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“4-8-4, Are You OK?”
4-8-4 was usually the car I worked. Your car number identified you and the district you worked. “4-8-4, are you ok?” was the question a 9-1-1 dispatcher would ask if they hadn’t heard from me on a traffic stop. It begins when you call a dispatcher to start your traffic stop.
4-8-4. “Traffic.”
Dispatcher: “4-8-4 go.”
4-8-4: “122 and Stark, with Oregon Adam Boy Lincoln 1-2-3.” (Oregon license plate ABL 123.)
The dispatcher enters the info on one of the multiple computer screens at their desk. It starts a timer on the screen. The timer alerts the dispatcher to call and ask if you’re okay after a few minutes have passed without hearing from you. That dispatcher is your lifeline, a guardian angel. Like a guardian angel, unseen, looking out for you, but heard. When first responders are mentioned sometimes we forget to remember that the 9-1-1 dispatcher is the first responder when they take a call from someone who needs help.
There was a recent article in the Oregonian about 9-1-1 dispatchers in Umatilla County. Umatilla County encompasses 3,231 square miles.
Caitlin Slette remembers one of her first calls as an emergency dispatcher.
“On my second or third day working on my own, I got a call from someone way out in the county,” she said. “(He) said there was someone at his door who thought his ear had gotten shot off. He kept saying, ‘If he comes in, I’m going to shoot him.'”
Slette was able to keep the caller on the phone, and get emergency services to the scene before he acted on his words.
This baptism-by-fire is not abnormal for dispatchers — the first point of contact when someone calls 911. Inside the Umatilla County Sheriff’s Office in Pendleton, the team of 18 dispatchers field calls from 25 different law enforcement and emergency agencies, directing police officers, fire and ambulance services to the places where callers need help. But new dispatchers like Slette, who has worked in the job for nearly a year, go through months of training before they can field emergency calls. They learn the basics — finding out a person’s location, the reason for the call, and if there are any weapons — and the language of law enforcement. Slette said she trained for about three months before being able to take emergency calls on her own.
Each dispatcher sits at a desk with seven screens: two connected to the phone lines, three where they enter and access information from various databases, and two that access the radio system. There are usually five or six working at a time, with each person managing a different agency. One person will take care of all emergency and fire agencies, and one dispatcher will be assigned to each police agency. As they receive information about a call, they enter it into the system, where the other dispatchers can view it.
Communications Sergeant Karen Primmer said one of the toughest parts of the job is the lack of closure — once law enforcement takes over, dispatchers are no longer a part of the call, and don’t know whether something was resolved.
“We sometimes get left out of that conclusion piece,” she said. “We want to hear the rest of the story.”
One night I was working with a friend from college. He was a traffic officer, a 300 car. He said we should pay a visit to radio. Radio was the Bureau of Emergency Communications. BOEC at that time was located inside a cold-war bunker that had been hollowed out of Kelly Butte, an extinct volcanic plug located within the city limits of Portland.
He introduced me by name to one the dispatchers and as soon as I said, “It’s nice to meet you,” she said “Oh, you’re 4-8-4. Hey, everyone, meet 4-8-4.” Greetings were exchanged, but I knew I was more than a number to everyone I met that night. You are too when you call 9-1-1.
Published in General
I have a lot of respect for 9-1-1 dispatchers. They have their own share of stress, it’s a tough job. They also have a sense of humor that is not unlike a police officer’s or a deputy’s sense of humor.
I don’t really know, sometimes an officer that had left the military would use military phonetics, or a mix of the two phonetic alphabets. Not all radio transmissions involved the use of 10 codes. I always said traffic rather than 10-84. 10-11 was starting your shift. Sometimes I would say 4-8-4 is on the air. 10-79 is end of shift, I always used that. 10-79 is also said at the end of an officer’s funeral, or memorial service. I have mixed emotions when I hear 10-79. It was my last contact with dispatchers on my last shift, bittersweet.
Again, there was a lot of history and different organizations setting the standards:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_alphabet
Thanks for the link, and I forgot to add the fact that 10 codes are not the same for all law enforcement agencies in comment# 32.
Also, don’t forget about all the young people who haven’t heard it yet! There are new ones being born every minute! And they deserve to hear it too…
I’m not dead yet.
That’s my motto!
That’s basically what my daughter said, something like, “well, no one called us, so we never caught them and I don’t know if they were bad people. Can I speak to your mommy?”
My daughter had to learn 3 or 4.
Right, nobody rides for free.
Dum vivimus vivamus!
Mine is “I’d like to go for a walk.”
Thanks for the post Doug.
My ex-sister-in-law (brother’s ex wife and mother of 2 of my nieces) has been a dispatcher for Douglas County for a while.
I recently got to hear her when she did the sign off for a deputy’s funeral.
Offically the NATO alphabet and the LAPD alphabet. When I became a firefighter I wondered why they were different (my WWII vet dad knew the old military alphabet Apple, Baker, etc.)
Lots of our firefighters and medics are military vets and use the NATO alphabet. It never seems to bother the dispatchers.
Since NIMS everyone is supposed to drop 10 codes but lots of agencies seem addicted to them.
Other terminology can be a problem. We had to start calling our water tankers “tenders” because if we asked for a tanker the forest service command post would start looking for an airplane.
The voice of experience?
Very funny.