the last few nights, I think something got into the water.. damn..


Update on me.. I finally was released out of training and am on my own, woohoo.. It's been a blast, I am liking the shift I chose (the afternoon, busy shift..) and the people I am working with.. plus I am starting to pick up OT which is going to help with the paycheck!

I see I got a comment from one reader, pretty neat! Thanks for letting me know that I at least have one person reading my nonsense! I guess I gotta keep updating this then, huh?!

Don't drink and drive

So.. Last night I was working City Fire.. and my partner working City PD got up so I had her radio up and all of a sudden my Sergeant keyed up "I dont think he is going to stop for me".. we are all like wtf?... a second later "[engine revving] Radio advise CITY TO OUR NORTH that they have a motorcycle going about 120 up YYY street, I am 22ing (disregarding) it's too dangerous"

So, I 10-4 him and my partner gets on the phone with city to the north and lets them know, not even 10 seconds later our cell phone 911 board lights up.. calls about a motorcycle 10-50 (accident) infront of a pizza place just 10 blocks north into city to the north on the YYY street..

As we are taking the 911 calls, the Sergeant keys up and says it looks like he wrecked up there.. we 10-4 that and adv him we are getting multiple 911 calls and he is now going to assist..

My partner gets a 911 caller that walked up the male driver, states he is barley breathing and not responding.. and he walks over to the female passenger on the motorcycle and informs my partner that.. her leg is missing..

4 ambulances are dispatched for 4 transports.. the guy driving the speeding motorcycle hit another motorcycle from behind, lost control and wiped out.. the 2nd motorcycle driver was able to crash down and come away with minor road rash and head scrapes.. the speeding motorcycle continued to flip and fly out of control for the next three blocks before striking a car waiting at a stop light and injuring the driver of that vehicle..

The Sergeant informed me when he came into the comm center later that night that the male driver lost all vitals in the bus on the way to the ER and the female was in very bad shape (anyone who lost a leg would be in my opinion) but at the time we left our shift at 6 am they were still barley hanging onto life in the ER.. the crash happened at 1:15 am..

State Police shut down the three blocks of the major road for 6 hours while reconstructing the accident, and brought in flood lights from a few fire departments around the county.. both the male and females BAC was 3 times the legal limit at about .25 (IL is .08).. I will find out for sure tonight when I go in if they made it or if the coroner was paged for their deaths..


Good thing the Sergeant called off any attempt at chasing the driver, because if he did it would have fallen on him and the department.. I guess the guy went by the officer at about 85 and took a turn and almost spilled.. the Sergeant said he saw no brake lights at all and the guy blew a stop light at least going 100+ mph..


Stupid.. And they looked to be in their 20's.. We hope they both survive and that this guy will have to live with the responsibility of casuing the misery to the lady he was driving that night.. But I highly doubt they survived since the impact was so violent and the fact that neither were wearing helmets..


[update]

After going into work today, I was able to get a little update on their status, as of this morning they were both still alive at our local hospital, I did not get information on the status of the female and her leg, but I doubt it was saved..

[update]

They are both still listed in critical condition, the females leg could not be saved and it was lost, the State Police have a minimum speed estimate at this time of 100 mph at the time of impact, they will have a report done with the final calculations but that is still going to be an estimate since there was no actual skid marks to use as reference.. also, all that was left of the motorcycle was the frame and engine, everything else was torn off and destroyed.. The male is being charged with DUI amongst many other traffic violations

When it rains, it pours..

It was a Saturday night, and pretty quiet for being a Saturday.. Then it hit the fan..

It all started about 8pm, two hours to the end of shift.. I took the frantic 911 call of a guy screaming it's on fire.. it's on fire.. after getting what it was and where he was the fire department was summoned in full force.. it was an acetylene tank which is used for welding, and it was next to an oxygen tank next to a house.. We had the guy get anyone that was in the house out and go down the street since the two are extremely flammable and under pressure.. It was treated as a structure fire and got a full response from City Fire and an auto-aide engine from the city to our north (Which is amazing that they came over the air and responded, usually they take a pass since they are vollys and not always fully staffed)

As city was taking care of this fire, and getting it under control city to the north (which has their own dispatch center) had a report of a structure fire in an apartment complex building, which activated auto-aide for them and send a City Fire engine, and two engines from two other departments.. We are the MABAS center for our county (Mutual Aide Box Alarm System) and that means if city to the north called for a box-alarm on their fire we would take over the fire traffic, page the box and run the show from our center.. So, we prepared and since I am the new guy they were going to have me page it, so I got the card printed and waited.. and they called for a investigation box... whaa?! That threw us off, so we paged out the arson team and went about our own business until the town all the way east had a structure fire!

Town to the east is volly, and do not have auto-aide, so when we got the 911 call about the garage fully engulfed attached to the house I paged the fire dept, printed their box card, went to the printer and was about 2 steps from my console when the chief went over the air and called for box card 123-321, woo! My first Box! I paged it out and spent 1 minute and 40 some seconds over the air giving all of the changes and calls and was done.. I was told that it was better than some of the people that have been there for a long time.. that made me feel good!

As soon as we were done paging the Box, as all of the units start going en route, we start getting 911 cell calls about a MVA on the highway just north of the farthest city to the north.. they were saying 4 vehicles involved, jeeze.. So, we page out fire and have them rolling on the way, I call up state police and ask if they need the farthest city pd to assist and she said no, there were 3 troops on scene and 5 en route (wow, I didn't even know that many worked a shift!) .. she then came back to the phone chuckling, telling me that there was only 1 car involed and 3 stopped to help.. no injuries.. how the callers were getting 4 vehicles involved in an accident we don't know...

So, after an hour it died down, all we had going was the box structure fire going out east and for the next hour we were pretty quiet and relief came and we went home.. so in a span of 1 hour we had three structure fires and a mva, with one fire going box.. when it rains it pours!

Status is 10-4

So, it's been a long month! I have successfully completed all of the fun CAD training and whatnot that we have been doing over and over for the last two and a half weeks, (First time they have done it this way, and I feel like it got a bit repetitive at the end, but I learned how to work it really fast, there was another person who was struggling with it so we kept reviewing to keep them up to pace..)

So, I am now starting the afternoon shift next week, it will be my first time operating the radio and I feel really confident about radio, CAD, and call taking, the only thing that I am a bit nervous about will be paging out FD and the things that we have to do for our FD along with the 15+ other FD's and Ambulances in the county.. pshew

I am looking forward for 7-4-08, first night I work on Midnights and it's going to be quite an experience.. I see in my future a slew of "shots fired" and "fireworks" calls.. I just hope I get a PD tac and not a FD tac.. ha!

Man, I am loving this so far... just being in the training of things and how well I am getting along with the other dispatchers (we've sat in, I have more than others because of my progress in CAD, with the dispatchers for a few hours at a time to get a feel of things) and have already started to 'fit in' with the joking that goes around to keep peoples stress down (I swear I didn't push the recline button on your chair when you were up.. honestly... but she thought I did and now I am watching my back, jeeze! haha!)

So far we haven't answered any 911 calls, but we have had the opportunity to pick up and listen at another console, so I have heard actual conversations and we have also listened to recorded calls and man, I can say some people are very 10-96 (that's N U T S for us, or should I say Mental... sorry!)..

I am so excited for next week... wish me luck that I don't get any box-alarm fires off the bat, that will NOT be cool ;)