Several hours into her shift, Hanford police dispatcher Deborah Stevens received a 911 call from a woman who was very upset. "There's a black Labrador retriever in my pool!" she screamed.

The woman had been in the backyard of her Lemoore home when the neighbor's dog had leapt the fence and growled at her, then jumped into the pool. Unsure of what to do, she ran inside and called the police.

"Don't worry about it, we'll get an officer over there right away," Stevens said.

Perhaps no one must face the front lines of emergency service work more than law enforcement dispatchers. It's not a job that usually makes the news, nor are there many heroic stories about those who act as a go-between for the community and the officers sworn to protect it.

"The city doesn't stop," dispatcher Cambria Gomez said. "In this job, you are responsible for getting things done in a timely manner. If the officers need investigators out in the field, you don't make that call when you have time, you do it now, when you are still answering 911 calls. You just get it done."

A recent evaluation by the state Public Safety Communications Division showed that Hanford Police Department dispatchers answer 98 percent of all emergency calls in under 10 seconds, which a spokesperson for the organization called "an exceptional rating."

A recent evening in what Hanford dispatchers call "The Room" underscored the need for strong men and women to maintain this constant juggling act.

In just under two hours on a Saturday night, the dispatchers rarely caught a break. The phone rang constantly. Administrators walked in and out. Officers radioed information, which had to be relayed to other agencies.

"It takes a special person to work in this environment, where everyone is pulling and tugging at you, wanting you to do something and do it now," dispatcher Marta Chavez said. "The education requirements for this job are not very high, but not just anyone can do the job."

Shifts normally last eight hours, but scheduling issues are frequent. If two employees are out sick, 12-hour shifts become a hard and necessary reality. Three dispatchers need to be available at all times to match the number of open 911 emergency phone lines.

The dispatchers sit in a small, cramped and dimly lit room. Each uses a computer terminal made up of multiple screens, displaying officer locations, caller information, real-time maps and more.

When a call comes in, the dispatcher takes down the information and kicks it over to an officer. Each patrol officer is assigned a specific beat, or coverage area within the city. It's the dispatcher's job to determine the priority level of the call and give it to the right person.

For Stevens, the most stressful times are when there just aren't enough officers to respond to the calls.

"When we get backed up really bad, we could have eight or nine people holding for service," she said. "They start calling back, wanting to know where the officers are."

"It can get really hard," Gomez said. "And the calls don't stop. Just because a large group of officers is working one incident doesn't mean you stop getting calls about prowlers, DUI drivers, things like that. People won't put their problems on hold just because there is a critical incident."

Gomez will often explain the situation to callers. People, she says, just want to know you haven't forgotten them.

"In an office, you can put stuff away, come back the next day, do bits at a time leading up to your deadline," Chavez said. "Here, you handle it right now. You only leave when you can hand it off to the next person."

Those aren't the only problems the dispatchers face.

Call volume has increased substantially since Lemoore came under the police department's purview. They had hoped installing an automated phone tree would cut down on the number of calls funneled through the dispatch office, but no dice.

Plus, there's a new operating system. The SMART system was adopted countywide within the last several months and, of course, there are still bugs to work out.

"We are trying to train new people on a system we are not that familiar with ourselves," Chavez said.

Calls made within the city limits, on a cell phone, are always routed through the California Highway Patrol office. As Stevens explains it, the signal bounces there immediately from local cell phone towers. The call can just be rerouted to the police department, but that takes time.

"By the time it comes to us, the person can be pretty fired up," Stevens said. "And, it's understandable. They shouldn't have to wait. But that's just the way it is right now."

Also consider jurisdiction. There are pockets within Hanford city limits which, technically, are considered Kings County land. Commit a crime there and the county Sheriff's Office, not the police, need to respond.

Another problem is when people call 911, not with an emergency, but to ask for a telephone number.

"This happens all the time," Chavez said. "People refuse to spend a dollar to call 411 and instead call us, expecting us to look up the number for them."

Meanwhile, an emergency line is tied up and someone with an urgent situation may not be able to get through.

There are moments of levity, tough. One dispatcher started humming the "Chicken Dance" song with her microphone on. A sergeant radioed in to request an encore.

Events like these go in the "Book of Shame," a scrapbook of sorts kept by the women to remind themselves of the good times on the job.

Then there are wacky calls that catch everyone off guard. An elderly man wants to know how to take Metamucil. A woman needs to know if she can legally wash her pigs in the backyard.

It's moments like this that allow them to unwind, to "decompress," as Gomez puts it.

"Every dispatcher in this room will experience the shooting, the stabbing, the kid calling because Dad is beating up Mom, the suicidal person in the middle of killing themselves," Gomez said. "Everyone will experience a traumatic cal. But you cannot be shook up. You have to recover and get back to work."

Yet, through it all, the phones still get answered.

"It's stressful, but everyone here would tell you they don't want to work in any other field," Chavez said. "Law enforcement gets into your blood."

The reporter can be reached at 583-2425.

(Oct. 3, 2009)