#911 dispatch

[dizzydispatch]

Deaf Americans and 9-1-1

It was sweet that he thought of me when he heard another police department over our region's shared police frequency, requesting the assistance of an officer fluent in American Sign Language with the arrest of a Deaf individual. Maybe the appropriate response would have been something along the lines of, hey, neat!

But I didn't think it was neat, and I still don't. In fact, it bothered me. the official symbol for ASL interpreters, based on the sign for "interpreting"

"That's super illegal," I texted Gabe back. "They can’t use an officer. A Deaf person has the right to a certified interpreter."

"Interesting," he sent back. "That's good to know."

But I wasn't done. "Just think about it," I continued. "If their Miranda rights aren’t read, correctly and in full, the entire arrest is bonk. How much worse do you think it could be if an un-licensed cop plays interpreter and screws something up? Even if they don’t, there’s no accountability. It’s a really risky game to play, as a department. You don't fuck with the ADA unless you want a serious lawsuit."

In 1990, then-President George H. W. Bush signed the ADA into law. The Americans with Disabilities Act was meant to protect individuals with a wide array of disabilities, a category that includes the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

“The ADA broadly protects the rights of individuals with disabilities in employment, access to State and local government services, places of public accommodation, transportation, and other important areas of American life. The ADA also requires newly designed and constructed or altered State and local government facilities, public accommodations, and commercial facilities to be readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities."

There are a few different ways that dispatchers are expected to comply with ADA expectations. The first method is using TTY technology, with which our 9-1-1 systems are required to comply. There's also text-to-911 services, some of which work better than others, and silent call procedures, in which a party unable to unwilling to speak aloud can still communicate with dispatchers. 

But even after the call, there are a thousand different ways that a deaf person can be failed by emergency responders. From police interactions to neglect in the courtroom, the issue is broad and systemic, and fixing it is going to require more than just attention and awareness.  

For a d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing person, the right to an interpreter is probably the most important right protected by the ADA. After all, the primary barrier of deafness is communication. How are you supposed to know what you're in trouble for when you're arrested, or follow along in your own court case, or tell the police what happened if you're a victim of a crime?

The ADA is supposed to protect against these sorts of injustices, but unfortunately, as demonstrated by the fact that we heard one of our own local PDs requesting an officer with ASL knowledge over the radio, the follow-through just isn't always there. The resources allocated to teaching law enforcement how to deal with individuals with disabilities are severely lacking. As Professor of Sociology Alex Vitale of Brooklyn College states, “Police compliance with ADA provisions is pretty poor across the board. It’s clearly not a priority for a lot of police leaders." 

In some places, in spite of the ADA, violations happen all the time. In 2012, St. Louis police tasered a deaf man on the side of the road, only for it to turn out he was having a diabetic emergency. Then in 2014, an elderly deaf man was dragged from his car and beaten by officers, before being charged with resisting an arrest by the same department that cleared the officers of all wrongdoing. A month later, a deaf man had been similarly beaten, tased, and choked out after being mistaken for a burglar. The officers had seen him signing, trying to communicate with them, and believed the movements to be signs of aggression, and had responded in kind.

This problem has been addressed by independent journals, such as The American Civil Liberties Union and The Atlantic, as well as in a humorous episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, guest-starring Deaf activist and entertainer Nyle DiMarco.

However, there hasn't been much coverage of D/deaf interactions with law enforcement in the mainstream media, with the exception of those reports where things do get out of hand. Like with many issues of civil rights, pleas for systemic change continue to go unaddressed, or are only addressed after tragedy occurs. More often than not, too, these are underwhelming measures that smack of PR damage control, and are unlikely to maintain traction after the initial outcry dies down.

There is a reason the law requires anyone who is serving as an interpreter in any official capacity to be certified. Without those protections, children may be coerced into interpreting for parents, which opens up all sorts of issues, both for the child and for the efficacy of services being provided.

Many of the same issues arise when unqualified third parties are asked or compelled to serve in the same way. Interpreters are held accountable to standards of care, much in the same as their doctors and judges are. They are trained in the language's nuance, in skills for effectively communicating complex ideas to and for their Deaf clients. Furthermore, there is a code of ethics, compliance to which can help ensure privacy, regulate appropriate intervention, and serve as a framework for professionalism.

Of course, a national interpreter shortage is part of the issue. In college, I chose the ASL Linguistics track, which focuses on the science of language with ASL as a model, rather than the ASL Interpreting track. This was a decision that many of my peers and even some professors expressed disappointment in, as there is such a profound disparity between the needs of the community and the available resources. I chose dispatch over working directly in the Deaf community, but my background both through my education and in the jobs I worked between the years of 2018 and 2023 has given me insights that I assume the department making the request did not have.

