Life at metro dispatch
Controlled chaos keeps law enforcement, emergency workers operating smoothly

Vandee Campos takes a breather during a busy period at McKinley County Metro Dispatch on Friday, May 2. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Phil Stake
Staff writer

GALLUP — Byron is on the call desk. When a call first comes in, he answers it. He gathers essential information like location and type of emergency from the caller, and then routes the call to one of four dispatchers. Ranee is on the Fire and EMS desk. It’s 3:30 p.m. on Friday, May 1, and she already has eight active calls.

Lori is on the county desk, dispatching for McKinley County Sheriff’s Office. And Vandee is on the city desk, far and away the busiest line of all, dispatching for Gallup Police Department. Unlike the other dispatchers, Vandee will get the bulk of “203” calls, the law-enforcement designation for “Intoxicated Subject.” Intoxicated subjects accounted for 38 calls during the 12-hour shift that runs between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., the first of which Byron answered at 8:38 a.m.

It’s the beginning of May. The first weekend of the month is a notoriously busy time for Gallup’s law enforcement and emergency services. Gallup is a commerce center for many reservation residents, and employees of the Navajo Nation receive paychecks on the first. This is also the time when state and federal subsidies are distributed. In consequence, police estimate that the population swells three fold, at times filling shops, restaurants, bars and the streets of Gallup with 80,000 people — gridlocked and vying for the resources built into this city of about 20,000. The city is bordered on all sides by tribal lands, Zuni land to the south and Navajo land to the west, north and east. This configuration prevents Gallup from ever growing to accommodate a permanent influx. It also blurs jurisdictional boundaries — another hurdle for dispatchers, which does little to lessen the severity of an emergency — and must be dealt with on the fly.

“It’s a very multitasking job,” Byron says.

“When I first started (seven weeks prior), I didn’t think I’d be able to work the radio and take the calls and get the information, but the more I do it, the easier it gets,” said Brian Salazar, a dispatcher in training May 1. “When I started, two others started, too. I’m the only one left.”

The office

If you were to view McKinley County from the sky, you would see the results of metro dispatch long before you’d see the office itself.

A Med Star ambulance speeding south down New Mexico Highway 602. Gallup Fire Department tankers surrounding a trailer fire on Gallup’s east side. Two McKinley County Sheriff’s deputy cruisers stopped in Continental Divide, both red and blues turning, their uniformed drivers conducting a field sobriety test. A CSA panel stopped along old Route 66 on Gallup’s west side, while a few miles further McKinley West EMS Chief Rudy Nez arrives at the scene of a “217,” to treat an injured victim of domestic violence.

The communication necessary to land available “units” at the appropriate emergency is accomplished by, at most, four seasoned dispatchers, explained assistant director Glendora Orphey, with two lesser-experienced dispatchers giving support — like Byron, who’s worked at Metro Dispatch about six months. While communicating with police, firefighters, ambulance drivers — and each other — dispatchers are simultaneously talking down sometimes frightened, sometimes angry voices on the other end of the line.

“I’ve been exposed to some of the things — not the domestics — but someone dying, you know, from medical reasons,” Byron said.

The view from the sky as you approach Boyd Avenue in Gallup settles on the office of McKinley County Metropolitan Dispatch Authority, as it’s officially known. Inside a roughly 30- by 60-foot room is a technophiles island ... a sea of carpet surrounding an oval of desks, piled high with computer screens — five per dispatcher — and telephonic inputs, redirects and amplifiers — all going 24 hours a day — and all fastened along a backbone of cables, bundled, tied and routed through various connections, to the New Mexico Department of Public Safety database in Santa Fe ... and the FBI’s central repository, the National Crime Information Center ... and to each police and fire department in the city and county ... and to 911.

The Work

Along the walls are sizeable cabinets. Inside the cabinets are rows of warrants and protective orders. A Metro employee picks up new warrants and protective orders every day, from magistrate and district courts. They are filed alphabetically, one cabinet each for district, magistrate and municipal courts. These may be accessed 100 times in a 24-hour period, any time the DPS search returns a match.

Dispatchers may have nine screens up at once, controlled by two mice and two keyboards. One screen shows the frequency over which he or she is dispatching, because each agency uses its own frequency. Another displays the search engine for the Department of Public Safety database in Santa Fe; another screen keeps track of the locations of on-duty “units;” another screen shows in-progress calls.

Orphey said call volumes can reach 500 calls in a 24-hour period. Dispatchers work 12 hour shifts, two-days on, two days off, with a half day on Monday ... in constant contact with people who are not generally in desirable circumstances. For that reason Orphey said they try to meet once a week to discuss healthy stress-relieving techniques.

Excerpt of dispatcher Vandee Campos during a call to Gallup Police Department:

“Where are you ma’am?”

“... near Avalon restaurant? what’s going on over there?”

“Ma’am?”

silence

“Ma’am?”

Campos keys in the woman’s response.

“Ma’am. OK. What is going on over there? OK. What is his name?”

“We try to calm them down,” Campos said later. “To put us in a position to get information ... who is injured, and where.”