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Ugly Bastard · 12-01-2004, 08:28 PM

Basic concept. Just write a paper for school? Post it here. Others can feel free to constructively criticize (proofread) the paper in hopes to boulster their fellow Nubblite's grade. Or maybe you're bored and wouldn't mind learning what the Monks in India do during Christmas. Or maybe you just realized you have a ten-page paper on the history of the world due in 10 minutes, and you just remembered that Johnny Sexpants posted a paper of the exact length and subject not too long ago, and you're up for a little plagerism. Or maybe you don't give a fuck and will never click on this thread again, either way, cheers.

***********

Disclaimer: I realize this paper is a pretty poor effort. I put little time into it, and was just going for the bare-minimum. Don't bother correcting my mistakes (not that I expect you to care that much), because I certainly don't care either.

This is a six-page paper required for my CJC 331 "Police Systems" Course.

The 911 Emergency System and the Police-Related Jobs Executing Its Purpose

At 2:00 pm on Friday February 16th, 1968; the first-ever 911 call is placed. Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite called from the Haleyville City Hall to US Representative Tom Bevill at the city’s police station. Bevill answered the phone “hello”, the two exchanged greetings, hung up, and went out for coffee and donuts. A celebration of the first 911 system implemented in an American town was underway (Fitzgerald). It took until 1999 for 911 to officially become the designated nationwide emergency number when President Bill Clinton penned Senate Bill 800 making it so (Bellis). The ability to dial a simple three-digit code anytime you have an emergency, anywhere you have an emergency, has saved countless lives due to the fast emergency responses generated with the 911 system. Today, the technology has become so progressive that satellites and antennas have gotten involved, allowing for pinpoint wireless 911 calls from a cell phone to the proper agency. This paper will deal with several aspects of the 911 emergency system, ranging from the history of its creation and evolution, the enhanced 911 system, and the responsibilities of an oft-forgotten job in policing, the police dispatcher.
In 1876, after dropping battery acid on himself, Alexander Graham Bell uttered these famous words “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you”, and thus was the birth of telephone communication. Several years later in 1937, we see the birth of emergency calling systems. As http://911dispatch.com informs us, it was in 1937 when Britain implemented its “999” emergency calling system. A fire-fatality fire several months back led Britain to creating the emergency number. It is reported that the calls to report the fire were so delayed, that officials became pretty positive that if the calls could have been placed faster, all five would have survived the fire. Britain’s “999” system was successful on its first try when a woman called in the middle of the night to inform police that her home was being robbed. The suspect was apprehended moments later. Clearly the emergency number system had a bright future ahead of it.
It could be debated that several lives would have been saved if other countries had taken the action that Britain did, and create their own universal emergency phone system. Unfortunately it isn’t until 1958 when the next emergency system is in place in the world; New Zealand’s “111” system. Australia follows three years later with its “000” system. Sadly, it isn’t until 1967 when America finally gets in the mix. President Lyndon Johnson’s Commission on Law Enforcement issues a report suggesting that police departments employ a single number to call for help, and that eventually this number should be used universally nationwide. The Commission compared their idea to the telephone company’s long-distance information number. Later in this same year, firefighter Leonard Kershner, is asked by Congress why he thinks that the United States suffered so many fire deaths compared to other countries, Kershner immediately sited poor response times. A few months later, AT&T officials meet with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) officials to discuss the possible logistics of a universal emergency number system. In January of 1968, after several months of snowballing leading up to this announcement, AT&T announces their designation of 911 as a universal emergency number. Widespread speculation follows this announcement as to why AT&T selected “911” as the designated emergency number. The selection was allegedly based on a few factors; the ease of dialing two ones on a rotary phone, some technical switching considerations, and Britain’s precedence with a three-digit number. After reading about AT&T’s announcement the next day, Bob Gallagher, president of the Alabama Telephone Co., decides to beat AT&T to the punch, and implement “911” first. This leads us to the point of the first 911 call detailed in the first paragraph of this paper, and the rest, as they say, is history. On a local note, in March of 1968, AT&T implemented their first 911 system in Huntington Indiana. AT&T chose Huntington because it was the hometown of US Rep Edward Roush who sponsored the adoption of a three-digit emergency number in Congress. It is estimated that by 1993, 911 is available to the great majority of households in the United States.