However, as a hearing person with no experience trying to run a law enforcement agency, I am far from qualified to decide what is and is not an acceptable risk. I don't know what was going on at that department. I don't know what kind of attempts may have been made to locate a certified interpreter before they put out that request over the radio. What I do know is that it's still unacceptable. 

Unfortunately, I don't have the answer. I'm just one dispatcher, in one small-town PSAP, with one set of ideals that I wish I could see reflected in the big wide world outside. But I can write, and so I do. I write to inform, to entertain, to commiserate with you, dear reader, dear stranger. I write in hopes that someday, somebody with more power than me understands what needs to be done, and sees it through. 

In the meantime, we can write. We can write to our representatives, calling them to action. We can write to police departments out of which atrocities are born, and demand justice for those wronged. We can write, and we can speak up. We can learn sign language and support organizations that support our local disabled communities. We can listen to the voices of those who experience the world a little differently to us, and maybe, just maybe, we'll be part of the force of change that makes the world a better place for all.

For Americans who want to make a difference, to find and contact your state representative, visit the U. S. House of Representatives website and search by your state and district. The same can be done for state senators here. The National Association of the Deaf has a great letter template that you can use as well. If you are able to and wish to donate financially to local or global Deaf activism groups, the bottom of this Wikipedia page contains a list of organizations from all over the world.

[margot-my-boo]

Sean John the Clothing line would be said it was owned and created by Olivia Newton John and it was her recording studio.

Olivia Newton John was it her recording studio. Evidence suggests and finding facts the Combs as Sean Diddy is a fraud title used by Puff Daddy. Facts are Diddy was arrested for killing Tupac Shakur in the 90's, he went to Brooklyn and changed his name to Sean Combs on bail from Las Vegas. In the 90's with all black judges in Brooklyn crime was even easier if a black male with money in Brooklyn and some places it still is!

Sean John the fancy logo known across America by some to be Olivia Newton John and some to be Sean Combs the fraud cyber attacker.

Dream they say was put up by Diddy and his record label but was it or were they put up by Olivia Newton John the fraud has gone on for years in New York and the year that Sean John building existed Sean Combs would have had to built it at age five or younger but Olivia Newton John she could have built it and the record company that's been around way before Sean Diddy was sperm in a nut sack!

Achieving number one with two well liked songs while Sean Diddy was still in school.

Sean Diddy Combs was actually arrested for the death of Tupac Shakur, whom Tupac claims was a staged death cause Diddy wanted him dead for rapping about the death of his partner Jay Z!

Tupac was not a crip but actually a blood against crips and his lyrics altered to promote gang wars! More so he like claiming he was an Outlaw! Also rode a motor bike with a motor bike gag in with the bloods that went by Outlaw gang Bad Boy Crips in California!

Tupac on a Harley Davidson

Tupac above claiming hes an outlaw!

Luke Combs just to sponsor hows that Diddy a Combs anyhow whats that nigger!

Written by Isaac Daniel Shoff

[lethargicspacepotato]

You're not ready to dispatch unless you have your emotional support selection of drinks and the remainder of your daytime pills.

[american-communism]

Building A Northwest Communistic City and Future

Good places to build and start ca communist ran city that is entirely operated by communism allowing so many visitors that are not republicans and democrats as well for seminars to create future together in communism!

Near the Bridge of the Gods at the gorge's west end is a temperate rain forest that can get over 110 inches of rain annually. As you travel east, the climate gets drier and drier until it becomes semi-desert near Arlington, receiving less than 10 inches of rain per year.

The Columbia Gorge still gets plenty of water and to Washington State and to Oregon State.

Turning the deserts into forests and creating water reservoirs and more from pipelines that would be a simple build with today's machinery and knowledge! The Columbia Gorge is mostly Forest and water ways with many waterfalls!

Yet the places that are desert can easily be turned into fruit forests and have skyscrapers of workers to tend to them, the communistic societies could stretch for many miles in places some a half mile of agriculture farmland that could be even turned into indoor farms to grow year round! The sand is there and everything that is needed to make glass skyscrapers and greenhouses! In the winter water can be pumped into places that even allow the water to run back where it cam from enriching nature and giving it the assistance that it needs!

The Columbia Gorge great northwest is perfect this was the driest year in the great northwest ive seen in over 25 years. usually in July it even rains atleast two to 3 days in a row once usually twice sometimes more not his year rained just not much!

