All agencies have Policies and Procedures. Supposedly so everyone knows their responsibility and actions demanded of them in any given call for service or request. Much is common sense, some you think were written by a juvenile chimpanzee.
With regards to the release of reports. Why do citizens yell (literally) in the lobby when demanding a copy of a report and told there are procedures in the request?
With our agency you make a written request, pay a fee, the request is reviewed and either approved or not approved. If approved, our records clerk then makes a copy and sends it to the requester.
The list of those who can get a copy of a report basically have to have their name somewhere in the report. Either as a directly involved party or registered owner of the vehicle involved, or listed in some manner.
But lately it seems "others" have been requesting reports where they aren't mentioned and very upset when denied. Or the man who created a huge scene in the lobby trying to get a copy of a report of a police action his son was involved in. His "of age" son. Son wouldn't tell him the w-h-o-l-e story.
What happened to the right of privacy? What happened to kids, even grown kids, telling parents the whole story since they are asking for the parents help? What happened to insurance companies making the requests and now having their customers do all their leg work?
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Retirement
Lately the topic of retirement has been popping up.
There are two dispatchers who are eligible for retirement now, one having already given a date in January 2013. The other (who is so burnt out and so crabby because of it) keeps saying she plans to retire before the end of 2013 but worried about having the money to support herself and all her four-legged menagerie. (Even with our pay cuts, she has the money because at a weak moment she talked about her finances, telling me more than I really wanted to know.)
In the list of older dispatchers, I would be next. Ouch.
My hubby (I know, I know, I don't talk about him much here) can also retire any time he wants. He wants to pay off his truck, three more years, and then set a retirement date. He is involved with lots of non-home improvement projects. Actually, not putting in a 40+ hour work week will give him more time to be more involved in his community activities.
My mother-in-law made sure I learned from her lesson on personal and spouse retirement. She retired first, had a routine with the house and garden, church mass, weekly hair appointment, bi-weekly lunch with best friend. Then my father-in-law retired. He was so use to working very long hours that when he no longer was punching a time clock, he really didn't know what to do. He would follow her around the house, the garden, basically driving her nuts. She told him to get a job for a few hours a week to get out of the house and out of her hair.
She instructed me to make sure hubby retired first, had a routine of activities, before I retired. To save myself a lot of grief.
So that has been our plan for many years. The biggest difference between hubby and his father is hubby is more involved in projects and service than his father was at time of retirement. But will be sure he is fully integrated before I turn in my retirement date.
And now the pickle.
I'm in a quagmire of "this" or "that" when I think about retirement. My retirement.
I have been working since 12 years old. Paycheck jobs since age 16. The only time I wasn't working regularly, or 40 hours a week, was when I was raising our family. I worked for a temp service, so I could work around the school and after school activities schedule and hubby's horrific work schedule. But I was still putting in a lot of hours around the house and at the kids school. Sometimes running a typing service on the side. And always busy with a very large service club.
But a lot of things have changed over the last couple of years since hubby and I started making retirement plans and discussing our "wants" over the previous years. Maybe because I am truly looking at a retirement date soon, for him and me, I am getting confused and worried.
I can already hear some voices saying, "Hey, you're looking at three years alone before hubby retires, and you plan to wait awhiles after his retirement to plan your own, why are you even stressing about it now?"
Like any good emergency plan, or long term investment plan, you have to think ahead and play the "what if's" game. And because I know I will be officially retiring probably five years or so from now, I need to start preparation and planning, for reals.
What am I going to be doing with myself without having the call of a 40+ hour work week?
And need to truly think about what to do with my free time. Which has just become very large.
Retirement - that word is getting to be high on my list of scary words.
There are two dispatchers who are eligible for retirement now, one having already given a date in January 2013. The other (who is so burnt out and so crabby because of it) keeps saying she plans to retire before the end of 2013 but worried about having the money to support herself and all her four-legged menagerie. (Even with our pay cuts, she has the money because at a weak moment she talked about her finances, telling me more than I really wanted to know.)
