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Murder and lost clock keys: Spending a shift with St. Johnsbury emergency dispatchers

A man in a baseball cap sits at his desk and stares into a computer monitor while  surrounded by other monitors.
Erica Heilman
/
Vermont Public
St. Johnsbury dispatcher Anthony Skelton works a recent shift in the dispatch center.

Emergency dispatch centers, like so many other Vermont workplaces, are suffering from worker shortages. The Vermont State Police says its having trouble managing call volumes at its two dispatch centers, and may redo its emergency communications system.

I went over to the St. Johnsbury Police Department to watch the dispatchers at work.

Lisa Young is getting a call from a lady about a little man on a bright red scooter in a gas station parking lot, who is looking for a key to a grandfather clock.

Lisa Young: "Are we talking about… which Chinese restaurant? Let’s go with that…"

We don't give a lot of thought to the people on the other end of our 911 calls, those calm, disembodied voices who are fielding calls about cats in trees and shootings at Maplefields and men on scooters and barn fires. And sometimes they're fielding all these calls at once.

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This is Anthony Skelton, the communications director who oversees all the operations of the dispatch center.

Anthony Skelton: "The best way I can actually describe it is a traffic conductor. So you have traffic coming in from many different directions. And you have to seamlessly put them into a couple of lanes to keep going. We get phone calls from the public, we get phone calls from 911 that's transferred, we get phone calls from other agencies that are looking for logistical support. We dispatch for 11 fire departments and two ambulance services in the St. Johnsbury Police Department.

"The very first 911 call that I picked up was a jet skier struck by lightning on Moore Reservoir. And so it was a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional nightmare, because most of the Connecticut River is done by New Hampshire because the state line is actually on the low watermark on the Vermont side. So you had New Hampshire agencies going and Vermont agencies going, so I just remember that was the most memorable call I've kind of had. And it was my very first one."

"We used to have somebody that used to call all the time just to tell us about their day, you know, one of those things is just like, yeah, all right, let them talk it out."
Anthony Skelton

Erica: "So you have police calling you, you have fire department, maybe Fish and Wildlife sometimes, mental health services and regular people who are calling 911. Those are all of the people who call you at any given time?"

Anthony Skelton: "Yeah. And just the general public has our phone number too, because we answer the phone for the police department…"

Erica: "So if they want to chat, they call you too?"

Anthony Skelton: "Well, we used to have somebody that used to call all the time just to tell us about their day, you know, one of those things is just like, yeah, all right, let them talk it out."

Erica: "There are two dispatchers in the room at all times?"

Anthony Skelton: "No, actually the majority of the time we only have one in there. And you know, we're funded by agencies that we dispatch for. And so Northeast Kingdom isn't exactly well-known for its well-to-do residents, or you know, there's not a lot of money to get out of it. And so I try to be cognizant of what we charge, because it's small fire departments that we’re charging money to."

Lisa Young: "74-year-old female who had fallen in the basement, she's still there, conscious and breathing…"

"I would say probably a good 25% of our calls are mental health-related. My dispatcher that's in there right now spent half an hour on the phone with a mental health patient. She was trying to talk him out of the house to the ambulance. You know, he indicated he had a knife and we were trying to you know, make sure that EMS was safe."
Anthony Skelton

Anthony Skelton: "Any cog in a gear, if you take out that cog, the whole wheel just stops working. So if you take out police, if you take out fire, if you take out EMS, take out dispatch, the whole thing stops functioning. I think we can all see the result of the closure of the mental health hospital with the large influx of mental health issues that we see across our state.

"When that cog — the mental health cog — kind of broke, it was left up to the rest of the services to kind of pick up the pieces. And we're still trying to do that. I would say probably a good 25% of our calls are mental health-related. My dispatcher that's in there right now spent half an hour on the phone with a mental health patient. She was trying to talk him out of the house to the ambulance. You know, he indicated he had a knife, and we were trying to you know, make sure that EMS was safe.

"And so she spent half an hour on the phone with him until he walked out and made sure that he didn't have any weapons or anything like that. And you know, she was managing other phone calls while still talking to this gentleman. So."

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Erica: "So one of the skill sets you have to have for this job is managing a huge amount of anxiety coming in at you. You have to talk with people who are in duress, people who are scared. So if you wanted to tell Vermonters what goes on in the world that you are witness to…"

Anthony Skelton: "Definitely, there is no two days that are ever the same. But yes, we see a huge range from you know, we've had the cat stuck in the tree, those cliche type of calls, all the way to a very serious you know, murder. And sometimes those things happen like right next to each other. There's no build up to it. It's just like, you go from one good call to one very bad call.

"And then it could be a whole series of bad calls. It is a wild rollercoaster ride. I got a call for an infant who, his heart had stopped beating, and just to hear the parents on the phone — it was terrible. So I would say that's probably the saddest call I've ever had. And, you know, the EMS crew that went to that, they still don't talk about that call to this day."

"I got a call for an infant who his heart had stopped beating and just to hear the parents on the phone — it was terrible. So I would say that's probably the saddest call I've ever had. And, you know, the EMS crew that went to that, they still don't talk about that call to this day."
Anthony Skelton

Lisa Young: "St. Johnsbury Dispatch. OK, is she hurt in any way? Do we know? OK, is the door locked? Do we know?"

Erica: "If you could tell everybody out here who hopefully never has to, but perhaps sometime has to call you? What's your advice for people about how they should behave on the phone?"

Anthony Skelton: "Well, I think one of the best things that emergency services ever did was push calling 911. But 911 is not the end all be all. And things that aren't critical, shouldn't be necessarily 911 calls. Calling 911 is for life-altering, life-threatening situations. Certainly if people are beating up on each other, absolutely. That's a 911 call. If you really need an ambulance to go to the hospital, that's a 911 call. Something is on fire. That's a 911 call. But having a dispute with your landlord is not a reason to call 911, or having a cat stuck in a tree is not a 911 call. The system as a whole is kind of just overwhelmed.

"I'm sure everybody knows about the staffing shortages that almost every industry is experiencing, and emergency services is no different. I have a job opening here. Police has job openings, fire department has a couple of job openings, you know, emergency services is not immune to that. So to help the public do their part is, only use 911 for its intended purpose. I think that’s what I would probably try to push more than anything."

Lisa Young: "Oh, hey, how's it going? So a female just called from Pearl Street. She thought that it was strange that a little man who was on a bright red scooter just was looking for an, a key to a grandfather clock…."

Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or tweet us @vermontpublic.

Erica Heilman produces a podcast called Rumble Strip. Her shows have aired on NPR’s Day to Day, Hearing Voices, SOUNDPRINT, KCRW’s UnFictional, BBC Podcast Radio Hour, CBC Podcast Playlist and on public radio affiliates across the country. Rumble Strip airs monthly on Vermont Public. She lives in East Calais, Vermont.
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