American Communism the great northwest is waiting for you!

Why turn good forests and soil into housing when places are waiting for so much more!

below is a better view of bridge of the gods!

The amount of water under the bridge of the gods and pouring in tot he body from so many places the river rapidly expand just 20+ miles downstream to be an entire mile wide already!

The water below fresh and abundant is only moments away from all that fresh water becoming sea water pouring into the ocean the with good dams and flying pipelines could be used to make the entire central USA and west coast flourish in nature once again!

Starting Communism to become solid in the northwest is what will make the world flourish in nature and more!

[space-engineer]

NASA Bullshit, Extraterrestrials information, And Our Space Administration

NASA claims they mapped and can see other galaxies through a telescope! I say bullshit light only travels so far! It would dissipate before even other solar systems light could reach earth and light would be distorted from light passing through light!

NASA is lie after lie. Then its claimed that dark matter exists between our galaxies but light cant pass through dark matter so seeing another galaxy is not even possible.

However I believe much on solar systems and galaxies has been learned from extraterrestrials and they built our space Administration originally to educate humans and tech parts that they must as we develop and learn together in progression. Most we need to know for a long time still is right in front of us we just have to place things together!

Eventually through my belief I invented a working space engine! My idealization could be wrong but it is my religion and belief and is what i consider logical! Logic is not always correct! But extraterrestrials have sent me messages for years through television images. And i gained education this way as i found out when i phoned a media company that they did not even work there and know aliens exist! I shared such information once publicly many years ago!

So I believe original information on some things well was nothing but correct but seeing from here not possible!

I even know of ways to travel through space faster then light but is very far beyond our civilization!

The space engine is what I bring for my invention. And it can travel faster then light!

I am a space engineer with no degree for I invented the space engne of course we already know many college students jealous like a tupac bitch cd and more will say no your a fraud you never went to college!

Ya well neither did Einstein was he still a physicist

[warpedpuppeteer]

"Eddie was never gay". Eddie worked in the dispatch building and immediately got into a petty passive aggressive territory bitch fight with Josh, the other gay man in the team. Gay recognises gay <3

[whollyjoly]

look we all want buck in tommys hoodie....

but i raise you a tommy who accidentally grabbed bucks hoodie and walks into harbour only to have lucy laugh so hard she falls out of her chair

[peggingeddiediaz]

Eddie Diaz forgetting to log out of his work twitter account part 132/?

[rendtion]

ALL MY PEOPLE.

HAPPY NATIONAL FIRST RESPONDER DAY.

Thank you for your service, guys.

-Your Local 911 Dispatcher

[sirwigglesalot]

The 911 Dispatcher (03-17-2008)

I answered the phone…

“911, where’s your emergency?”

The voice on the other end spoke.

“My dad is dead…he shot himself!”

My heart stopped, but I remained calm.

I began to ask the basic questions: name, number, address.

Then I dispatched it to the deputy…possible suicide.

Told him to remain on the phone until the deputy arrives.

I asked for more information…trying to keep his focus off of his dad.

Then I heard him say “Why?…Dad…why?...Why did you do this?”

Over the radio I heard the deputy say he was on scene.

So when I heard the deputy’s voice speak, I hung up.

What do you say?

How do you just let something like this go?

It’s a job…being the one to take these kind of calls.

No matter how much it gets to me…I can’t give up.

Because I’m still the 911 dispatcher.

So after I got off work, I went for a drive.

Trying to wind down from another eventful night.

I just took off, hoping to get it off of my mind.

But it didn't help so when I got home, I drank a beer.

I finally fell asleep after a few more beers.

When I woke up, I got sick, but it wasn't the alcohol.

I was glad it was my day off.

Went to an old friend’s house to hang out.

While I was there, he told me that his cousin’s father in law died.

I had the nerve to ask how.

I already knew the answer before I finished asking.

He looked at me and said “He shot himself…why?”

What do you say?

How do you just let something like this go?

It’s a job…being the one to take these kind of calls.

No matter how much it gets to me…I can’t give up.

Because I’m still the 911 dispatcher.

I answered the phone…

“911, where’s your emergency?”

The voice on the other end spoke.

“He’s not breathing; my baby boy is not breathing!”

My heart stopped, but I remained calm.

I began to ask the basic questions: name, number, address.

Then I dispatched it to the rescue…EMS.

I told her to remain on the phone while I transferred to St. Johns.

Before I hung up the phone I heard a whimper from a baby.

Over the radio I heard the rescue and medics say they were on scene.

Then I get the call from St. Johns…the patient didn't make it.

