URGENT COMMUNICATIONS
Sep 14, 2010 6:01 PM
By Glenn Bischoff
A couple of weeks ago, Urgent Communications spoke with Dick Mirgon about his year as president of the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials. This week we catch up with Bill Carrow, the communications section chief for the Delaware State Police, who last month began his term as APCO’s president. Carrow spoke extensively about one of his pet projects — training certification for 911 telecommunicators — and the progress that has been made to date.
Statewide training certification is sorely lacking nationwide. What is APCO doing about it?
The Professional Human Resources Taskforce (ProCHRT) was unveiled during National Public Safety Telecommunicator Week in 2009. The first step was to establish some very specific goals, first and foremost, to study what each state is doing, or what they’re mandating, in the way of training certification for telecommunicators. We knew that this was a nationwide problem. We knew that we had bits and pieces of training going on, some more elaborate than others — and that’s no way to run an airline, much less a public-safety answering point. You see in the media all the time stories about 911 calls that went awry.
The Denise Amber Lee tragedy has become the poster child for such events, has it not?
That’s what I was leading up to. You see these events on a weekly basis, but the Denise Amber Lee Foundation really hit home. We started studying the Denise Amber Lee case to understand what had happened. Two years prior to that event happening, APCO’s Florida chapter had been pushing for training certification across the state, but wasn’t successful.
What were the hurdles?
The hurdles basically were funding, number one, and, number two, getting the various entities down there — the sheriffs, the police and fire — to fully understand that this not only should be a requirement, but that it also is a necessity.
What has been accomplished so far regarding ProCHRT?
Where we really started gaining some ground is when we realized just how few states have any kind of mandated training. When you consider that the person who runs a tanning booth is required to have more training than our telecommunicators who are handling life-and-death decisions every day, that’s wrong. We now have an interim report that provides a report card for the country up to this point. It delineates the training that is going on state by state, and lists any agencies that are Project 33-compliant within a given state. There are 17 of those right now.
After reviewing this report card, what grade would you give in terms of the level of training certification across the country?
It would be a grade of “F.” There’s a lot of room for improvement.
What needs to be done? What’s the first step?
Basically, we wanted to gather information via ProCHRT that would let us create a tool kit that our members could use to go back to their home states and push for training certification. We never had this kind of information before. The next step is to use the success we’ve had in the state of Florida as a starting point for success in other states. Arkansas is one of those states — it has proposed legislation that was based on what they saw in Florida. I think this is going to be a groundswell. It’s not insurmountable anymore.
What else would you like to see accomplished in the coming year?
Right along those lines is promoting our Project 33, which has just been revised for 2010. It has been beefed up by adding the fire and EMS pieces to the dispatch function and by increasing the minimum requirements for all positions. My agency just went through it. That was one of the goals I set for myself — I wanted my agency not only Project 33–compliant, but also fully accredited.
Why was that so important to you?
When you do those things, you’re showing people that you’re trying to meet the best-of-the-best standards. So, what we want to do is promote that to every chapter, to show the importance of getting individual training programs P33-compliant.
Ed: Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law in June a bill that requires 911 telecommunicators in the state to become certified and compile 232 hours of training before handling an emergency call.
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/news/carrow-apco-QandA-20100914/
Showing posts with label Urgent Communications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Urgent Communications. Show all posts
Friday, October 1, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
I missed this in November 2009/Chaos Theory
but it is important and relevant to what is going on in Tallahassee. my opinion first:
my opinion: I would like to say to Rick Jones, that my family and other families who have suffered through 9-1-1 tragedies, know the cost of training. It cost my daughter-in-law her life. And you can spend all your monies on the best technologies in the world, but if you do not have people who know how to use them appropriately those technologies are worthless. My daughter in law's life was priceless.
Chaos Theory
Nov 1, 2009 12:00 PM
By Glenn Bischoff (glenn.bischoff@penton.com)
Protocols and intuitive managers are key to reducing dispatcher pressure in 911 call centers.
Nathan Lee returned to his Florida home in the middle of the afternoon on Jan. 17, 2008. When he arrived, he found his two sons — a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old — together in the younger boy's crib. His wife and the boys' mother, Denise Amber Lee, was nowhere to be found.
She was found two days later in a shallow grave after being brutally raped. In the first frenetic hours after her abduction, mistakes allegedly were made by a 911 call-taker and dispatchers that hampered the search effort. Today, her family and friends are wondering why no national training and certification program exists for 911 telecommunicators, which they believe would help professionals in the sector better keep their wits in an intrinsically high-stress environment that becomes a crucible when things hit the fan.
Not on Alert
The first 911 call on the day of Denise Lee's abduction was placed by Nathan Lee. The 911 center that took that call and two others promptly issued BOLO (“Be On the LookOut for”) signals that allegedly were missed by the 911 center in an adjacent county. At some point during the ordeal, the assailant drove through that county with Denise Lee in tow.
Later in the afternoon, a witness called 911 to report that a child in the back seat of a green Camaro was pounding on the window and screaming hysterically. The “child” was Denise Lee, according to Peggy Lee, the victim's mother in law. According to Lee's family, that call was received by the same 911 center that allegedly missed the BOLOs issued after Nathan Lee's 911 calls. Somehow, the family alleges, no BOLO ever was issued for the call from the eyewitness nor were police cruisers dispatched, even though the eyewitness provided cross streets at several junctures until the car carrying Denise Lee peeled off onto another road.
Peggy Lee today serves as the community relations director for the Denise Amber Lee Foundation, which is lobbying for training and procedural reforms in the 911 sector. She has heard the recording from the eyewitness call and said the call-taker became flustered during the nine minutes she was on the line with the eyewitness. “That call-taker didn't know what to do — you could hear the chaos,” she said.
Denise Lee's father works in that county as a police detective. He said in an interview on a network-television newsmagazine that a fellow officer told him that the officer was certain the vehicle drove “right by him” but did not pursue, because “he never received the information.”
Local media reported that the county's sheriff defended the performance of the 911 center's call-takers and dispatchers that night but acknowledged that mistakes were made. Reportedly, two dispatchers were suspended as a result of this incident.
During the ordeal, Denise Lee somehow managed to get her hands on the assailant's wireless phone without him knowing and placed her own 911 call. She cleverly gave the call-taker vital information, such as the type of car, by speaking in a way that made her assailant think she was talking to him. After seven minutes the assailant caught on and the call ended. “That call was handled superbly,” Peggy Lee said. (Since this was quoted we have come to find out that the call was not handled "superbly" but it was handled well. The call taker was new, on few short months on the job, and has since had to move out of state because Denise's call effected her so greatly.)
However, Denise Lee's location couldn't be identified by the 911 system because she used a pre-paid wireless phone to place the call.
Unanswered Questions
The television newsmagazine posed this question: Could Denise Lee have been saved if the call-taker and dispatchers had kept their cool? It's a question that haunts her family.
Consequently, the Denise Amber Lee Foundation is lobbying for the creation of a national certification program for 911 call-takers and dispatchers. “We want to ensure that no other family has to endure the pure hell our family has experienced,” said Nathan Lee during this year's National Emergency Number Association (NENA) conference in Fort Worth, Texas.
Craig Whittington, NENA's newly elected president, who spent six years on the organization's educational committee before joining its executive board in 2007, is in favor of such a program. “You have to be certified to operate a tanning booth, but for 911 — the most critical link in emergency response — there is no certification,” Whittington said.
While a good idea, a national program likely would be difficult to create and maintain, said Rick Jones, NENA's director of operations. Funding would be at the heart of that difficulty. “When you address the need for training and certification, you indeed are going to escalate their costs,” he said.
Protocols and intuitive managers are key to reducing dispatcher pressure in 911 call centers.
Jones said that 911 call centers ideally would allocate 5% of their operating budgets for training but acknowledged that such a goal would be unrealistic for many, if not most, centers in the current economic environment. “Their training has been cut, and their practice time has been reduced for various reasons, [but] basically economic,” Jones said. “That starts to have a negative effect.”