Today, nearly 140 million Americans are subscribed to a cell phone service (Gaudin). E911, short for Enhanced 911, is an initiative that was taken by the FCC in 1996 (E911). When a person places a call on a regular ground wire, the call is directed to the nearest Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) where the caller’s exact location appears on screen instantly. The cell phone phenomenon introduces a whole new dilemma, how can someone roaming around the country call 911 on their cell phone? Enhanced 911 is the answer. In 1996, the FCC ruled that a 911 call placed from a cell phone must go directly to the nearest PSAP without needing verification of service from a cell phone service provider. This means that even an old cell phone which is no longer serviced by a cell phone provider can still place a 911 call from anywhere in this country. This has directly resulted in the popularity of donating old cell phone’s to charities so un-serviced cell phones can be donated to the less fortunate for emergency calls only. The FCC formally introduced E911 in two phases. Phase I (in 1998) forced mobile phone carriers to disclose the location of the tower from which the signal is being sent to on a cell-phone 911 call. It also demanded that the mobile providers must disclose the number from which the call is being placed. In 2001, Phase II went into effect. Phase II requires that any mobile phone company doing business in the US must provide the exact location, down to the nearest 100 meters from where the 911 caller is located. This is known as Automatic Location Identification. In June of 2003, Senators Conrad Burns and Hillary Clinton introduced the “Enhanced 911 Emergency Communications Act of 2003” (911 Information). The purpose of this bill was to integrate the growing need for Homeland Security with E911. The bill provided money to improve the speed of information coming in from a cell phone call during an emergency. Granting $500 million in tax dollars towards the improvement of 911 infrastructures, our emergency systems today are certainly in better shape than they were pre-September 11th. Senator Clinton says she hopes the bill “[will elevate] emergency communications issues within all branches of government at the federal, state, and local levels” (E911 Caucus).
So now the highly-advanced 911 system is in place. A state of the art telephone and computer system that can do so much except; perform CPR, talk down a suicide candidate, extinguish a house fire, intervene in a domestic dilemma, well you get the idea. This is where the police (along with paramedics and firefighters, but we will be focusing primarily on police) come into play. One aspect of policing that receives less attention than it deserves is the job of the police dispatcher. A dispatcher’s job is to schedule and dispatch workers, equipment, or service vehicles in a speedy fashion as 911 calls come in. In some areas where technology has not advanced terribly far, the speed of the dispatcher’s job performance can literally be the difference between someone living and someone dying. In other more advanced areas, the dispatcher’s duties and responsibilities have been lessened by the automated nature of the 911 system. (Dispatchers – Nature of the Work). Dispatchers are almost always the first person the public is in contact with during an emergency. The dispatcher is the one job that ties the police, EMS, and fire departments in a community together. Citizens dial 911 for an array of emergencies, and although the nature of the emergency dictates which one of the three civil units will handle the emergency, the dispatcher will be taking the calls for all of them. When handling 911 calls, dispatchers question each caller to determine the nature, seriousness, and location of the emergency. In the past, this information was recorded by hand. That practice is nearly extinct now, as we see most emergency information being processed into a computer. In some areas, this information goes through a middle man, a police supervisor. The supervisor’s job is to determine the priority of the emergency, the number of units that will be needed at the emergency, and the precinct from which to dispatch the units (which isn’t a concern in rural communities). In 2002, there were about 85,000 people (mostly in urban areas) employed as emergency dispatchers in America (Dispatchers – Nature of the Work). The US Department of Labor expects job opportunities to grow rapidly in the next few years for dispatchers. “The growing and aging population will increase demand for emergency services and stimulate employment growth of police, fire, and ambulance dispatchers” (Dispatchers – Nature of the Work). Not much thought is given to the fact that the entire concept of policing is hinged on the job of the dispatcher. Sure, on occasion a patrol officer will randomly bump into a situation that needs policing. But the fact is, a great deal of a police officer’s job is derived from responding to the dispatcher’s instructions to respond to a 911 (or non-emergency) call.