It had Sudden Infant Death Syndrome…

it was his twin sister that I heard whimper.

What do you say?

How do you just let something like this go?

It’s a job…being the one to take these kind of calls.

No matter how much it gets to me…I can’t give up.

Because I’m still the 911 dispatcher.

© Erick Scott Neal. All rights reserved

[dizzydispatch]

IX-I-I

History Lessons with Dizzy: Part 1 (the Origins of 9-1-1)

Content warning: brief mentions of domestic violence, school shootings, and death

"Hurry!" coughed one little boy. "Hurry! Get us out!"

"We're suffocating!" the other cried, his voice echoing from beneath the boulder that has entrapped them.

Through coughs and pleas for aid, one of the two boys managed to utter one of the funniest lines ever written into a kids' movie, if you're sharp enough to pick it up:

"Somebody call IX-I-I!"

This moment from Disney's 1997 film Hercules has always been one of my favorite moments. For anyone who doesn't get it, the boy is pleading for some bystander to dial IX-I-I, which is how one might represent 9-1-1 in Roman numerals. 

The reference is further anachronized by the fact that, despite using the titular hero's Roman name (Hercules was, by many accounts, a Romanized take on the Greek Heracles), it is well-established that the movie takes place in Greece. Roman numerals wouldn't be invented until the ninth century B.C.E., whereas the hero Heracles would have been assumed to live closer to 1280 B.C.E., a few decades prior to the start of the Trojan War-- three hundred years prior to the advent of Roman numerals.

However inconsistent with historical and mythological timelines, the detail is, nevertheless, still amusing. Of course, to the layperson (especially one who didn't spend their junior high years poring over the Percy Jackson series, and who certainly wouldn't have read The Iliad well before high school), the joke is as forgettable as it is quick.

Most people my age grew up being taught that, in case of emergency, you dial 9-1-1. I can't remember a time I didn't know that. Even if my parents hadn't taught me, my kindergarten would have, when the fire department did yearly visits to the local elementary schools to teach kids how to do that funky little dance we call stop, drop, and roll.

So it's probably a bit mind-boggling for anyone under the age of thirty to realize that "Call 9-1-1" wouldn't be the accompanying lyrics to the You're On Fire: Now What? choreography. Today, about 96% of the United States is covered by 9-1-1, with much of the "dead space" belonging to areas where cell service is not a guarantee anyway.

But 9-1-1 has only been around for about fifty years. In fact, my town still has the old copper lines in operation today, their upkeep likely due to the not-insubstantial population of mostly older folks who still use them to dial the Police and Fire Departments directly.

In the "old days," to report a fire, you'd call your town's local FD directly. To request police response to a scene, you'd call the PD. The first "dispatchers" were often just whatever officers happened to be in the station. There were also no standards by which these officers would be obligated to respond to every reported emergency.

This lack of response standards is how you get fiascos like the one depicted in one of my favorite campy horror movies, Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988). I had a movie night with some work friends once, and we turned this one into a drinking game: Take A Shot Every Time Someone Does Something That Would Get You Fired In 2024.

Before 9-1-1, if you were in need of medical transport, you would have called a hospital. (If the hospital could spare you an ambulance, it wouldn't have been staffed by medical professionals, either. The advent and development of EMS as we now know it was a result of the spread of large highways, as the increasing rate of speed in modern vehicles and the danger of their occasional collisions became more and more prevalent-- but that's a topic for another day.) 

The need for these numbers to be consolidated was first pointed out in 1957 at the National Association of Fire Chiefs, where the idea for designating one standardized number at which fires could  be reported. A decade later, in 1967, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice convened and decided that the Fire Chiefs were right. 

It was at the suggestion of AT&T to the FCC that the numerals 9-1-1 were chosen, as they were easy both to remember and to dial, and had not yet been assigned either as an area code or a direct line to anywhere. 

Up until then, all phone numbers had been seven digits, and the telephone infrastructure was not equipped to take or dial out a 3-digit one. So the structures in place that facilitated telephone communications had to be fixed up in order to process 9-1-1 calls and route them to emergency response agencies, later dubbed "PSAPs". This was a lengthy process, but Congress had backed AT&T's proposal with a series of legislative acts carried out over the next few decades.

The first 9-1-1 call was made on February 16th, 1968 by Rankin Fite, Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives. However, it wasn't yet a standardized practice. Just because Haleyville, Alabama incorporated 9-1-1, soon to be followed by the State of Alaska and some scattered other places, didn't mean the rest of the country automatically did, too. 

