Dispatchers needed!

And they are the first line of contact for a responding officer.

“It could be anything,” says Corporal Jennifer Cooper with the Prince George RCMP. “It could be a missing kid, could be an assault in progress, a break and enter. I have no idea. So they’re the ones that kind of start that whole process of informing me of what I’m going to go to next and giving me the information in the most sensible or logical way possible.”

And it takes a certain personality to do the job.

“You have to have empathy for others to be there in their time of crisis and walk through that with them,” says Patterson. “You need mental resiliency and grit. You know, it can be a hard job, and you have to, you know, hang up that very hard phone call and then pick up the next one. And, it takes it takes grit to be able to do that day in and day out.”

But once the call is done, what happens? There are pros and cons to knowing the outcome of a call.

“We do not find out the conclusions of the phone calls. And that is a blessing and a curse. Sometimes it’s good for self-preservation to not know what happened. You know, and if there is the odd one that isn’t sitting well with you and is bothering you. We have a great relationship with our police officers, and we can reach out to them and just say, ‘Hey, I just really need to know what happened with the conclusion there.’ And they’re more than happy to let us know.”

If this seems like a career path that might appeal to you, check out the website www.bcrcmp911.ca and there are in person sessions, which is the first step in what could well be a fulfilling career journey.

by Cheryl Jahn

Dispatchers needed!

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