The negative effect is three-fold. Rigorous ongoing training, core-competency standards and proficiency tests would increase the likelihood that call-takers and dispatchers act properly and — perhaps more important — instinctively. This, in turn, would make them more competent and confident, leading to reduced stress. And the less stressed that call-takers and dispatchers are, the less likely they are to lose their composure and make mistakes at crucial moments.
But such training, standards and testing largely are absent in the 911 world, a fact that Gordon Graham, the keynote speaker at NENA's conference, noted. Graham, a former California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer turned litigator and educator specializing in risk management, said, “Once you are hired, you will never have to take another test if you don't want to be promoted. The public deserves better.”
Grace Under Pressure
To illustrate the point, Graham spoke of US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who landed his airplane in New York City's Hudson River in January after several birds flew into the craft's engines, rendering them inoperable. According to Graham, Sullenberger said in an interview shortly after his heroic actions saved the lives of everyone aboard Flight 1549 that he tried, throughout his flying career, to make small deposits each day into his memory bank, knowing that one day he would “have to make a massive withdrawal.”
It was a sound strategy, Graham said, because doing so enabled Sullenberger to make instantaneous, life-and-death decisions on that fateful day. It's a lesson especially adaptable to the public-safety sector, whose personnel make such decisions on a daily basis.
“You will run into the unthinkable event someday, and you will have to make instantaneous decisions,” Graham said. “Whether you are prepared to do so is up to you.”
To prepare, Jones recommended that 911 emergency call centers at least implement protocols that every telecommunicator follows for every call the center receives. He suggested that centers adopt the protocols already established by the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Institute or PowerPhone (a provider of crisis communications training), and resist the temptation to create their own.
“That's dangerous, because a local agency doesn't have the expertise,” said Jones, who further cautioned that centers also should resist altering the national protocols, because “sometimes they over-modify them.”
Emergency call center managers also can play an important role in reducing the stress encountered by 911 call-takers and dispatchers, according to Steve Wisely, director of APCO's Communications Center and 911 services department. He said managers should be trained to have a calming effect on telecommunicators. “It's important that the supervisory leadership has training that will allow them to act in a calm manner, even when high-profile incidents are underway,” Wisely said. “The supervisors set the tone for the workers that are reporting to them.”
It's also important that supervisors recognize when a call-taker or dispatcher needs to decompress or a shoulder to lean on for a few minutes, Wisely said. “A support system needs to be in place where a person can get out of their seat and go to a quiet place to contemplate [an incident] or talk to somebody, if they're troubled by it,” he said.
This article originally appeared in Urgent Communications, a FIRE CHIEF sister publication.
http://firechief.com/training/ar/reduce-911-dispatcher-pressure-200911/index.html
my opinion: I would like to say to Rick Jones, that my family and other families who have suffered through 9-1-1 tragedies, know the cost of training. It cost my daughter-in-law her life. And you can spend all your monies on the best technologies in the world, but if you do not have people who know how to use them appropriately those technologies are worthless. My daughter in law's life was priceless.
Chaos Theory
Nov 1, 2009 12:00 PM
By Glenn Bischoff (glenn.bischoff@penton.com)
Protocols and intuitive managers are key to reducing dispatcher pressure in 911 call centers.
Nathan Lee returned to his Florida home in the middle of the afternoon on Jan. 17, 2008. When he arrived, he found his two sons — a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old — together in the younger boy's crib. His wife and the boys' mother, Denise Amber Lee, was nowhere to be found.
She was found two days later in a shallow grave after being brutally raped. In the first frenetic hours after her abduction, mistakes allegedly were made by a 911 call-taker and dispatchers that hampered the search effort. Today, her family and friends are wondering why no national training and certification program exists for 911 telecommunicators, which they believe would help professionals in the sector better keep their wits in an intrinsically high-stress environment that becomes a crucible when things hit the fan.
Not on Alert
The first 911 call on the day of Denise Lee's abduction was placed by Nathan Lee. The 911 center that took that call and two others promptly issued BOLO (“Be On the LookOut for”) signals that allegedly were missed by the 911 center in an adjacent county. At some point during the ordeal, the assailant drove through that county with Denise Lee in tow.
Later in the afternoon, a witness called 911 to report that a child in the back seat of a green Camaro was pounding on the window and screaming hysterically. The “child” was Denise Lee, according to Peggy Lee, the victim's mother in law. According to Lee's family, that call was received by the same 911 center that allegedly missed the BOLOs issued after Nathan Lee's 911 calls. Somehow, the family alleges, no BOLO ever was issued for the call from the eyewitness nor were police cruisers dispatched, even though the eyewitness provided cross streets at several junctures until the car carrying Denise Lee peeled off onto another road.
Peggy Lee today serves as the community relations director for the Denise Amber Lee Foundation, which is lobbying for training and procedural reforms in the 911 sector. She has heard the recording from the eyewitness call and said the call-taker became flustered during the nine minutes she was on the line with the eyewitness. “That call-taker didn't know what to do — you could hear the chaos,” she said.
Denise Lee's father works in that county as a police detective. He said in an interview on a network-television newsmagazine that a fellow officer told him that the officer was certain the vehicle drove “right by him” but did not pursue, because “he never received the information.”
Local media reported that the county's sheriff defended the performance of the 911 center's call-takers and dispatchers that night but acknowledged that mistakes were made. Reportedly, two dispatchers were suspended as a result of this incident.
During the ordeal, Denise Lee somehow managed to get her hands on the assailant's wireless phone without him knowing and placed her own 911 call. She cleverly gave the call-taker vital information, such as the type of car, by speaking in a way that made her assailant think she was talking to him. After seven minutes the assailant caught on and the call ended. “That call was handled superbly,” Peggy Lee said. (Since this was quoted we have come to find out that the call was not handled "superbly" but it was handled well. The call taker was new, on few short months on the job, and has since had to move out of state because Denise's call effected her so greatly.)
However, Denise Lee's location couldn't be identified by the 911 system because she used a pre-paid wireless phone to place the call.
Unanswered Questions
The television newsmagazine posed this question: Could Denise Lee have been saved if the call-taker and dispatchers had kept their cool? It's a question that haunts her family.Consequently, the Denise Amber Lee Foundation is lobbying for the creation of a national certification program for 911 call-takers and dispatchers. “We want to ensure that no other family has to endure the pure hell our family has experienced,” said Nathan Lee during this year's National Emergency Number Association (NENA) conference in Fort Worth, Texas.
Craig Whittington, NENA's newly elected president, who spent six years on the organization's educational committee before joining its executive board in 2007, is in favor of such a program. “You have to be certified to operate a tanning booth, but for 911 — the most critical link in emergency response — there is no certification,” Whittington said.
While a good idea, a national program likely would be difficult to create and maintain, said Rick Jones, NENA's director of operations. Funding would be at the heart of that difficulty. “When you address the need for training and certification, you indeed are going to escalate their costs,” he said.
Protocols and intuitive managers are key to reducing dispatcher pressure in 911 call centers.
Jones said that 911 call centers ideally would allocate 5% of their operating budgets for training but acknowledged that such a goal would be unrealistic for many, if not most, centers in the current economic environment. “Their training has been cut, and their practice time has been reduced for various reasons, [but] basically economic,” Jones said. “That starts to have a negative effect.”
The negative effect is three-fold. Rigorous ongoing training, core-competency standards and proficiency tests would increase the likelihood that call-takers and dispatchers act properly and — perhaps more important — instinctively. This, in turn, would make them more competent and confident, leading to reduced stress. And the less stressed that call-takers and dispatchers are, the less likely they are to lose their composure and make mistakes at crucial moments.
But such training, standards and testing largely are absent in the 911 world, a fact that Gordon Graham, the keynote speaker at NENA's conference, noted. Graham, a former California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer turned litigator and educator specializing in risk management, said, “Once you are hired, you will never have to take another test if you don't want to be promoted. The public deserves better.”