In the list of older dispatchers, I would be next. Ouch.
My hubby (I know, I know, I don't talk about him much here) can also retire any time he wants. He wants to pay off his truck, three more years, and then set a retirement date. He is involved with lots of non-home improvement projects. Actually, not putting in a 40+ hour work week will give him more time to be more involved in his community activities.
My mother-in-law made sure I learned from her lesson on personal and spouse retirement. She retired first, had a routine with the house and garden, church mass, weekly hair appointment, bi-weekly lunch with best friend. Then my father-in-law retired. He was so use to working very long hours that when he no longer was punching a time clock, he really didn't know what to do. He would follow her around the house, the garden, basically driving her nuts. She told him to get a job for a few hours a week to get out of the house and out of her hair.
She instructed me to make sure hubby retired first, had a routine of activities, before I retired. To save myself a lot of grief.
So that has been our plan for many years. The biggest difference between hubby and his father is hubby is more involved in projects and service than his father was at time of retirement. But will be sure he is fully integrated before I turn in my retirement date.
And now the pickle.
I'm in a quagmire of "this" or "that" when I think about retirement. My retirement.
I have been working since 12 years old. Paycheck jobs since age 16. The only time I wasn't working regularly, or 40 hours a week, was when I was raising our family. I worked for a temp service, so I could work around the school and after school activities schedule and hubby's horrific work schedule. But I was still putting in a lot of hours around the house and at the kids school. Sometimes running a typing service on the side. And always busy with a very large service club.
But a lot of things have changed over the last couple of years since hubby and I started making retirement plans and discussing our "wants" over the previous years. Maybe because I am truly looking at a retirement date soon, for him and me, I am getting confused and worried.
I can already hear some voices saying, "Hey, you're looking at three years alone before hubby retires, and you plan to wait awhiles after his retirement to plan your own, why are you even stressing about it now?"
Like any good emergency plan, or long term investment plan, you have to think ahead and play the "what if's" game. And because I know I will be officially retiring probably five years or so from now, I need to start preparation and planning, for reals.
What am I going to be doing with myself without having the call of a 40+ hour work week?
And need to truly think about what to do with my free time. Which has just become very large.
Retirement - that word is getting to be high on my list of scary words.
Friday, May 25, 2012
NYC 911 Needs CPR
This article was forwarded to me by a friend. I love NYC, love to visit with my friends and family there. Haven't yet been able to arrange a sit-a-long to see they 911 center. This report breaks my heart.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, May 10, 2012, 2:00 AM
Todd Maisel/New York Daily News
Mayor Bloomberg and his fire and police commissioners toured the new NYPD-FDNY 911 operators and dispatchers headquarters at 11 Metrotech in Brooklyn earlier this year. A report says the $2 billion modernization is riddled with errors.
No wonder Mayor Bloomberg fought for months to keep secret an independent review he requested of problems dogging the city's 911 communications upgrade.
Bloomberg finally released the report late Friday - or at least a shortened version of the original draft - after a long court battle with the firefighters unions who want the whole thing made public.
Even in its abridged form, the report's conclusions are a huge embarrassment to City Hall. The 911 modernization, after all, is one of the signature projects of the Bloomberg era. It has already cost taxpayers $2 billion - nearly twice its original pricetag - and is still not finished.
Most disturbing are the report's conclusions that city officials have operated the 911 system contrary to the "best practices" of emergency response organizations nationwide.
The NYPD, for example, typically requires 911 operators to ask callers a dozen questions. They ask about the caller's borough, exact location, cross streets, apartment number, building floor, name and phone number. Then the operators have to verify that information via computer even before asking the nature of the emergency.
According to the report, operators don't ask the type of emergency - a crime, a medical problem or a fire - until question No. 12.
The questions, which have been part of NYPD protocols for decades, consume valuable seconds and do not conform to best standards, the report concluded.
