By Amanda Pinto
New Haven Register
MADISON, Conn. — The distance between the dispatch center and the areas where town police supervisors work can’t be more than a few dozen feet.
Until recently, those familiar with police and dispatch said, it seemed more like a chasm.
Palpable friction between some dispatchers and some cops has long simmered. Some officials said it is beginning to be quelled by new Chief John Drumm.
A Freedom of Information request for all Police Department correspondence related to problems with the dispatch center yielded more than 160 pages of documents written within the last year. The stack of papers, authored largely by police supervisors, chronicles dispatch errors that range from information inputting problems to failure to provide information that can “jeopardize officer safety.”
In another memo obtained through FOI, a dispatcher wrote that he and his co-workers were tired of being the “scapegoat” for Police Department mistakes.
“There is beginning to be a lot of animosity between some of the officers and some of the dispatchers,” Sgt. Jonathan Pardo wrote in a Sept. 19 memo obtained through FOI. “If this situation is not corrected, then it is inevitable that someone is going to get hurt.”
Director of Public Health John Bowers and Director of Emergency Management Edmond Brunt, who are in charge of dispatch, said Drumm has already worked to remedy that animosity.
Brunt said he’s already noticed a positive shift in morale at dispatch.
Drumm said the relationship between dispatchers and cops is vital, and that they need to work well together.
“I see it as interpersonal relationships that need to be worked on, no different than any other communications center anywhere in the country,” he said.
Although the dispatch center, which handles calls for the volunteer Fire Department, ambulance, police, 911, and radio channels, is housed within police headquarters, police have no administrative control over the center, Brunt said.
The dispatch center was taken out of the auspices of the Police Department around 2005, after the town’s two volunteer fire chiefs said the system was in disarray and pushed to form a regional center with Guilford. The dispatch centers never merged, and dispatch has been since managed by Brunt, who reports to Bowers.
It’s a “nontraditional” layout and has caused some friction, Bowers said.
Police lieutenants, apparently responding to a request from former Police Department leader Robert Nolan to document their complaints, have compiled in the last year a litany of problems they saw in dispatch.
The majority of the documents obtained through the FOI were printouts from the department’s computerized call system -- showing errors in information gathering. Chronicling dispatchers’ “typos” had an effect on morale, Brunt said. Bowers said dispatchers “feel picked on.”
“Suggestions for improvement are legitimate, but when someone’s just trying to put out typographical mistakes in an effort to create turmoil, I don’t take it very seriously,” Brunt said.
But not all of the errors were typographical. In the stack of papers, there are memos that claim dispatchers didn’t verify the correct address, or give police officers enough information about the arrest history or weapons a suspect might be carrying. It prompted one supervisor to write the information provided to police responding to calls is “unreliable.”
In one memo, Nolan wrote that some of the dispatcher actions could “very well jeopardize an officer who initially responded to the call.”
“We have taken disciplinary action against a number of dispatchers based on the way they handle calls,” Bowers said.
Brunt praised the dispatchers, who process 5,000 911 calls and 15,000 calls for service annually, as part of a job that consists of “hours of boredom and moments of sheer terror.”
“Each one is absolutely concerned and committed to officers on the road, there’s no doubt in my mind,” Brunt said.
The resolution, Pardo suggested in the Sept. 19 memo obtained through FOI, lies in better communication.
“Officers do not have a clear understanding of what a dispatcher has to do; likewise, the dispatchers do not have a clear understanding of all the hazards associated with policing,” Pardo said. “We need to get everyone together and make sure that dispatchers/police understand what is expected of them for the safety of everyone.”
Brunt said he hoped the situation would improve “now that we have a permanent chief.”
The general climate between cops and dispatchers has recently taken a turn for the better, Pardo said.
Copyright 2010 Journal Register Co.