Grace Under Pressure
To illustrate the point, Graham spoke of US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who landed his airplane in New York City's Hudson River in January after several birds flew into the craft's engines, rendering them inoperable. According to Graham, Sullenberger said in an interview shortly after his heroic actions saved the lives of everyone aboard Flight 1549 that he tried, throughout his flying career, to make small deposits each day into his memory bank, knowing that one day he would “have to make a massive withdrawal.”
It was a sound strategy, Graham said, because doing so enabled Sullenberger to make instantaneous, life-and-death decisions on that fateful day. It's a lesson especially adaptable to the public-safety sector, whose personnel make such decisions on a daily basis.
“You will run into the unthinkable event someday, and you will have to make instantaneous decisions,” Graham said. “Whether you are prepared to do so is up to you.”
To prepare, Jones recommended that 911 emergency call centers at least implement protocols that every telecommunicator follows for every call the center receives. He suggested that centers adopt the protocols already established by the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Institute or PowerPhone (a provider of crisis communications training), and resist the temptation to create their own.
“That's dangerous, because a local agency doesn't have the expertise,” said Jones, who further cautioned that centers also should resist altering the national protocols, because “sometimes they over-modify them.”
Emergency call center managers also can play an important role in reducing the stress encountered by 911 call-takers and dispatchers, according to Steve Wisely, director of APCO's Communications Center and 911 services department. He said managers should be trained to have a calming effect on telecommunicators. “It's important that the supervisory leadership has training that will allow them to act in a calm manner, even when high-profile incidents are underway,” Wisely said. “The supervisors set the tone for the workers that are reporting to them.”
It's also important that supervisors recognize when a call-taker or dispatcher needs to decompress or a shoulder to lean on for a few minutes, Wisely said. “A support system needs to be in place where a person can get out of their seat and go to a quiet place to contemplate [an incident] or talk to somebody, if they're troubled by it,” he said.
This article originally appeared in Urgent Communications, a FIRE CHIEF sister publication.
http://firechief.com/training/ar/reduce-911-dispatcher-pressure-200911/index.html
Sunday, July 26, 2009
"Chaos Theory" from Urgent Communications
In light of DateLine airing again tonight, I thought I'd post this to update persons new to the case on what the foundation is doing and what we're fighting for. We so hope and pray such errors are minimized and that more people don't have to die needlessly. Denise's tragedy is not an isolated incident. Problems happen more than most people know. We can improve this folks! And people truly are out there trying but we need your help!
Jul 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Glenn Bischoff
Protocols and intuitive managers are key to reducing pressure in 911 centers.
Nathan Lee returned to his Florida home in the middle of the afternoon on Jan. 17, 2008. When he arrived, he found his two sons — a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old — together in the younger boy's crib. His wife and the boys' mother, Denise Amber Lee, was nowhere to be found.
She was found two days later in a shallow grave after being brutally raped. In the first frenetic hours after her abduction, mistakes allegedly were made by a 911 call-taker and dispatchers that hampered the search effort. Today, her family and friends are wondering why no national training and certification program exists for 911 telecommunicators, which they believe would help professionals in the sector better keep their wits in an intrinsically high-stress environment that becomes a crucible when things hit the fan.
The first 911 call on the day of Denise Lee's abduction was placed by Nathan Lee. The 911 center that took that call and two others promptly issued BOLO ("Be On the LookOut for") signals that allegedly were missed by the 911 center in an adjacent county. At some point during the ordeal, the assailant drove through that county with Denise Lee in tow.
Later in the afternoon, a witness called 911 to report that a child in the back seat of a green Camaro was pounding on the window and screaming hysterically. The "child" was Denise Lee, according to Peggy Lee, the victim's mother in law. According to Lee's family, that call was received by the same 911 center that allegedly missed the BOLOs issued after Nathan Lee's 911 calls. Somehow, the family alleges, no BOLO ever was issued for the call from the eyewitness nor were police cruisers dispatched, even though the eyewitness provided cross streets at several junctures until the car carrying Denise Lee peeled off onto another road.
Peggy Lee today serves as the community relations director for the Denise Amber Lee Foundation, which is lobbying for training and procedural reforms in the 911 sector. She has heard the recording from the eyewitness call and said the call-taker became flustered during the nine minutes she was on the line with the eyewitness. "That call-taker didn't know what to do — you could hear the chaos," she said.
Denise Lee's father works in that county as a police detective. He said in an interview on a network-television newsmagazine that a fellow officer told him that the officer was certain the vehicle drove "right by him" but did not pursue, because "he never received the information."
Local media reported that the county's sheriff defended the performance of the 911 center's call-takers and dispatchers that night but acknowledged that mistakes were made. Reportedly, two dispatchers were suspended as a result of this incident.
During the ordeal, Denise Lee somehow managed to get her hands on the assailant's wireless phone without him knowing and placed her own 911 call. She cleverly gave the call-taker vital information, such as the type of car, by speaking in a way that made her assailant think she was talking to him. After seven minutes the assailant caught on and the call ended. "That call was handled superbly," Peggy Lee said.
However, Denise Lee's location couldn't be identified by the 911 system because she used a pre-paid wireless phone to place the call.
The television newsmagazine posed this question: Could Denise Lee have been saved if the call-taker and dispatchers had kept their cool? It's a question that haunts her family.
Consequently, the Denise Amber Lee Foundation is lobbying for the creation of a national certification program for 911 call-takers and dispatchers. "We want to ensure that no other family has to endure the pure hell our family has experienced," said Nathan Lee during last month's National Emergency Number Association (NENA) conference in Fort Worth, Texas.
Craig Whittington, NENA's newly elected president, who spent six years on the organization's educational committee before joining its executive board in 2007, is in favor of such a program. "You have to be certified to operate a tanning booth, but for 911 — the most critical link in emergency response — there is no certification," Whittington said.
While a good idea, a national program likely would be difficult to create and maintain, said Rick Jones, NENA's director of operations. Funding would be at the heart of that difficulty. "When you address the need for training and certification, you indeed are going to escalate their costs," he said.
Jones said that 911 call centers ideally would allocate 5% of their operating budgets for training but acknowledged that such a goal would be unrealistic for many, if not most, centers in the current economic environment. "Their training has been cut, and their practice time has been reduced for various reasons, [but] basically economic," Jones said. "That starts to have a negative effect."
The negative effect is three-fold. Rigorous ongoing training, core-competency standards and proficiency tests would increase the likelihood that call-takers and dispatchers act properly and — perhaps more important — instinctively. This, in turn, would make them more competent and confident, leading to reduced stress. And the less stressed that call-takers and dispatchers are, the le
ss likely they are to lose their composure and make mistakes at crucial moments.
But such training, standards and testing largely are absent in the 911 world, a fact that Gordon Graham, the keynote speaker at NENA's conference, noted. Graham, a former California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer turned litigator and educator specializing in risk management, said, "Once you are hired, you will never have to take another test if you don't want to be promoted. The public deserves better."
To illustrate the point, Graham spoke of US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who landed his airplane in New York City's Hudson River in January after several birds flew into the craft's engines, rendering them inoperable. According to Graham, Sullenberger said in an interview shortly after his heroic actions saved the lives of everyone aboard Flight 1549 that he tried, throughout his flying career, to make small deposits each day into his memory bank, knowing that one day he would "have to make a massive withdrawal."
It was a sound strategy, Graham said, because doing so enabled Sullenberger to make instantaneous, life-and-death decisions on that fateful day. It's a lesson especially adaptable to the public-safety sector, whose personnel make such decisions on a daily basis.
"You will run into the unthinkable event someday, and you will have to make instantaneous decisions," Graham said. "Whether you are prepared to do so is up to you."
To prepare, Jones recommended that 911 emergency call centers at least implement protocols that every telecommunicator follows for every call the center receives. He suggested that centers adopt the protocols already established by the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Institute or PowerPhone (a provider of crisis communications training), and resist the temptation to create their own.
"That's dangerous, because a local agency doesn't have the expertise," said Jones, who further cautioned that centers also should resist altering the national protocols, because "sometimes they over-modify them."
