Sheriff Roger Brandner on Shortages of Emergency Dispatchers

Frederica Freyberg:
A legislative hearing at the Capitol this week focused on staffing shortages in law enforcement, looking at county jurisdictions in particular.

Dispatcher:
911, what’s the address of the emergency?

Frederica Freyberg:
One place staffing shortages are being felt acutely across the state, in 911 emergency call centers among dispatchers. What has led to shortages and what can be done about it? We turn to Columbia County Sheriff Roger Brandner who testified at the Capitol. And sheriff, thanks very much for being here.

Roger Brandner:
You’re welcome. Glad to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:
So describe the shortage of dispatchers in your county.

Roger Brandner:
Yeah, I think we’re consistent with the rest of the 911 PSAP dispatch centers across the state. There’s been a struggle to get qualified dispatchers in the door and get them trained. In our county, we’re four short. We’ve been four to five short for just over a year and a half, which puts a, you know, a great strain on the other dedicated dispatchers that are currently there.

Frederica Freyberg:
Yeah, indeed. Now, I read that the pay is between about 50 and $70,000 a year. Why is it hard to fill and retain these positions? Is it that the pay cannot make up for the stress of the job?

Roger Brandner:
Well, I think it’s a combination of both. You know, most dispatchers around the area are going to be making around that $25, $26 an hour. You know, which is not a bad paying job, but you’re working nights, weekends, holidays. It’s not Monday through Friday shift work. These are long hours. Very stressful. You know, if you can just imagine taking that call from that mom whose young child is not breathing or from a car accident or a domestic, you know, or a sexual assault, there’s a lot of stressful calls. And these dispatchers are the ones that answer that call to get the first responders to that scene.

Frederica Freyberg:
And so with a shortage, in addition to, to that, they’re working a lot of overtime hours?

Roger Brandner:
Oh, absolutely. I know dispatch centers across the state that have contracted with other dispatch centers. I know one county where the sheriff is actually dispatching at night because they’re so short. Our dispatchers are working a lot of overtime. It’s nothing, nothing for them to work 20 extra hours, in addition to their 40 hours a week.

Frederica Freyberg:
What does a shortage of dispatchers mean for emergency response in your community and others?

Roger Brandner:
Yeah, I mean, we’ve been able to backfill it with our dedicated men and women in our dispatch center. But the fear across the state and in our county especially, is when they burn out and they leave and we get any shorter, we’re going to struggle with having someone answer that call for service. When someone calls for that, that immediate need of fire, EMS or law enforcement, you know, we need a proper, timely response. We need a trained dispatcher to gather all the adequate information to get the right first responders there. And if they’re tired, if they’re calling in sick, if we don’t have the staff to sit in that dispatch center, there’s going to be a delay in first responder services, which is a public safety issue.

Frederica Freyberg:
So how frightening for you is that as the lead law enforcement official in your county, to be worrying about emergency response times?

Roger Brandner:
Oh, it’s critical. This has been our number one focus in our county for about the last year. There’s no question there’s a shortage of qualified law enforcement officers that work the street. Our jailers and our county jails, many county jails are not at full staff. But our dispatch center, I mean, they have to be there. They have to answer that, that call for service. They just have to. We have to have someone sitting in those chairs and there cannot be a delay. Seconds truly make a difference when you’re calling for assistance.

Frederica Freyberg:
What are some of the solutions being looked at?

Roger Brandner:
Well, our county specifically, we really did an adjustment of pay. We did some premium incentives for working at night and on weekends. We have done some other financial type of incentives. So if you’re here a year, three years, five years, you get a bonus. We have changed the hours. One unique thing with us is we just consolidated the Wisconsin Dells Police Department’s dispatch center, which, you know, was about $1 million project. And we had to increase our space up there. Our dispatch stations, the equipment, update them. So that was a big project, you know, because Wisconsin Dells area is busy in the summertime especially. But, you know, actually all 12 months out of the year now. So we’ve given them more help. We’ve increased, you know, some of the little things up there. As crazy as it sounds, we got them a treadmill. We started some yoga classes here. We do a lot of stress management with helping them cope with the stress of taking these calls because our dispatchers work 12 hours a shift, and that’s a long time to be sitting there, and they don’t get the opportunity, like so many other workers, to get up and walk around, to move around, to leave the station and go get fresh air outside. They have to stay close to that radio because at any given second, that emergency could happen.

Frederica Freyberg:
What a hard job. Sheriff Roger Brandner, thanks very much.

Roger Brandner:
You’re welcome. Thank you.