Thursday, August 23, 2007

Couldn't Have Happened to a Nicer Officer

Let me begin this post by saying, even the very few officers that regularly treated me like crap at Evil PD, were given my "A" game. Yes, there was a time or two where I was lured into the back and forth"who can give the meanest tone of voice on the radio." If I want to, I can be the queen of the bad attitude. My voice can drip with such scathing tones, your ears will melt off. I digress, that is a post for another time, this is an Evil PD story. There's this officer there, I will call her Officer M. She had about 3 years experience at the time, she is about 5'4" in decent shape and probably about 25 years old. That's all fine, but she walks around with this swagger, thumbs hooked in her duty belt and all, like she's all that and a tub of biscuits. It wasn't that she was really mean to me, it is just she thought she was a complete bad a$$ and treated others as if they were insignificant. So, every year in Evil City there is an Air Show at the local airport. Memos are emailed out for weeks leading up to it and they get posted all over the station, warning officers and dispatchers that there is a part of the show where a stunt helicopter appears to crash, but that it is well rehearsed and just fine. Every year we get about 25 frantic 911 callers, screaming into the phone about a crash at the airport, and every year we calm them down, with the aforementioned explanation. Bottom line, we expect the callers to call and the frantic citizens to flag down officers. What we don't expect is the following to happen:

Officer M: I'll be making an 1186 at---OH MY GAWD! SEND FIRE AND MEDICS CODE 3 TO THE EVIL AIRPORT THERE HAS BEEN A HELICOPTER CRASH!!!!!!

Me: [In an extremely calm, level voice] Negative Officer M, please 1021 radio.

Officer M: I DON'T HAVE TIME TO GIVE YOU A CALL RIGHT NOW!!!! SEND FIRE AND MEDICS NOW!!!! I AM ROLLING CODE 3 TO THE SCENE.

Me: [Genuinely hoping I can help her save face.] Reduce code, and 1021 dispatch immediately.

Officer M: NO ! I AM ALMOST 97. I WILL BE ABLE TO SEE THE CRASH IN JUST A SECOND. OK, I SEE IT!!!!!!! LET FIRE KNOW......oh.... Nevermind.

Me: Yes. Now, please 1021 radio.

And the radio clicks went on for over a minute. She was called Officer Mayday for a really long time. I would like to say that she learned something from the experience or at least that she calmed down a bit but I can't. In fact the reason I wrote this random Evil PD story is that I just heard that Officer Mayday was recently at a Party/Noise complaint call, had her taser out, tripped and fell and tased herself. Amazing.

14 comments:

HotRodHanna said...

O the irony. I guess some people just need to be taken down a notch or two. Funny story!

Anonymous said...

I love clicking people when they do dumb things. Would love to have been there.

Ron said...

click
click
click
click
Civilians just don't understand the value of a good mic-click

On another 'embarrassment' note: At times various officers would forget their rear 'wig-wag' lights were on while driving around. As a courtesy, a fellow officer would simple announce "light bar" on the radio and all officers would check to see if they had any switch activated.

There was one Sgt that all officers despised, so when he did it, we would always say "-call#-, you might check your control panel, you rear wig-wags are 10-8"

Unknown said...

OMG...if only all the ones like that could trip and tazer themselves!!! It was funny, I could have sworn you were describing one of our Disfuncional City officers!! Guess there's a couple like that.

Wicked 911 said...

jajaja!! one sgt was giving a class one time on tazers and an ofcr says..."hey sarge be careful dont taze yourself" the sgt goes, What what? Im an instruct ttzzttzzttzz...We call him A.D. Law

Wadical said...

Unfortunately Paramedics don't carry tasers so there is no hope that they will do something incredibly painful yet non-lethal to themselves for the enjoyment of their dispatcher.

Jason said...

Oh brother. We've had a couple of those here too.

The Dance Family said...

That's soo funny. Sounds like some of the people I work with.

Cali911 said...

That's funny!! I just imagined that happening and made me laugh all over again!! lol

Anonymous said...

my son is a Police Dispatcher and he gets treated like crap from his Chief, who thinks that monkees can do his job.......year right!
he is treated like a second class citzen in his department....sux*

Anonymous said...

My son also gets treated badly in the Police Deaprtment where he works, does great Dispatching 99.99% of the time, the one and only time he sort of messed up no one got hurt and nothing became of the situation but he got suspended and almost fired, they also changed his police standard uniform with badge to a polo shit with collar and a small patch with P.D. logo on front, looks very unprofessional to say the least, he is the 1st one that the public sees when they enter P.D., so he should have his police uniform on. Anyway most of the cops treat him ok but some of the higher up treat him like crap....no good reason for it either so I know how you feel.
Rob

Anonymous said...

Police Dispatching is a very hard job at times, you are doing so many things @ a time, multitasking and most times it is not appreciated so I do understand the above posts, I resent the fact that anyone would say the monkees can do this job...keep dreaming, you have to be on the ball or something bad can happen and then you will get fired.....hang in there.......

Anonymous said...

Ditto to above posts, dispatching is a multitask job, you gotta B on the ball is right, we wear standard P.O. uniform of different color than the cops with communications patch also, don't like the golf shirts some departments wear now, unprofessional, proud of what I do for a living, your son's should B 2!!

Anonymous said...

DISPATCHING IS HARD WORK AND YOU HAVE TO HAVE HALF A BRIAN AND BE VERY COMPUTER SAVORY SINCE YOU ARE CHECKING A FEW SYSTEMS AT ONCE.
WE WORE THOSE GOLF SHIRTS BUT THEY FADED, BUTTONS KEPT FALLING OFF AND A FEW OF THE GALS WERE WEARING THEM WITHOUT A BELT AND IT LOOKED SLOPPY SO THANKFULLY WE ARE BACK TO THE DRESS SHIRTS, TIES AND BADGE AGAIN, LOOKS MUCH BETTER I THINK.
WE ARE TREATED LIKE SECOND CLASS CITIZENS BY SOME OF THE HIGHER UPS TOO BUT JUST DO YOUR JOB & BE RESPECTFUL AND YOU WILL BE OK...:-)