Emergency call center managers also can play an important role in reducing the stress encountered by 911 call-takers and dispatchers, according to Steve Wisely, director of APCO's Communications Center and 911 services department. He said managers should be trained to have a calming effect on telecommunicators. "It's important that the supervisory leadership has training that will allow them to act in a calm manner, even when high-profile incidents are underway," Wisely said. "The supervisors set the tone for the workers that are reporting to them."
It's also important that supervisors recognize when a call-taker or dispatcher needs to decompress or a shoulder to lean on for a few minutes, Wisely said. "A support system needs to be in place where a person can get out of their seat and go to a quiet place to contemplate [an incident] or talk to somebody, if they're troubled by it," he said.
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/mag/sops-training-reduce-call-takers-stress-200907/index.html?smte=wl
Jul 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Glenn Bischoff
Protocols and intuitive managers are key to reducing pressure in 911 centers.
Nathan Lee returned to his Florida home in the middle of the afternoon on Jan. 17, 2008. When he arrived, he found his two sons — a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old — together in the younger boy's crib. His wife and the boys' mother, Denise Amber Lee, was nowhere to be found.
She was found two days later in a shallow grave after being brutally raped. In the first frenetic hours after her abduction, mistakes allegedly were made by a 911 call-taker and dispatchers that hampered the search effort. Today, her family and friends are wondering why no national training and certification program exists for 911 telecommunicators, which they believe would help professionals in the sector better keep their wits in an intrinsically high-stress environment that becomes a crucible when things hit the fan.
The first 911 call on the day of Denise Lee's abduction was placed by Nathan Lee. The 911 center that took that call and two others promptly issued BOLO ("Be On the LookOut for") signals that allegedly were missed by the 911 center in an adjacent county. At some point during the ordeal, the assailant drove through that county with Denise Lee in tow.
Later in the afternoon, a witness called 911 to report that a child in the back seat of a green Camaro was pounding on the window and screaming hysterically. The "child" was Denise Lee, according to Peggy Lee, the victim's mother in law. According to Lee's family, that call was received by the same 911 center that allegedly missed the BOLOs issued after Nathan Lee's 911 calls. Somehow, the family alleges, no BOLO ever was issued for the call from the eyewitness nor were police cruisers dispatched, even though the eyewitness provided cross streets at several junctures until the car carrying Denise Lee peeled off onto another road.
Peggy Lee today serves as the community relations director for the Denise Amber Lee Foundation, which is lobbying for training and procedural reforms in the 911 sector. She has heard the recording from the eyewitness call and said the call-taker became flustered during the nine minutes she was on the line with the eyewitness. "That call-taker didn't know what to do — you could hear the chaos," she said.
Denise Lee's father works in that county as a police detective. He said in an interview on a network-television newsmagazine that a fellow officer told him that the officer was certain the vehicle drove "right by him" but did not pursue, because "he never received the information."
Local media reported that the county's sheriff defended the performance of the 911 center's call-takers and dispatchers that night but acknowledged that mistakes were made. Reportedly, two dispatchers were suspended as a result of this incident.
During the ordeal, Denise Lee somehow managed to get her hands on the assailant's wireless phone without him knowing and placed her own 911 call. She cleverly gave the call-taker vital information, such as the type of car, by speaking in a way that made her assailant think she was talking to him. After seven minutes the assailant caught on and the call ended. "That call was handled superbly," Peggy Lee said.
However, Denise Lee's location couldn't be identified by the 911 system because she used a pre-paid wireless phone to place the call.
The television newsmagazine posed this question: Could Denise Lee have been saved if the call-taker and dispatchers had kept their cool? It's a question that haunts her family.
Consequently, the Denise Amber Lee Foundation is lobbying for the creation of a national certification program for 911 call-takers and dispatchers. "We want to ensure that no other family has to endure the pure hell our family has experienced," said Nathan Lee during last month's National Emergency Number Association (NENA) conference in Fort Worth, Texas.
Craig Whittington, NENA's newly elected president, who spent six years on the organization's educational committee before joining its executive board in 2007, is in favor of such a program. "You have to be certified to operate a tanning booth, but for 911 — the most critical link in emergency response — there is no certification," Whittington said.
While a good idea, a national program likely would be difficult to create and maintain, said Rick Jones, NENA's director of operations. Funding would be at the heart of that difficulty. "When you address the need for training and certification, you indeed are going to escalate their costs," he said.
Jones said that 911 call centers ideally would allocate 5% of their operating budgets for training but acknowledged that such a goal would be unrealistic for many, if not most, centers in the current economic environment. "Their training has been cut, and their practice time has been reduced for various reasons, [but] basically economic," Jones said. "That starts to have a negative effect."
The negative effect is three-fold. Rigorous ongoing training, core-competency standards and proficiency tests would increase the likelihood that call-takers and dispatchers act properly and — perhaps more important — instinctively. This, in turn, would make them more competent and confident, leading to reduced stress. And the less stressed that call-takers and dispatchers are, the le
ss likely they are to lose their composure and make mistakes at crucial moments.
But such training, standards and testing largely are absent in the 911 world, a fact that Gordon Graham, the keynote speaker at NENA's conference, noted. Graham, a former California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer turned litigator and educator specializing in risk management, said, "Once you are hired, you will never have to take another test if you don't want to be promoted. The public deserves better."
To illustrate the point, Graham spoke of US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who landed his airplane in New York City's Hudson River in January after several birds flew into the craft's engines, rendering them inoperable. According to Graham, Sullenberger said in an interview shortly after his heroic actions saved the lives of everyone aboard Flight 1549 that he tried, throughout his flying career, to make small deposits each day into his memory bank, knowing that one day he would "have to make a massive withdrawal."
It was a sound strategy, Graham said, because doing so enabled Sullenberger to make instantaneous, life-and-death decisions on that fateful day. It's a lesson especially adaptable to the public-safety sector, whose personnel make such decisions on a daily basis.
"You will run into the unthinkable event someday, and you will have to make instantaneous decisions," Graham said. "Whether you are prepared to do so is up to you."
To prepare, Jones recommended that 911 emergency call centers at least implement protocols that every telecommunicator follows for every call the center receives. He suggested that centers adopt the protocols already established by the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Institute or PowerPhone (a provider of crisis communications training), and resist the temptation to create their own.
"That's dangerous, because a local agency doesn't have the expertise," said Jones, who further cautioned that centers also should resist altering the national protocols, because "sometimes they over-modify them."
Emergency call center managers also can play an important role in reducing the stress encountered by 911 call-takers and dispatchers, according to Steve Wisely, director of APCO's Communications Center and 911 services department. He said managers should be trained to have a calming effect on telecommunicators. "It's important that the supervisory leadership has training that will allow them to act in a calm manner, even when high-profile incidents are underway," Wisely said. "The supervisors set the tone for the workers that are reporting to them."
It's also important that supervisors recognize when a call-taker or dispatcher needs to decompress or a shoulder to lean on for a few minutes, Wisely said. "A support system needs to be in place where a person can get out of their seat and go to a quiet place to contemplate [an incident] or talk to somebody, if they're troubled by it," he said.
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/mag/sops-training-reduce-call-takers-stress-200907/index.html?smte=wl
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Federal oversight of 911 funds is needed (from Urgent Communications)
After reading the article on MSNBC yesterday, I went back and read this article by Glenn Bischoff. I thought I should post it here. I feel remiss in not posting it before. But as most of you know my world is a little topsy turvy right now. Quite the roller coaster. It is upsetting and word needs to get out. I guess I seem to some people obsessed with this stuff. Oh well. I don't feel so much obsessed as I feel driven and compelled.
I've been reading about the Leutjens story. There's so much more to it than people know. I'll try and post more later. But for now here's Glenn Bischoff's article about federal oversight of 9-1-1 funds. I truly wish I would have posted this when I first read it. I read so much about this stuff, I get almost dizzy and have to go back to re-read it. But it ties into the other article so neatly.