In most police systems, a newly hired dispatcher is placed in a new employee in-service program. This is followed by a departmental training program which includes classroom and operational training (McLarty). The responsibility on the hands of a dispatcher is great. In some cases, human lives lie solely in the dispatcher’s ability to communicate clearly with the emergency caller. High context communication is just one quality that police supervisors are looking for in potential dispatcher candidates. An employment notice was recently posted by the San Antonio Texas police department, who is seeking to hire a full time dispatcher. As far as basic requirements are concerned, a simple high school equivalent along with a Texas driver’s license will be enough to get your foot in the door (Dispatcher Employment Notice). However, the depth of skills required for a dispatcher job eliminates a lot of people from contention, and rightly so due to the high level of responsibility associated with the job. There is usually a speed typing quota for a dispatcher job, but surprisingly it can be as low as just 35 words per minute (Finding and Hiring Dispatchers). A clause that seemingly eliminates any outsiders from the job is the need for knowledge of the geographical area. Assuming one does not live in San Antonio (about 99.7% of the people in the US), this would put a huge dent in your chances of being hired as a dispatcher in San Antonio. Two other skills that can be easily taught are the ability to operate telecommunications equipment, and the capacity to determine the seriousness and type of calls. Police executives weed out dispatcher candidates through a series of interviews and tests to see who can stay calm during emergency situations, and who displays the potential to lose control in such a situation. The high-context communication desired for the job includes the ability to effectively communicate clearly with a wide array of individuals utilizing delicacy and diplomacy. The final thing sought out by police supervisors is a “people person”. A dispatcher needs to be able to maintain effective relationships with 911 callers, fellow dispatchers, the officials they are dispatching calls to, as well as the general public. All of these qualities are expected at the low rate of $9-$13 dollars per hour, which is the standard for most dispatchers in America. It is hard to find good dispatchers, when other private-dispatcher jobs in the private sector (such as a cable-service, gas-company, or trucking-business) are able to pay much more, and include better benefits than government dispatcher jobs. This high pressure, high social, “gatekeeper” job is not for everyone as it is the biggest variable in the success of any 911 emergency system.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, Reba. "Where 911 Began." 30 Oct 2002. The History of 911.
<http://www.911dispatch.com/911_file/...story.html>.
Bellis, Mary. "Who Designed And Installed The First 911 System." 1998. The History of 911
Emergency Calls. <http://inventors.about.com/library/i.../bl911.htm>.
Gaudin, Sharon. "Cell Phone Facts and Statistics." 02 Sept. 2004. Network World.
<http://www.nwfusion.com/research/200...tside.html>.
"E911." 01 Oct 2001. The Webopedia. <http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/E911.html>.
"911 Information." 02 2003. Dispatch Monthly.
<http://www.911dispatch.com/911_file/911explain.html>.
"E911 Caucus." 27 2004. Senators Clinton and Burns Introduce E9-1-1 Legislation. House.Gov.
<http://www.house.gov/shimkus/911home.htm>.
"Dispatchers - Nature of the Work." 21 2004. US Department of Labor.
<http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos138.htm>.
McLarty, Nicholas. "Police Dispatcher Training." Northside ISD Police. 16 08 2004
<http://www.nisd.net/police/recruitin...aining.htm>.
"Dispatcher Employment Notice." 30 Oct 2004. San Antonio Police Department.
<http://www.nisd.net/hr/jobs/jobs_pdf...804015.pdf>.
"Finding And Hiring Dispatchers." 14 2003. Dispatch Monthly.
<http://www.911dispatch.com/job_file/...iring.html>.

