Reputation from JBE - Page 5

ny10570 liked a post in a topic by JBE in FDNY Dispatchers... July 2, 2012

My boy, TL-2 summed it up quite nicely. You called 911 and got a civilian employee of the PD. To echo what was said here, if you had said 79th Street Boat Basin, you probably would not have had as big of a problem. In all fairness, most of these calltakers are overworked, underpaid, and aren't given the slightest bit of encouragement to learn outside of what they are taught. Not to mention, they do work in a pretty hostile work environment, where every minor screw up is given either a write up, or results in a loss of vacation time or pay. One other thing, depending on the name of the landmark, they can't put it in their system. Remember the shooting at City Hall a number of years back?? They couldn't put CITY HALL into their CAD. They can't put the bridges in for the most part. They need cross streets. If you had said, Hudson River and 79th Street that would have also helped.
They weren't trained properly in taking fire calls, and still screw stuff up on a pretty consistent basis. When you call 911 in NYC, you get the PD Calltaker who enters the information, sends it to the FDNY CAD/EMS CAD through a link, then conference calls you in to either us, or EMS. We take the info, basically to make sure PD didn't screw it up, and update the incident.
Now, here is the difference between us and them. They have folks who are nothing but professional call takers, who have it beaten into their heads to take calls at face value. They are not allowed to use common sense, and any inkling of common sense is quickly discouraged. Prior to UCT, you have no idea how many calls we disregarded, or told the caller the FDNY was not responding because it wasn't a fire department issue. Not so with UCT, they send us EVERYTHING!!!! I'm not going to give examples. One of the other disadvantages, is when you call 911 is that it isn't borough specific. They take calls for the whole city. I've worked most of my career between the Bronx and Manhattan, and I was born and kinda raised in Queens, and even I don't know all the streets. Although through out my experience, if I hear a street I am not familiar with, I can either ask my colleagues, or ask what borough it's in and have an idea of where it is. The way the building is set up, I spent sometime right in between EMS and PD, and overheard a lot of the operators. I remember one night recently, the calltaker kept repeating Bronx River Road and Nereid. I looked at her supervisor and said, Why don't you put in Webster Avenue and Nereid, or Webster and the City Line. I got ignored for a good two minutes.
We are not allowed to have professional call takers. We train our dispatchers to do everything. This takes up to 10 weeks of training. If one of my guys on a call doesn't know where something is, there is a strong possibility someone on my platform does.
If you need the FDNY or an Ambulance, the proper number to call in the boroughs are:
Manhattan 212-999-2222
Bronx 718-999-3333
Brooklyn 718-999-4444
Queens 718-999-5555
SI 718-999-6666
One of my dispatchers will answer the phone, and we will get you what you need.