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/commentary/911-fund-raids-20090709/
Federal oversight of 911 funds is needed
Jul 9, 2009 4:07 PM, By Glenn Bischoff
It’s time that state piracy of money collected for emergency communications networks is ended once and for all
This week, the National Emergency Number Association, National Association of State 911 Administrators and the 911 Industry Alliance jointly issued a policy statement that addressed the long-standing practice of state and local governments raiding funds collected to pay for 911 emergency communications systems. These groups pointed out that federal law requires state and local governments that impose 911 fees to use the money for the intended purpose. They also strongly urged state and local governments to “refrain from diverting 911 for unintended or unauthorized purposes.”
That’s fine. These organizations are advocates for the 911 sector and issuing statements such as this one, and lobbying lawmakers and policymakers, is exactly what they should be doing — and they do a great job. But asking state and local governments to cease the siphoning, particularly in this economic climate, is analogous to me telling my dog to stay out of the treat bowl after I’ve placed it uncovered on the coffee table and then left the room.
A while back Congress tried to discourage this practice by passing legislation that would make any state that diverted 911 funds ineligible for grants from the Enhance 911 Act of 2004, which authorized up to $1.25 billion for public-safety answering point (PSAP) upgrades. Unfortunately, that has had as much impact as the bark of a toothless dog, as Congress only has appropriated $43.5 million to date. Spread over 50 states and several territories, that money is hardly incentive to keep states from continuing the piracy.
Another problem, according to Jeff Robertson, executive director of the 911 Industry Alliance, is the grant program’s match requirement. “They don’t bother applying for the money because they can’t come up with the matching funds,” Robertson said. “That’s happened in a lot of cases.”
So is it any wonder then that the state of Wisconsin recently moved $20 million collected for 911 to its general fund? Or that the states of Oregon, Hawaii and Delaware also shifted millions of dollars collected for 911 to their general funds? What’s to stop them?
On that note, I asked Robertson whether the time had come for the federal government to wrest control of 911 funding from the states. He predicted that “there would be a ton of opposition to that.” One concern is that states with heavier political clout might be able to wrangle a disproportionate share of the money. “Also, you’d then have three tiers that could skim off the top,” Robertson said.
As a follow up, I suggested that the federal government at least take on an overseer role by performing audits of how the states use money collected for 911. I further suggested tougher sanctions, perhaps making pirating states ineligible for any federal money, including dollars targeted for roads, education and social programs. What good is a sanction, after all, if it doesn’t hurt?
“That would help,” Robertson said. “If you put a spotlight on it, even if it’s just the auditing process, that would be great, because then the public would see it and politicians thinking of putting their hands on those funds would know they’ll have to answer to somebody.”
Indeed, a big part of the 911 sector’s policy strategy going forward, Robertson said, centers on educating the general public on this issue. The thinking is that if the public is aware of the potential negative impact on 911 communications of these funding raids — for instance, the inability to locate wireless callers and/or to take calls from VoIP users — it will put pressure on lawmakers and policy officials to make substantive changes or risk being voted out of office.
It’s a great idea. The public instinctively believes that the 911 system is going to work without fail, every time. It would be good for them to know that might not always be the case. It also would be good for them to understand that states which divert funds expressly collected to operate, maintain and improve the 911 communications system to other purposes are — philosophically, if not legally — defrauding the public. While there is safety in numbers, there also is power.
I've been reading about the Leutjens story. There's so much more to it than people know. I'll try and post more later. But for now here's Glenn Bischoff's article about federal oversight of 9-1-1 funds. I truly wish I would have posted this when I first read it. I read so much about this stuff, I get almost dizzy and have to go back to re-read it. But it ties into the other article so neatly.
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/commentary/911-fund-raids-20090709/
Federal oversight of 911 funds is needed
Jul 9, 2009 4:07 PM, By Glenn Bischoff
It’s time that state piracy of money collected for emergency communications networks is ended once and for all
This week, the National Emergency Number Association, National Association of State 911 Administrators and the 911 Industry Alliance jointly issued a policy statement that addressed the long-standing practice of state and local governments raiding funds collected to pay for 911 emergency communications systems. These groups pointed out that federal law requires state and local governments that impose 911 fees to use the money for the intended purpose. They also strongly urged state and local governments to “refrain from diverting 911 for unintended or unauthorized purposes.”
That’s fine. These organizations are advocates for the 911 sector and issuing statements such as this one, and lobbying lawmakers and policymakers, is exactly what they should be doing — and they do a great job. But asking state and local governments to cease the siphoning, particularly in this economic climate, is analogous to me telling my dog to stay out of the treat bowl after I’ve placed it uncovered on the coffee table and then left the room.
A while back Congress tried to discourage this practice by passing legislation that would make any state that diverted 911 funds ineligible for grants from the Enhance 911 Act of 2004, which authorized up to $1.25 billion for public-safety answering point (PSAP) upgrades. Unfortunately, that has had as much impact as the bark of a toothless dog, as Congress only has appropriated $43.5 million to date. Spread over 50 states and several territories, that money is hardly incentive to keep states from continuing the piracy.
Another problem, according to Jeff Robertson, executive director of the 911 Industry Alliance, is the grant program’s match requirement. “They don’t bother applying for the money because they can’t come up with the matching funds,” Robertson said. “That’s happened in a lot of cases.”
So is it any wonder then that the state of Wisconsin recently moved $20 million collected for 911 to its general fund? Or that the states of Oregon, Hawaii and Delaware also shifted millions of dollars collected for 911 to their general funds? What’s to stop them?
On that note, I asked Robertson whether the time had come for the federal government to wrest control of 911 funding from the states. He predicted that “there would be a ton of opposition to that.” One concern is that states with heavier political clout might be able to wrangle a disproportionate share of the money. “Also, you’d then have three tiers that could skim off the top,” Robertson said.
As a follow up, I suggested that the federal government at least take on an overseer role by performing audits of how the states use money collected for 911. I further suggested tougher sanctions, perhaps making pirating states ineligible for any federal money, including dollars targeted for roads, education and social programs. What good is a sanction, after all, if it doesn’t hurt?
“That would help,” Robertson said. “If you put a spotlight on it, even if it’s just the auditing process, that would be great, because then the public would see it and politicians thinking of putting their hands on those funds would know they’ll have to answer to somebody.”
Indeed, a big part of the 911 sector’s policy strategy going forward, Robertson said, centers on educating the general public on this issue. The thinking is that if the public is aware of the potential negative impact on 911 communications of these funding raids — for instance, the inability to locate wireless callers and/or to take calls from VoIP users — it will put pressure on lawmakers and policy officials to make substantive changes or risk being voted out of office.
It’s a great idea. The public instinctively believes that the 911 system is going to work without fail, every time. It would be good for them to know that might not always be the case. It also would be good for them to understand that states which divert funds expressly collected to operate, maintain and improve the 911 communications system to other purposes are — philosophically, if not legally — defrauding the public. While there is safety in numbers, there also is power.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Prepaid Wireless and 9-1-1 (Urgent Communications article)
My opinion, article to follow: While, yes, absolutely "the time for talking about this is over"! But, I'd like to add, we need to use those funds collected to be able to find these phones when someone calls for 9-1-1 assistance. Denise Amber Lee had the comm center on the phone for 7 (seven minutes). She most likely, fully expecting to be found. If we're not going to do any of this any time soon, we need to educate the public on what their cell phones and 9-1-1 centers can and cannot do. Too many people are watching CSI and Law and Order and have expectations about 9-1-1 that are quite simply unrealistic. So if you're just going to keep talking, at least, educate people. The woman who died in Oklahoma, Kimberly Rae Kendrick, the young boy in Australia, David Iredale, Jennifer Johnson in Tampa, Olida Kerr Day in Miami etc........ They all expected to be found through wireless technology and were tragically disappointed. Denise's call was made from the alleged murderer's own PRE-PAID cell phone. IMO NENA, and other 9-1-1 industry experts need to start educating people on how to use 9-1-1 from any wireless phone. They can't expect a sales clerk at a sales counter, making minimum wage plus commission, selling cell phones to do that job. JMHO. I've seen some literature but definitely not enough because regular folks, outside the industry, just have no clue.