-Ugly Bastard

[ December 01, 2004, 05:35 PM: Message edited by: Ugly Bastard ]

12-01-2004, 08:28 PM	#1 (permalink)
Ugly Bastard Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: U.S.A. Posts: 13,643 Internets: 247330	Basic concept. Just write a paper for school? Post it here. Others can feel free to constructively criticize (proofread) the paper in hopes to boulster their fellow Nubblite's grade. Or maybe you're bored and wouldn't mind learning what the Monks in India do during Christmas. Or maybe you just realized you have a ten-page paper on the history of the world due in 10 minutes, and you just remembered that Johnny Sexpants posted a paper of the exact length and subject not too long ago, and you're up for a little plagerism. Or maybe you don't give a fuck and will never click on this thread again, either way, cheers. ********* Disclaimer: I realize this paper is a pretty poor effort. I put little time into it, and was just going for the bare-minimum. Don't bother correcting my mistakes (not that I expect you to care that much), because I certainly don't care either. This is a six-page paper required for my CJC 331 "Police Systems" Course. The 911 Emergency System and the Police-Related Jobs Executing Its Purpose** At 2:00 pm on Friday February 16th, 1968; the first-ever 911 call is placed. Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite called from the Haleyville City Hall to US Representative Tom Bevill at the city’s police station. Bevill answered the phone “hello”, the two exchanged greetings, hung up, and went out for coffee and donuts. A celebration of the first 911 system implemented in an American town was underway (Fitzgerald). It took until 1999 for 911 to officially become the designated nationwide emergency number when President Bill Clinton penned Senate Bill 800 making it so (Bellis). The ability to dial a simple three-digit code anytime you have an emergency, anywhere you have an emergency, has saved countless lives due to the fast emergency responses generated with the 911 system. Today, the technology has become so progressive that satellites and antennas have gotten involved, allowing for pinpoint wireless 911 calls from a cell phone to the proper agency. This paper will deal with several aspects of the 911 emergency system, ranging from the history of its creation and evolution, the enhanced 911 system, and the responsibilities of an oft-forgotten job in policing, the police dispatcher. In 1876, after dropping battery acid on himself, Alexander Graham Bell uttered these famous words “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you”, and thus was the birth of telephone communication. Several years later in 1937, we see the birth of emergency calling systems. As http://911dispatch.com informs us, it was in 1937 when Britain implemented its “999” emergency calling system. A fire-fatality fire several months back led Britain to creating the emergency number. It is reported that the calls to report the fire were so delayed, that officials became pretty positive that if the calls could have been placed faster, all five would have survived the fire. Britain’s “999” system was successful on its first try when a woman called in the middle of the night to inform police that her home was being robbed. The suspect was apprehended moments later. Clearly the emergency number system had a bright future ahead of it. It could be debated that several lives would have been saved if other countries had taken the action that Britain did, and create their own universal emergency phone system. Unfortunately it isn’t until 1958 when the next emergency system is in place in the world; New Zealand’s “111” system. Australia follows three years later with its “000” system. Sadly, it isn’t until 1967 when America finally gets in the mix. President Lyndon Johnson’s Commission on Law Enforcement issues a report suggesting that police departments employ a single number to call for help, and that eventually this number should be used universally nationwide. The Commission compared their idea to the telephone company’s long-distance information number. Later in this same year, firefighter Leonard Kershner, is asked by Congress why he thinks that the United States suffered so many fire deaths compared to other countries, Kershner immediately sited poor response times. A few months later, AT&T officials meet with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) officials to discuss the possible logistics of a universal emergency number system. In January of 1968, after several months of snowballing leading up to this announcement, AT&T announces their designation of 911 as a universal emergency number. Widespread speculation follows this announcement as to why AT&T selected “911” as the designated emergency number. The selection was allegedly based on a few factors; the ease of dialing two ones on a rotary phone, some technical switching considerations, and