‘Calming voice’: McHenry County dispatchers provide direction in times of crisis

In some way an invisible job, dispatchers are the voice people hear in life’s worst moments.

Tucked away in the basement of the Crystal Lake Police Department is Southeast Emergency Communications, a group of five people who answer 911 calls from residents in southeast McHenry County. These dispatchers guide people through life-threatening emergencies and manage the stress of the job together.

“The normal person may only see one horrendous rollover wreck in their lifetime, and that affects them for a long period of time,” SEECOM Executive Director Jason Kern said. “But we get the domestic batteries, and we hear the screams and things on the phone, and you don’t necessarily know what happens.”

While some agencies around the country, including downstate Champaign, face a shortage of dispatchers, officials in McHenry County aren’t encountering that issue. Both SEECOM and the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office, which dispatches for 14 agencies, said they have enough employees, although interest in the job is down.

“We’re seeing a lower number than normal apply and actually test,” Kern said.

McHenry County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Sgt. Aimee Knop said they are seeing fewer applicants this year, too, but remain fully staffed.

Operating police and fire dispatch systems and fielding 911 calls is a job full of surprises that is not for everyone, Kern said. Sometimes the call is for a person who falls and needs assistance. Other times it’s for a person in cardiac arrest.

“I don’t think anyone could understand it, but you could sit here and do CPR for seven minutes. A short time later you’re taking a dog barking call, and a short time later you’re ordering food with the team for lunch that day,” Kern said. “Somebody standing outside looking in wouldn’t understand the dynamic.”

SEECOM keeps a wall outside the office with a note of each incident in which a dispatcher’s work directly contributed to reviving a person found not breathing and had no heartbeat but later walked out of the hospital alive. It serves as a reminder to dispatchers of how important their job is.

To deal with the stress of the job, dispatchers often depend on others.

“Being a former police officer, I don’t consider it as stressful as others. You just debrief afterwards, go out with friends after work, workout, hang out with your family, make sure you keep above it so you don’t get stressed out,” said Robert Pierson, a SEECOM dispatcher who is a former Lake in the Hills police officer. “For the most part, you’ve just got to decompress when you leave here so you don’t take it home.”

Pierson made the transition to SEECOM when Lake in the Hills closed its dispatch center in 2017. He said the larger dispatch center is good for officer safety, but there are some things he misses about working for a single community.

“The difference is you don’t have the one-on-ones that you have with the officers at a bigger dispatch center,” Pierson said.

The dispatchers have a strong bond with each other, allowing them to manage the difficult parts of the job. When the phones and radios are quiet, they’re often laughing with each other. After an especially bad call, supervisors and directors will run out to grab doughnuts to ease some tension.

Like for those who respond to calls, the pandemic has changed the job for dispatchers.

“[There are] extra questions we have to ask on medical calls for the responder’s safety,” Kern said. “Do they have COVID? Some people don’t like that. They don’t want to talk about it. But our responders have asked that we ask that.”

Kern said as the pandemic has gone on, and especially during the stay-at-home order, he feels other calls have increased, such as drug overdoses and domestic violence incidents.

Dispatchers even field calls about people complaining about businesses enforcing or not enforcing COVID-19 restrictions.

“Whether they were enforceable by police or not, if you as a citizen calls in and has an issue, it’s really not our position to sit on the phone and argue the case with you,” Kern said. “We’re not the lawyers.”

The best way people can help dispatchers is by making sure they answer the questions they’re asked, he said.

Kern said dispatchers have scripts for medical calls and ask specific questions for a reason to expedite help. At the same time, dispatchers are sending first responders to the call, and asking questions does not delay the response.

Kern also said it’s important people know their location. Although dispatchers can trace landline calls, he said, cellphone signals are not as easy to find, and that is where a majority of the calls come from.

However, dispatchers understand that when people call them it’s one of the most stressful moments in their life, Kern said.

“We’re the calming voice they need to hear,” Pierson said. “Most of the time they call in crisis when they need the calming voice, and [we] administer whatever they need over the phone.”