Solution may be near for prepaid wireless 911 funding dilemma
Jul 9, 2009 5:51 PM, By Glenn Bischoff
The advent of prepaid wireless phones created a nasty problem for the 911 emergency-communications sector. Where wireless operators collect 911 fees from their monthly subscribers, they cannot collect from prepaid customers because those customers don’t have billing plans; they simply purchase minutes through various retail outlets.
It’s a problem that’s getting bigger, according to Patrick Halley, government affairs director for the National Emergency Number Association, who led a panel discussion on the topic last month at the organization’s annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas. Citing various sources, Halley said that 20% of wireless phone users are prepaid and that 80% of new users in May were such customers.
Moreover, Halley cited a report from the New Millennium Research Council that predicted that 60 million people nationwide would shift to less-expensive wireless plans as a result of the flagging economy. Many are expected to migrate to pay-as-you-go options.
“This is a rapidly growing market, without a doubt,” Halley said.
Several approaches have been floated to ensure that prepaid customers contribute their fair share to state 911 funds. The one that is gaining the most momentum calls for legislation that would require retailers to tack a 911 fee onto the purchase price of the prepaid wireless phone cards they sell, in part because it appears to be the easiest to implement.
But is this approach fair to the retail community? Mark Barfield, a vice president with Radio Shack, who also participated in the panel discussion at NENA, doesn’t think so. “There are tens of thousands of mom-and-pop stores that sell these things and many won’t comply,” Barfield said. “Small businesses will think that no one will catch them if they don’t charge the fee.”
That would put any retailer that does comply with such a mandate at a distinct competitive disadvantage, according to Barfield.
“People will come into our store and ask, ‘Why are you collecting this fee when the store down the street isn’t’ — and then they will shop down the street,” Barfield said. Not only would that cost the retailer a sale, but it also could create an unfair perception in the mind of the customer, he added. “People will think we’re cheating them, when we’re just complying with the law.”
But the fact that no mechanism currently is in place to collect 911 fees from pre-paid wireless users is costing the public-safety sector nationwide roughly $200 million a year, money that is sorely needed, especially in a down economy, said Jeff Robertson, executive director of the 911 Industry Alliance, who also participated in the panel discussion.
“The time for talking about this is over,” Robertson said. “A point-of-sale model is the best way to go, so let’s get it done. We could debate this for another year, but anything that we come up with, someone will be able to poke holes in it.”
For those retailers that believe this approach to be unfair, Robertson had some simple advice: “If you don’t want to subscribe to this model, don’t sell the [cards].”
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/news/prepaid-wireless-fees-20090709/
Solution may be near for prepaid wireless 911 funding dilemma
Jul 9, 2009 5:51 PM, By Glenn Bischoff
The advent of prepaid wireless phones created a nasty problem for the 911 emergency-communications sector. Where wireless operators collect 911 fees from their monthly subscribers, they cannot collect from prepaid customers because those customers don’t have billing plans; they simply purchase minutes through various retail outlets.
It’s a problem that’s getting bigger, according to Patrick Halley, government affairs director for the National Emergency Number Association, who led a panel discussion on the topic last month at the organization’s annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas. Citing various sources, Halley said that 20% of wireless phone users are prepaid and that 80% of new users in May were such customers.
Moreover, Halley cited a report from the New Millennium Research Council that predicted that 60 million people nationwide would shift to less-expensive wireless plans as a result of the flagging economy. Many are expected to migrate to pay-as-you-go options.
“This is a rapidly growing market, without a doubt,” Halley said.
Several approaches have been floated to ensure that prepaid customers contribute their fair share to state 911 funds. The one that is gaining the most momentum calls for legislation that would require retailers to tack a 911 fee onto the purchase price of the prepaid wireless phone cards they sell, in part because it appears to be the easiest to implement.
But is this approach fair to the retail community? Mark Barfield, a vice president with Radio Shack, who also participated in the panel discussion at NENA, doesn’t think so. “There are tens of thousands of mom-and-pop stores that sell these things and many won’t comply,” Barfield said. “Small businesses will think that no one will catch them if they don’t charge the fee.”
That would put any retailer that does comply with such a mandate at a distinct competitive disadvantage, according to Barfield.
“People will come into our store and ask, ‘Why are you collecting this fee when the store down the street isn’t’ — and then they will shop down the street,” Barfield said. Not only would that cost the retailer a sale, but it also could create an unfair perception in the mind of the customer, he added. “People will think we’re cheating them, when we’re just complying with the law.”
But the fact that no mechanism currently is in place to collect 911 fees from pre-paid wireless users is costing the public-safety sector nationwide roughly $200 million a year, money that is sorely needed, especially in a down economy, said Jeff Robertson, executive director of the 911 Industry Alliance, who also participated in the panel discussion.
“The time for talking about this is over,” Robertson said. “A point-of-sale model is the best way to go, so let’s get it done. We could debate this for another year, but anything that we come up with, someone will be able to poke holes in it.”
For those retailers that believe this approach to be unfair, Robertson had some simple advice: “If you don’t want to subscribe to this model, don’t sell the [cards].”
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/news/prepaid-wireless-fees-20090709/
Monday, June 15, 2009
from Urgent Communications
I posted a synopsis of his speech late last week. I just came across this article. The author of the artice is so right! If you ever get the opportunity to hear Gordon Graham speak, do so!
Risk management is a laughing matter
Jun 9, 2009 11:04 AM, By Glenn Bischoff
FORT WORTH, Texas — Who doesn't like a "two-fer?" Whether it's a buy-one-get-one deal at the grocery store or a baseball doubleheader, more generally is viewed as better. Yesterday, at the National Emergency Number Association conference, attendees were treated to a unique two-fer, a keynote address that doubled as a stand-up comedy routine.
Gordon Graham was the speaker. His career is a two-fer: he started his professional life as a California Highway Patrol officer, rising through the ranks to captain before his retirement; later he became a successful attorney and educator. In 30 years of attending keynote addresses — the list includes such entertaining and/or inspiring speakers such as Mike Ditka, Bo Schembechler and Adrian Cronauer (whose exploits inspired the cult-classic movie "Good Morning, Vietnam") — Graham's stands alone. I'm not the only one who thought so. Throughout the day, I overheard similar comments. Indeed, Graham himself is a two-fer — someone who delivers a relevant, on-point message in a completely hilarious fashion.
His topic was risk management, and his message was remarkably simple: nearly every bad outcome is predictable and thus preventable. He used several historical examples to illustrate the point. The one I found most interesting was the most recent. He showed a copy of yesterday's USA Today, which reported that nearly every "serious" regional airline accident over the past 10 years involved at least one pilot who had previously failed a proficiency test. According to Graham, each of these incidents was predictable and preventable. "If your pilot can't pass the test, then maybe he shouldn't fly the plane," he said.
In contrast, Graham then presented US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who landed his airplane in New York City's Hudson River in January after several birds flew into the craft's engines, rending them inoperable. Sullenberger is a shining example of one of Graham's seven rules of risk management: training has to be constant and rigorous. "Every day needs to be a training day," Graham said.
He spoke of something that Sullenberger said in an interview shortly after his heroic actions saved the lives of everyone aboard Flight 1549. Sullenberger said that he tried, throughout his flying career, to make small deposits each day into his memory bank, knowing that one day he would "have to make a massive withdrawal," Graham said. It was a sound strategy, Graham said, because doing so enabled him to make instantaneous, life-and-death decisions on that fateful day. It's a lesson especially adaptable to the public-safety sector, whose personnel make such decisions on a daily basis.
"You will run into the unthinkable event someday, and you will have to make instantaneous decisions," Graham said. "Whether you are prepared to do so is up to you."
His other rules of risk management included the following:
Organizations must strive for continuous improvement in their personnel;
Organizations must hire quality people — "If you hire stupid people, they are not going to get better over time," Graham said;
An organization's supervisors must spot problems before they become tragedies;
An organization and its members must have a healthy respect for the dangers and risks they face;
An organization must establish performance metrics for its personnel and hold them accountable — "Rules without enforcement are just nice words," Graham said;
An organization and its personnel must be able and willing to learn from their mistakes.