Britain’s precedence with a three-digit number. After reading about AT&T’s announcement the next day, Bob Gallagher, president of the Alabama Telephone Co., decides to beat AT&T to the punch, and implement “911” first. This leads us to the point of the first 911 call detailed in the first paragraph of this paper, and the rest, as they say, is history. On a local note, in March of 1968, AT&T implemented their first 911 system in Huntington Indiana. AT&T chose Huntington because it was the hometown of US Rep Edward Roush who sponsored the adoption of a three-digit emergency number in Congress. It is estimated that by 1993, 911 is available to the great majority of households in the United States. Today, nearly 140 million Americans are subscribed to a cell phone service (Gaudin). E911, short for Enhanced 911, is an initiative that was taken by the FCC in 1996 (E911). When a person places a call on a regular ground wire, the call is directed to the nearest Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) where the caller’s exact location appears on screen instantly. The cell phone phenomenon introduces a whole new dilemma, how can someone roaming around the country call 911 on their cell phone? Enhanced 911 is the answer. In 1996, the FCC ruled that a 911 call placed from a cell phone must go directly to the nearest PSAP without needing verification of service from a cell phone service provider. This means that even an old cell phone which is no longer serviced by a cell phone provider can still place a 911 call from anywhere in this country. This has directly resulted in the popularity of donating old cell phone’s to charities so un-serviced cell phones can be donated to the less fortunate for emergency calls only. The FCC formally introduced E911 in two phases. Phase I (in 1998) forced mobile phone carriers to disclose the location of the tower from which the signal is being sent to on a cell-phone 911 call. It also demanded that the mobile providers must disclose the number from which the call is being placed. In 2001, Phase II went into effect. Phase II requires that any mobile phone company doing business in the US must provide the exact location, down to the nearest 100 meters from where the 911 caller is located. This is known as Automatic Location Identification. In June of 2003, Senators Conrad Burns and Hillary Clinton introduced the “Enhanced 911 Emergency Communications Act of 2003” (911 Information). The purpose of this bill was to integrate the growing need for Homeland Security with E911. The bill provided money to improve the speed of information coming in from a cell phone call during an emergency. Granting $500 million in tax dollars towards the improvement of 911 infrastructures, our emergency systems today are certainly in better shape than they were pre-September 11th. Senator Clinton says she hopes the bill “[will elevate] emergency communications issues within all branches of government at the federal, state, and local levels” (E911 Caucus). So now the highly-advanced 911 system is in place. A state of the art telephone and computer system that can do so much except; perform CPR, talk down a suicide candidate, extinguish a house fire, intervene in a domestic dilemma, well you get the idea. This is where the police (along with paramedics and firefighters, but we will be focusing primarily on police) come into play. One aspect of policing that receives less attention than it deserves is the job of the police dispatcher. A dispatcher’s job is to schedule and dispatch workers, equipment, or service vehicles in a speedy fashion as 911 calls come in. In some areas where technology has not advanced terribly far, the speed of the dispatcher’s job performance can literally be the difference between someone living and someone dying. In other more advanced areas, the dispatcher’s duties and responsibilities have been lessened by the automated nature of the 911 system. (Dispatchers – Nature of the Work). Dispatchers are almost always the first person the public is in contact with during an emergency. The dispatcher is the one job that ties the police, EMS, and fire departments in a community together. Citizens dial 911 for an array of emergencies, and although the nature of the emergency dictates which one of the three civil units will handle the emergency, the dispatcher will be taking the calls for all of them. When handling 911 calls, dispatchers question each caller to determine the nature, seriousness, and location of the emergency. In the past, this information was recorded by hand. That practice is nearly extinct now, as we see most emergency information being processed into a computer. In some areas, this information goes through a middle man, a police supervisor. The supervisor’s job is to determine the priority of the emergency, the number of units that will be needed at the emergency, and the precinct from which to dispatch the units (which isn’t a concern in