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BEHIND THE NUMBER |
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Written by FRANK PEEBLES, Citizen staff
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Sunday, 04 May 2008 |
The RCMP dispatch centre at North District RCMP headquarters. (Citizen photo by Brent Braaten)
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MILE HOUSENORTH DISTRICTPETER LEE
Last week the public was made acutely aware of the powerful forces involved in the job. Public testimony at a coroner's inquest in Victoria this week told of a 911 call there that necessitated counselling for the participating operators who answered when a distraught female screamed for help from an Oak Bay home.
When authorities arrived, they found the bodies of Peter Lee, his wife Sunny Park, their young son Christian, and her parents Kum Lea Chun and Moon Kyu Park. It is believed all were murdered by Lee, who then killed himself.
"Dealing with the emotion, distraught people -- either your coworkers, the police officers in the field, and the public who has faced a trauma -- is absolutely part of our job, we are trained for handling those situations," said Rita Dreher, one of the managing operators at the Operational Communication Centre based at RCMP North District headquarters. "You never know what people will react to. For some, a break-and-enter at their house can feel blase, but I remember a call where the person on the end of the phone was keening, grieving from the pit of her soul, because of that feeling of violation. It can vary and you have to be responsive to that variation."
Sandy Vogstad, manager of the North District OCC, said there are services in place to help operators handle the emotions of the job, and those emotions are natural and expected. They are not expected to be robotic and cold, only professional in the heat of a moment, she said. There is also plenty of supervision and mentorship to help operators through the ups and downs of the calls they receive.
"I'm going to go back a few years to my own personal priorities when I started 31 years ago," Vogstad told The Citizen about why she joined the dispatch team. "It was an opportunity to look after public safety and the health and well-being of the community in general. We look after that, we take the calls for those people who are in dire straights or reporting circumstances.
"It is also something else from a personal perspective. It is a job that is constantly changing, constantly in a variety of circumstances. There is certainly never a sense of boredom or lack of opportunity either."
At peak hours there are more than a dozen operators all working at the local OCC, and slow times still press six or eight into duty. They take the emergency calls from all across the north -- 100 Mile House to the Yukon border, the ocean to Alberta's border -- and direct the appropriate RCMP responders to attend. A number of operators take part in each call, aided by a complex network of information systems, both phone and computer based. Each operator sits in a semi-circle of data screens, with phones, information manuals, and other resources all at their fingertips.
Once they are done their work they go home, said Vogstad, where they are coaches of their kids' sports teams, active in volunteer positions, busy with family functions. But they rarely talk about their work, partly due to security requirements and partly because few can understand unless they have been there.
"The big challenge is being able to remain calm in times of duress, being able to take direction and give direction when required, and we do not ask people to work independently until you are trained properly and there are senior officers to supervise," Dreher said.
Vogstad said the turnover rate for most OCCs across the continent is high, but many thrive in their unique environment, especially those who can do well what is commonly called multi-tasking.
"Multi-tasking isn't the right word," she said. "From psychological studies we know that no one's brain can truly multi-task. Your brain can only effectively concentrate on one thing at a time so we are looking for people who can make those fast choices to prioritize well, and move back and forth between mental tasks quickly and professionally."
If that sounds like a pitch for new recruits, it is. Vogstad and Dreher encourage others to join the local OCC team, and an open call for applications is now open. They understand that some will be worried about the obvious stress that comes with the job, but the waves of satisfaction that come with bringing positive closure to hard times in people's lives when they reach out for help overshadows that.
"That is my personal goal in my current job as manager, to support these people (who operate emergency calls)," said Vogstad. "It is to support them and ensure that they have the opportunity to look after these communities and their own personal goals and philosophies about safety, law and order, and those types of ideas. My goal is to support them in a job that is not easy that yet I know and I see every day that they love so much for the same reasons I did when I first started."
The next career information session for potential OCC dispatchers is May 31 at 9 a.m. at North District headquarters (4020 5th Avenue). Call recruiting contact Marty Dupas at 561-4509 for more information.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 04 May 2008 )
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