Concerning the final rule, Graham told the story of a woman he encountered while a member of the California Highway Patrol. The woman lived near Malibu, Calif. On three separate occasions, each roughly a decade apart, wildfire destroyed the woman's home, which she promptly rebuilt on the same spot each time.
During the most recent wildfire, Graham said he received numerous e-mails from people who had attended one of his lectures at some point over the years and were now concerned that he might be in danger. The e-mails, which came from all over the country, were so numerous that Graham eventually was forced to craft a blanket response, which he wrote firm in the knowledge that "California catches on fire every year." It read, "Risk management is not a class I teach; it's a way of life. Do you really think I'd build my [freaking] house in the [freaking] woods?" Predictable and preventable.
If you ever have a chance to take in one of Graham's lectures, I urge you to do so. I guarantee you will learn something — and will be thoroughly entertained in the process.
Risk management is a laughing matter
Jun 9, 2009 11:04 AM, By Glenn Bischoff
FORT WORTH, Texas — Who doesn't like a "two-fer?" Whether it's a buy-one-get-one deal at the grocery store or a baseball doubleheader, more generally is viewed as better. Yesterday, at the National Emergency Number Association conference, attendees were treated to a unique two-fer, a keynote address that doubled as a stand-up comedy routine.
Gordon Graham was the speaker. His career is a two-fer: he started his professional life as a California Highway Patrol officer, rising through the ranks to captain before his retirement; later he became a successful attorney and educator. In 30 years of attending keynote addresses — the list includes such entertaining and/or inspiring speakers such as Mike Ditka, Bo Schembechler and Adrian Cronauer (whose exploits inspired the cult-classic movie "Good Morning, Vietnam") — Graham's stands alone. I'm not the only one who thought so. Throughout the day, I overheard similar comments. Indeed, Graham himself is a two-fer — someone who delivers a relevant, on-point message in a completely hilarious fashion.
His topic was risk management, and his message was remarkably simple: nearly every bad outcome is predictable and thus preventable. He used several historical examples to illustrate the point. The one I found most interesting was the most recent. He showed a copy of yesterday's USA Today, which reported that nearly every "serious" regional airline accident over the past 10 years involved at least one pilot who had previously failed a proficiency test. According to Graham, each of these incidents was predictable and preventable. "If your pilot can't pass the test, then maybe he shouldn't fly the plane," he said.
In contrast, Graham then presented US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who landed his airplane in New York City's Hudson River in January after several birds flew into the craft's engines, rending them inoperable. Sullenberger is a shining example of one of Graham's seven rules of risk management: training has to be constant and rigorous. "Every day needs to be a training day," Graham said.
He spoke of something that Sullenberger said in an interview shortly after his heroic actions saved the lives of everyone aboard Flight 1549. Sullenberger said that he tried, throughout his flying career, to make small deposits each day into his memory bank, knowing that one day he would "have to make a massive withdrawal," Graham said. It was a sound strategy, Graham said, because doing so enabled him to make instantaneous, life-and-death decisions on that fateful day. It's a lesson especially adaptable to the public-safety sector, whose personnel make such decisions on a daily basis.
"You will run into the unthinkable event someday, and you will have to make instantaneous decisions," Graham said. "Whether you are prepared to do so is up to you."
His other rules of risk management included the following:
Organizations must strive for continuous improvement in their personnel;
Organizations must hire quality people — "If you hire stupid people, they are not going to get better over time," Graham said;
An organization's supervisors must spot problems before they become tragedies;
An organization and its members must have a healthy respect for the dangers and risks they face;
An organization must establish performance metrics for its personnel and hold them accountable — "Rules without enforcement are just nice words," Graham said;
An organization and its personnel must be able and willing to learn from their mistakes.
Concerning the final rule, Graham told the story of a woman he encountered while a member of the California Highway Patrol. The woman lived near Malibu, Calif. On three separate occasions, each roughly a decade apart, wildfire destroyed the woman's home, which she promptly rebuilt on the same spot each time.
During the most recent wildfire, Graham said he received numerous e-mails from people who had attended one of his lectures at some point over the years and were now concerned that he might be in danger. The e-mails, which came from all over the country, were so numerous that Graham eventually was forced to craft a blanket response, which he wrote firm in the knowledge that "California catches on fire every year." It read, "Risk management is not a class I teach; it's a way of life. Do you really think I'd build my [freaking] house in the [freaking] woods?" Predictable and preventable.
If you ever have a chance to take in one of Graham's lectures, I urge you to do so. I guarantee you will learn something — and will be thoroughly entertained in the process.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
National certification program for 911 telecommunicators is long overdue
Great article! Thank you, Glenn, for sharing our story. Thank you, Craig Whittington for introducing us to Glenn. You, dear Craig, are going to be an absolutely fantastic NENA president especially if you accomplish all you've set out to do. It's clear your family loves you, and your NENA family loves you. God bless you with guidance and strength through your journey as president. And again, thank you for helping us.
Before you all read the article there are some very minor errors regarding Denise's call. (Admittedly it is a complicated story). She did get a hold of her abductor's cell phone and kept the call taker on the line or 7 minutes giving as much information as she could. That call was handled very professionally and our hats off to the call taker who had to take that call. It must have been an emotionally difficult call. God bless you. The call that was not aired went to a different comm center. The eyewitness had that particular call taker on the line for 9 minutes giving cross streets. That call taker in a neighboring county failed to enter the information immediately and they failed to dispatch a car and worse never let the neighboring agencies know about the call. It's very glaring when listening to the 9-1-1 calls how different the counties are as far as standards. And Mr Graham is absolutely correct that supervisors need to be held accountable.
In any case, thank you for telling our story. Hopefully the 9-1-1 industry can learn from this debacle and minimize some of these errors by insisting on having our very first line of defense (call takers) become certified and make them live up to a set of standards.
National certification program for 911 telecommunicators is long overdue
Jun 11, 2009 1:59 PM, By Glenn Bischoff
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/commentary/national-certification-911-telecommunicators-20090611/
FORT WORTH, Texas — In his keynote address earlier this week at the National Emergency Number Association conference, Gordon Graham, the erstwhile motorcycle cop turned litigator/educator, spent much of the hour talking about the value of ongoing rigorous training, performance metrics and accountability as risk-management tactics. He bemoaned the lack of core-competency tests in the 911 emergency communications sector.
"Once you are hired, you will never have to take another test, if you don't want to be promoted. The public deserves better," Graham said.
Regarding those promotions, Graham also spoke of the need for supervisors to do the jobs for which they were hired.
"On every public-safety tragedy, I guarantee that you will find the fingerprints of supervisors who didn't act like a supervisor," he said. "Too many supervisors can't make the transition from buddy to boss. This is a problem lying in wait. You have to promote people who have the guts to supervise."
Graham's message was music to the ears of Craig Whittington, NENA's newly elected president, who spent six years on the organization's educational committee before joining its executive board in 2007. He told me shortly after Graham's speech that he would like to see a national certification program for 911 call-takers and dispatchers.
"You have to be certified to operate a tanning booth, but for 911 — the most critical link in emergency response — there is no certification," Whittington said.
The family and friends of Denise Amber Lee couldn't agree more with that sentiment. The 21-year-old Lee was abducted from her Florida home in January 2008, then brutally raped, killed and buried in a shallow grave by her assailant. She was found two days after her abduction. Lee's family and friends believe she might be alive today had the system — and those who work in it — performed better on the day of her abduction and have created a foundation in her name that champions 911-sector reform.
The first 911 call on that day was reportedly placed by Lee's husband Nathan, who had returned to the family's home in mid-afternoon to discover his wife missing and his two young sons — ages 2 and 6 months at the time — together in the baby's crib. The 911 center that took the call promptly reportedly issued a "be on the lookout" alert, or BOLO, which the family alleges was missed inexplicably by the 911 center in an adjacent county. At some point during the ordeal, the assailant drove through that county with Denise Lee in tow.