rural communities). In 2002, there were about 85,000 people (mostly in urban areas) employed as emergency dispatchers in America (Dispatchers – Nature of the Work). The US Department of Labor expects job opportunities to grow rapidly in the next few years for dispatchers. “The growing and aging population will increase demand for emergency services and stimulate employment growth of police, fire, and ambulance dispatchers” (Dispatchers – Nature of the Work). Not much thought is given to the fact that the entire concept of policing is hinged on the job of the dispatcher. Sure, on occasion a patrol officer will randomly bump into a situation that needs policing. But the fact is, a great deal of a police officer’s job is derived from responding to the dispatcher’s instructions to respond to a 911 (or non-emergency) call. In most police systems, a newly hired dispatcher is placed in a new employee in-service program. This is followed by a departmental training program which includes classroom and operational training (McLarty). The responsibility on the hands of a dispatcher is great. In some cases, human lives lie solely in the dispatcher’s ability to communicate clearly with the emergency caller. High context communication is just one quality that police supervisors are looking for in potential dispatcher candidates. An employment notice was recently posted by the San Antonio Texas police department, who is seeking to hire a full time dispatcher. As far as basic requirements are concerned, a simple high school equivalent along with a Texas driver’s license will be enough to get your foot in the door (Dispatcher Employment Notice). However, the depth of skills required for a dispatcher job eliminates a lot of people from contention, and rightly so due to the high level of responsibility associated with the job. There is usually a speed typing quota for a dispatcher job, but surprisingly it can be as low as just 35 words per minute (Finding and Hiring Dispatchers). A clause that seemingly eliminates any outsiders from the job is the need for knowledge of the geographical area. Assuming one does not live in San Antonio (about 99.7% of the people in the US), this would put a huge dent in your chances of being hired as a dispatcher in San Antonio. Two other skills that can be easily taught are the ability to operate telecommunications equipment, and the capacity to determine the seriousness and type of calls. Police executives weed out dispatcher candidates through a series of interviews and tests to see who can stay calm during emergency situations, and who displays the potential to lose control in such a situation. The high-context communication desired for the job includes the ability to effectively communicate clearly with a wide array of individuals utilizing delicacy and diplomacy. The final thing sought out by police supervisors is a “people person”. A dispatcher needs to be able to maintain effective relationships with 911 callers, fellow dispatchers, the officials they are dispatching calls to, as well as the general public. All of these qualities are expected at the low rate of $9-$13 dollars per hour, which is the standard for most dispatchers in America. It is hard to find good dispatchers, when other private-dispatcher jobs in the private sector (such as a cable-service, gas-company, or trucking-business) are able to pay much more, and include better benefits than government dispatcher jobs. This high pressure, high social, “gatekeeper” job is not for everyone as it is the biggest variable in the success of any 911 emergency system. Works Cited Fitzgerald, Reba. "Where 911 Began." 30 Oct 2002. The History of 911. <http://www.911dispatch.com/911_file/...story.html>. Bellis, Mary. "Who Designed And Installed The First 911 System." 1998. The History of 911 Emergency Calls. <http://inventors.about.com/library/i.../bl911.htm>. Gaudin, Sharon. "Cell Phone Facts and Statistics." 02 Sept. 2004. Network World. <http://www.nwfusion.com/research/200...tside.html>. "E911." 01 Oct 2001. The Webopedia. <http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/E911.html>. "911 Information." 02 2003. Dispatch Monthly. <http://www.911dispatch.com/911_file/911explain.html>. "E911 Caucus." 27 2004. Senators Clinton and Burns Introduce E9-1-1 Legislation. House.Gov. <http://www.house.gov/shimkus/911home.htm>. "Dispatchers - Nature of the Work." 21 2004. US Department of Labor. <http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos138.htm>. McLarty, Nicholas. "Police Dispatcher Training." Northside ISD Police. 16 08 2004 <http://www.nisd.net/police/recruitin...aining.htm>. "Dispatcher Employment Notice." 30 Oct 2004. San Antonio Police Department. <http://www.nisd.net/hr/jobs/jobs_pdf...804015.pdf>. "Finding And Hiring Dispatchers." 14 2003. Dispatch Monthly. <http://www.911dispatch.com/job_file/...iring.html>. -Ugly Bastard [ December 01, 2004, 05:35 PM: Message edited by: Ugly Bastard ]