DISPATCHERS `PIVOTAL LINK' IN PUBLIC SAFETY

Dispatchers at the Cape Girardeau Police Department will be sporting a bright red button this week. The buttons read: "When you need help, we're there."

In honor of National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, April 11-17, Cape Girardeau Mayor Gene Rhodes signed a proclamation last week recognizing those who serve as "that pivotal link between the citizen or victim and the public safety provider who may apprehend a criminal, save their worldly possessions from fire, save their life or the life of a loved one," it said.

"Telecommunicators are our nation's unsung heroes who are responsible for getting emergency assistance where it is needed while often times not getting their much-deserved credit," said Cape Girardeau Police Chief Howard Boyd Jr. "They often work long and hard hours under extremely stressful conditions."

Juanita Henley, dispatcher supervisor of the Cape Girardeau police, said that it takes a special kind of person to be a dispatcher.

"A dispatcher must be a `take command' type of person," Henley said. "When dealing with a hysterical or scared person on the phone, the dispatcher must be able to calm the person down, gather the information to dispatch fire or police units and assure them that help is on way."

Like the officers, dispatchers must go through a mandatory 120-hour training program - both in class and on the job.

"They must go through a basic, six-week on-the-job training course," Henley said. "But since we're hooked into the (Missouri) Highway Patrol's MULE system, dispatchers must go through 80 hours of computer training, and 40 hours at the Highway Patrol Academy in basic communications."

The MULE system to which Henley referred is properly called the Missouri Uniform Law Enforcement System. It is a network which allows its users to draw from and enter names of wanted or missing persons, stolen vehicles, lost license plate numbers and other information which could prove useful to officers on the street.

The Cape Girardeau police also have a hookup to the NCIC National Crime Information Center, which is a pool of information on a nationwide spectrum.

"In 1992 not counting St. Louis and Kansas City our department was the fifth largest user of the MULES database in the state," Boyd said. "That goes a long way to say how vital that network and our dispatchers are to this department."

Henley said that there is a great deal of book work dispatchers must go through before they actually are introduced into the control room.

"But there is a lot of hands on," Henley said. "The only way to learn the job and learn it well is by actually doing it."

To be a dispatcher, one must have a high school diploma and a clean criminal record.

"Candidates for dispatchers must have comparable backgrounds to the officers they work with because they are handling the same confidential information," Henley said.

And with the recent introduction of computer software into law enforcement, dispatchers must be computer literate.

Both MULES and NCIC are computer databases, as is the console that dispatchers of the Cape Girardeau police use to keep track of the officers and run local background checks on people and places to which the officers are responding.

Coming in October, the Cape Girardeau police and fire dispatchers will enter into another phase of the computer age, as the new, enhanced 911 system the department is installing comes on line.

"We are limited today because we have a basic 911 system, where we can answer calls and ring them back, but not tell where the call is coming from," Henley said. "The new system will not only instantly advise us of where the call is coming from, but it will result in a number of changes to be made within the control room in equipment and procedure.

"Our people know how to deal with emergencies," Henley said. "Now they will have to be trained on new equipment."

A majority of the radio and visual equipment now used by the department is 17-years-old. Much of it is a hodge-podge of equipment, spliced into the existing control board as it was acquired over the years.

"One of the officers once referred to the control room as the cockpit of an airplane," Henley said. "I think that's a rather appropriate description."

Within the small, dimly-lit room, two dispatchers sit divided by a console of phones and a printer.

Two 911 phone lines sit facing the dispatchers. In front of them stands a grid of microphones, television screens monitoring the movement of people within the station, a keyboard to operate the computers and an emergency phone which hooks the dispatchers immediately into each fire station within the city.

The dispatchers are bordered by the MULE system terminals and monitors. Dispatchers even have a direct line into the elevator at the Federal Court building.

"We had to use that just last week," Henley said. "Someone got stuck in the elevator."

In a small room to the back of the control room stands the 24-hour tape machine, which records all incoming calls to the station.

In addition to their police, fire and ambulance connecting duties, the Cape Girardeau police dispatchers monitor more than 140 burglar and in-house fire alarms in homes and businesses across the city.

Cape Girardeau police also have an automatic dialing system that is used to advise nursing homes, day care centers, hospitals and local schools of severe weather conditions or other natural disasters.

"No one really recognizes the amount of paper work that goes into running a police station," Henley said. "It all starts right here. We have to type every municipal report into the system."

Boyd remembers from past experience the work that goes into dispatching.

"In the old days, police had to do this kind of thing for themselves," Boyd said. "Some liked it; some really hated it.

"I understand the kind of pressure the dispatchers are under," he continued. "It's a very demanding job they can't slack off for even a minute.

"They all do an excellent job," he continued. "They serve as a lifeline of the community."