Furthermore, by the time that call volume necessitated designated call-takers, such individuals were not equipped the way we are today. My training enables me to virtually triage a mass casualty event, give life-sustaining medical intervention instructions, and analyze (and hopefully diffuse) a variety of dangerous situations. But the idea of EMD wasn't introduced until after 1978, when the Salt Lake Fire/EMS determined that dispatchers could play a far more vital role in saving lives if only they were trained in pre-arrival intervention.

In 1973, the White House's Office of Telecommunications issued a declaration encouraging mass adoption of the program. In the next three years, 9-1-1 was adopted by just under a fifth of the country. By the 80s, it was up to a quarter, with nine states fully covered, and by 1987, about half the country recognized 9-1-1.

Just as the century was about to turn, Congress passed the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act of 1999, which amended the Communications Act of 1934 (the same bill that created the FCC). The amendment did several things, including officially establishing 9-1-1 as a nationwide emergency number, allowing cell phone carriers to release location information with PSAPs, and requiring that both listed and unlisted phones be able to access 9-1-1, whether they were contracted for phone service or not.

As the 20th Century came to a close, over 90% of the United States had 9-1-1 coverage, and 95% of that was what we call "Enhanced 9-1-1." This refers to the location service that cellular callers mean when they respond to my inquiries about their location by asking me that frustrating question: "Don't you have, like, a map or something?"

(For the record, yes. I  have a map. No, I do not wish to gamble your safety, no matter how annoying you are, on the odds that my maps are always correct. Remember, kiddos: 911: Lone Ranger is not a higher authority than my training.)

It's not just the scope of 9-1-1 that has been developing since its inception, however: the quality of 9-1-1 care has been a constant source of legislative motions as well. 

In 2013, in a quiet hotel room in Texas, a man broke into the room of Kari Hunt Dunn and her daughter. While Kari recognized the man as her estranged husband and likely pleaded with him to not hurt her, Kari's daughter was trying to call for help. Though only nine years old, she knew to dial 9-1-1 in emergencies-- but unfortunately, the hotel's landline service required its users to dial "9" before making external calls. 

To a generation raised with cell phones, the idea of needing to "dial out" is unthinkable, so of course the little girl didn't know why none of her four calls went answered. All she knew is that she'd been told her whole life that, no matter what happened, if she dialed 9-1-1, someone would come to help, and now, nobody was coming. 

For five years, Kari's father Hank Hunt fought to make sure nothing like this would ever happen again. Finally, on February 16, 2018, "Kari's Law" was passed federally, requiring all phone service companies to ensure that 9-1-1 would be accessible on all serviceable phones, without the need to dial out.

Along with Kari's law, you also have RAY BAUM’S Act, which highlights the importance of exact location services and encourages PSAPs to use whatever tools and technology are available to obtain as precise a location as possible. There's also Alyssa's Law, named for a victim of the Parkland school shooting, that requires schools to have silent panic alarms linked directly to emergency response services, and has been passed in many states.

It's hard to reconcile the good these laws do with the names we give them: each one a reminder of the people we've failed to save, the disasters we couldn't prevent, the deaths we couldn't stop. But each call I take, I learn a bit more, and I get a little bit better at my job. And with each tragedy that we as emergency responders fail to prevent, we refine our craft a little bit more. 

Seeing how 9-1-1 has developed in this time is one way to mark our progress. We've come a long way, after all, from the days of IX-I-I.

[hotcinnamonsunset]

linda's work wives club💼

[hisbucky]

Maddie, whispering: Eddie worked at dispatch while I was gone, right? May: Yeah, not as a dispatcher though - Maddie: Not the point. How much did he talk about Buck while he was here? May: ...He never really stopped. You were right, they're kind of obsessed with each other. Maddie, thoughtfully: Good. That's good. We're one step closer to making them realize they're idiots who belong together.

[neverevan]

9-1-1 SEASON 7: FAVORITE MOMENTS ↳ part 13/?

[chronicowboy]

buck casually mentioning that the last time he played poker he thought maddie was setting him up with josh:

eddie:

[space-engineer]

Space Engineer-Isaac Daniel Shoff

I'm the space engineer of the future, and no I never went to college. Not a licensed engineer neither.

See I tagged it this way cause I actually was ripped off by patent agencies already that are spies and attorney spy thieves. USA s number one patent thieves work for other countries and go by Davison Design & Development. Took me for over 300 inventions filed. So I filed my space engine with 911 dispatch and district of Columbias senators office. Lol. All dispatch offices and more government no I'm the space engine inventor even the Pentagon. Lol. Gave invention to China cause whites are pieces of shit thieves now and days. Heck probably always been.