Later in the afternoon, a witness reportedly called 911 to report that a child in the back seat of a green Camaro was pounding on the window and screaming hysterically. The "child" was Denise Lee. According to Lee's family, that call was received by the 911 center that allegedly missed the first BOLO. Somehow, her family alleges, no BOLO ever was issued for the call from the eye witness.
Denise Lee's father works in that county as a police detective. He said in an interview on a network television newsmagazine that he was told by one fellow officer that the officer was certain the vehicle drove "right by him" but he had no idea that he should pursue because "he never received the information."
Reportedly, the county's sheriff defended the performance of the 911 center's call-takers and dispatchers that night, but he acknowledged that mistakes were made. Two dispatchers were suspended as a result of this incident.
During the ordeal, Denise Lee somehow managed to get her hands on the assailant's wireless phone without him knowing. She placed a call to 911 and cleverly gave the call-taker vital information, such as the type of car and its location — down to the cross streets — by speaking in a way that made her assailant think she was talking to him. After 7 to 9 minutes — reports vary — the assailant caught on and the call ended. Somehow, the crucial information provided by Denise Lee never made it to officers in the field, according to her family. And, her location couldn't be identified by the 911 system because she used a pre-paid wireless phone to place the call.
Steve Largent, the former congressman from Oklahoma and member of the Professional Football Hall of Fame, spoke during the NENA conference in his current role of CTIA president and CEO. He told of one particular tactic used by his Seattle Seahawks coach Chuck Knox, who was the first to regularly practice the plays the team would use at the end of games when they desperately needed to score. Today, every team does this, but in Largent's playing days, the practice was considered cutting-edge. According to Largent, the tactic was quite effective, because the players knew just what to do at the most stressful, frenetic juncture of the game.
Before telling the Knox story, Largent said something that well could be applied to the Lee tragedy. "You [911 call-takers and dispatchers] are a phone call people hope they never have to make. They count on you. You have to have a game plan in place and know what play to call."
There are few jobs as stressful as that of 911 call-taker/dispatcher. No one outside of that world can empathize with what these dedicated professionals encounter on a daily basis. When journalists make mistakes, publications run corrections. When 911 telecommunicators make mistakes, people die. Undeniably, it's a tough job — which is all the more reason for them to be at the top of their game.
The Denise Amber Lee Foundation is lobbying for the creation of a national certification program for 911 call-takers and dispatchers. "We want to ensure that no other family has to endure the pure hell our family has experienced," Nathan Lee said this week at the NENA conference.
It seems like a reasonable request.
Before you all read the article there are some very minor errors regarding Denise's call. (Admittedly it is a complicated story). She did get a hold of her abductor's cell phone and kept the call taker on the line or 7 minutes giving as much information as she could. That call was handled very professionally and our hats off to the call taker who had to take that call. It must have been an emotionally difficult call. God bless you. The call that was not aired went to a different comm center. The eyewitness had that particular call taker on the line for 9 minutes giving cross streets. That call taker in a neighboring county failed to enter the information immediately and they failed to dispatch a car and worse never let the neighboring agencies know about the call. It's very glaring when listening to the 9-1-1 calls how different the counties are as far as standards. And Mr Graham is absolutely correct that supervisors need to be held accountable.
In any case, thank you for telling our story. Hopefully the 9-1-1 industry can learn from this debacle and minimize some of these errors by insisting on having our very first line of defense (call takers) become certified and make them live up to a set of standards.
National certification program for 911 telecommunicators is long overdue
Jun 11, 2009 1:59 PM, By Glenn Bischoff
http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/commentary/national-certification-911-telecommunicators-20090611/
FORT WORTH, Texas — In his keynote address earlier this week at the National Emergency Number Association conference, Gordon Graham, the erstwhile motorcycle cop turned litigator/educator, spent much of the hour talking about the value of ongoing rigorous training, performance metrics and accountability as risk-management tactics. He bemoaned the lack of core-competency tests in the 911 emergency communications sector.
"Once you are hired, you will never have to take another test, if you don't want to be promoted. The public deserves better," Graham said.
Regarding those promotions, Graham also spoke of the need for supervisors to do the jobs for which they were hired.
"On every public-safety tragedy, I guarantee that you will find the fingerprints of supervisors who didn't act like a supervisor," he said. "Too many supervisors can't make the transition from buddy to boss. This is a problem lying in wait. You have to promote people who have the guts to supervise."
Graham's message was music to the ears of Craig Whittington, NENA's newly elected president, who spent six years on the organization's educational committee before joining its executive board in 2007. He told me shortly after Graham's speech that he would like to see a national certification program for 911 call-takers and dispatchers.
"You have to be certified to operate a tanning booth, but for 911 — the most critical link in emergency response — there is no certification," Whittington said.
The family and friends of Denise Amber Lee couldn't agree more with that sentiment. The 21-year-old Lee was abducted from her Florida home in January 2008, then brutally raped, killed and buried in a shallow grave by her assailant. She was found two days after her abduction. Lee's family and friends believe she might be alive today had the system — and those who work in it — performed better on the day of her abduction and have created a foundation in her name that champions 911-sector reform.
The first 911 call on that day was reportedly placed by Lee's husband Nathan, who had returned to the family's home in mid-afternoon to discover his wife missing and his two young sons — ages 2 and 6 months at the time — together in the baby's crib. The 911 center that took the call promptly reportedly issued a "be on the lookout" alert, or BOLO, which the family alleges was missed inexplicably by the 911 center in an adjacent county. At some point during the ordeal, the assailant drove through that county with Denise Lee in tow.
Later in the afternoon, a witness reportedly called 911 to report that a child in the back seat of a green Camaro was pounding on the window and screaming hysterically. The "child" was Denise Lee. According to Lee's family, that call was received by the 911 center that allegedly missed the first BOLO. Somehow, her family alleges, no BOLO ever was issued for the call from the eye witness.
Denise Lee's father works in that county as a police detective. He said in an interview on a network television newsmagazine that he was told by one fellow officer that the officer was certain the vehicle drove "right by him" but he had no idea that he should pursue because "he never received the information."
Reportedly, the county's sheriff defended the performance of the 911 center's call-takers and dispatchers that night, but he acknowledged that mistakes were made. Two dispatchers were suspended as a result of this incident.
During the ordeal, Denise Lee somehow managed to get her hands on the assailant's wireless phone without him knowing. She placed a call to 911 and cleverly gave the call-taker vital information, such as the type of car and its location — down to the cross streets — by speaking in a way that made her assailant think she was talking to him. After 7 to 9 minutes — reports vary — the assailant caught on and the call ended. Somehow, the crucial information provided by Denise Lee never made it to officers in the field, according to her family. And, her location couldn't be identified by the 911 system because she used a pre-paid wireless phone to place the call.
Steve Largent, the former congressman from Oklahoma and member of the Professional Football Hall of Fame, spoke during the NENA conference in his current role of CTIA president and CEO. He told of one particular tactic used by his Seattle Seahawks coach Chuck Knox, who was the first to regularly practice the plays the team would use at the end of games when they desperately needed to score. Today, every team does this, but in Largent's playing days, the practice was considered cutting-edge. According to Largent, the tactic was quite effective, because the players knew just what to do at the most stressful, frenetic juncture of the game.
Before telling the Knox story, Largent said something that well could be applied to the Lee tragedy. "You [911 call-takers and dispatchers] are a phone call people hope they never have to make. They count on you. You have to have a game plan in place and know what play to call."
There are few jobs as stressful as that of 911 call-taker/dispatcher. No one outside of that world can empathize with what these dedicated professionals encounter on a daily basis. When journalists make mistakes, publications run corrections. When 911 telecommunicators make mistakes, people die. Undeniably, it's a tough job — which is all the more reason for them to be at the top of their game.
The Denise Amber Lee Foundation is lobbying for the creation of a national certification program for 911 call-takers and dispatchers. "We want to ensure that no other family has to endure the pure hell our family has experienced," Nathan Lee said this week at the NENA conference.
It seems like a reasonable request.
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