Hail Dog

911, what is your emergency

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

The question I get the absolute most when people find out I was a 911 dispatcher is this: what’s the worst call you’ve ever taken?

I HATE that question.

Don’t ask a dispatcher that question.

I don’t know if people just are not thinking through that question when they ask. Or if they watch too much of that stupid 911 show on television. But let me translate how I hear that question: what’s the call that haunts you? What call gives you nightmares or keeps you up at night?

Why in the world would anyone think I would answer that? Maybe I am just no fun. I get it, people want the gory details and the funny stories. And the copious amounts of objects stuck in peoples butts.

I will tell you a 911 dispatcher story that came up recently in my mind because Nazis are suddenly a thing again (as Indiana Jones says, I hate Nazis).

Let me give you some background first in case you’re not a fellow dispatcher or law enforcement person following this page. There is call taking, which is what people think of when they think of 911. The person who answers the phone, “911, what is your emergency?”

And then you have dispatchers. The person at the radio talking to the units that are going on the emergency call.

So most places you’re doing both. A small town dispatcher is doing everything all the time. A big city, I’ve seen it where you do one or the other. Where I worked, we rotated. So half a shift (5 hours) you could be call taking and the other half you could be dispatching (a breaker would be doing everything as they relieved people for lunches etc). When it got busy where I worked you could be doing everything. For the purposes of this story, I was dispatching.

I was working the main channel. A unit goes on a car stop. The usual thing that happens on a car stop is the unit will tell you when they are code 4 (basically, I’m good for the moment) and then ask to run a subject (or two or several). So my unit gives a name, date of birth, and a driver’s license number. My job then is to comb through all the pages of returns that come back. Now for the sake of showing you how incredibly talented dispatchers are, you are doing this while getting more radio traffic from other units (who probably want to run subjects to), having calls sent to you by call takers that you need to dispatch units on, people in the control room talking, etc. 911 is all about multi tasking.

Each page that comes back is a different database of information. My job is to make sure there are no warrants as quickly as possible because my unit is out in the field with a guy or several who know if they have a warrant and are now contemplating what they should do to avoid jail.

So I get a hit. A big one. Now I go back out and in code ask if the ‘bad guy’ is close by? My unit answers and I am good to go. I tell him the guy has a couple no bail warrants. I tell him the offenses and now I have to give him the descriptors on the warrant. The unit will have to match the descriptors on the warrant to his guy he has pulled over.

The descriptors are: WMA BLND/BLU 6’2 230 (white male adult, blonde hair, blue eyes and height/weight). It also lists numerous Nazi style tattoos. But the one that sticks out is “HAIL SATIN” across his chest. And I start laughing and tell my coworker who joins me in laughing hysterically. We all love a good tattoo in this business….

Control one (aka me): 81-george- four, break for descriptors

81G4: Go ahead

Control one: WMA blonde over blue 6’2 230 with a tattoo across the chest that says Hail Satin. Repeating Satin like the soft fabric.

81G4: (laughing) Radio confirm satin, not Satan

You can hear a guy in the background just screaming obscenities

Control one: 81-george-four, that is correct, satin, like smooth satin sheets. Not Satan, the devil.

81G4: (laughing more) that’s a match on the Hail Satin tattoo on the chest

The guy in the background being arrested is screaming F You pigs! Hail Satan! It’s Hail Satan!

Memories like this will just pop up in my head occasionally. For the most part, after almost a decade in dispatch and a decade out of dispatch, the funny stories come to mind. The other day I randomly thought of a moment that I was really proud of from work and I shared it with my dad a former police officer. I have had a few nightmares in my time from calls. Some nightmares that are more that generic fear of not being able to hear someone calling for help. Still have my recurring nightmare where I see a police officer on the side of the road and have to help. I use to dream of radio traffic constantly.

As for my worst call, I don’t share it. I still remember it.

I will share something else….

How about the last call I remember taking: a woman called 911 to ask for a police escort because she was stuck in traffic on the freeway. I told her we didn’t do that. She apologized and I could tell she was crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said her dog was hurt. And her husband was in the back of the car with him as they were trying to get to an emergency vet. I looked up the vet she was trying to get to and started to give her the back way directions there. The husband says I don’t think he’s breathing. And I ask her if she knows dog CPR. I had never done dog CPR but we have the instructions on our refrigerator at home. I have read them a million times now. And I start to tell her instructions that she gives her husband. They end up making it to the vet at some point and I have to hang up. I know one of my coworkers has overheard me give dog CPR instructions and I am just waiting for a supervisor to call me in the office.

I never did get in trouble. The supervisor never came over to talk to me.

I do not remember taking any calls after that. The next shift I remember going to, I quit before sitting down.

The lady called me the next day to say they got the dog breathing again in the car but he ended up dying overnight at the vet. He was an older black lab. She thanked me.

I ended up making a wood burn box with the dog’s picture on it for her kids.

That is the last call I remember taking as a 911 dispatcher. I think I would have preferred not hearing the dog had died and thinking I had saved it. But doing the box for her kids so they had something to put momentos in gave me some closure. I continue to randomly do memorial dog artwork for people to this day. It gives me the feeling I purpose that I lost when I left 911 dispatching.