The new report to Bloomberg, done by the Virginia-based Winbourne Consulting Group, urges the NYPD to "consider changing the order of the questions asked the caller to first ask 'what is your emergency,' before trying to determine the caller's location.
If the caller says 'fire' or 'heart attack,' the 911 operator should then immediately connect the person to an appropriate Fire or EMS dispatcher, the consultants recommended. That dispatcher would then take over asking the remaining questions while the police operator stays on the line and simultaneously inputs the responses into the NYPD computers.
The way things operate now, the NYPD operator asks all the location questions first, and if a fire dispatcher or EMS dispatcher is later connected, those dispatchers have to repeat the same location questions.
Emergency officials said operators ask the location questions first in case a call gets dropped. Records from Los Angeles show operators there ask for the nature of the emergency by the third question.
The proposed change would "eliminate redundant data entry," "improve the 911 call processin*g time," and "leverage the call taking expertise" of Fire and EMS dispatchers, the report concludes.
But the problems don't end there.
The city is also masking how long it actually takes emergency responders to answer a 911 call - commonly referred to as "response time," the reports says.
All over the country response time is defined as "the total time from the time a 911 call is made to the arrival of the responding units," the report says.
That includes four components: waiting for a 911 operator to pick up; the "call-processing time" by the operator; the time spent by dispatchers from either police, Fire or EMS sending units out; and the time it takes units to arrive.
But the city's calculations of response time have never publicly counted the first two steps - the time it takes 911 to answer the phone, and the time the 911 operator is asking the questions.
"This practice inhibits the ability of the NYPD and FDNY Fire and EMS to generate accurate response time information," the report said.
In other words, you can't trust what City Hall says about response times.
Other parts of the report point to the historic turf battles between the Police and Fire Departments.
Despite all that money spent on modernization, Police, Fire and EMS still maintain their separate maps of the city for their dispatchers, their own separate databases of addresses, and their own separate computer dispatch systems.
The separate systems lead to periodic mixups in dispatching emergency workers because the same location can have a different address depending on the database.
They are all now co-located in the same emergency call center in downtown Brooklyn - but each still preserves its own turf.
The 911 system itself is in need of emergency care.
The report Bloomberg sought to hide is aptly titled l "911CPR."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/report-concludes-city-2-billion-911-modernization-redundant-inefficient-article-1.1075364#ixzz1uUXTSc6A
In earlier posts I have lectured about how to make a 911 call. First thing to do, in ten words or less, state the emergency. Then you give location information.
But I think what really bothers me, is clearly the call takers are using a script to make up calls for service. Like the medical aid emergency dispatchers here, they follow a script, depending on the callers answers they go to the next screen of what to ask.
Don't think I could work that way. Maybe because I was taught/trained differently. If script driven call taking is all I know how can I imagine the free format of thinking and responding call taking?
I think script driven call taking is too restrictive. It has its place (especially in medical aid calls), but when you are taking calls for help and truly listening to the callers voices (inflictions, breathing, stalls) and the background, you sometimes know there are other questions you need to ask to get the full story.
And when you are script driven you don't have that freedom. You can actually get written up and disciplinary action taken against you for deviating from the script.
A well trained dispatcher knows what to ask, in the proper order, without the benefit of a script.
Hey New York, try answering 911 calls as, "911, What's your emergency?"
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, May 10, 2012, 2:00 AM
Todd Maisel/New York Daily News
Mayor Bloomberg and his fire and police commissioners toured the new NYPD-FDNY 911 operators and dispatchers headquarters at 11 Metrotech in Brooklyn earlier this year. A report says the $2 billion modernization is riddled with errors.
No wonder Mayor Bloomberg fought for months to keep secret an independent review he requested of problems dogging the city's 911 communications upgrade.
Bloomberg finally released the report late Friday - or at least a shortened version of the original draft - after a long court battle with the firefighters unions who want the whole thing made public.
Even in its abridged form, the report's conclusions are a huge embarrassment to City Hall. The 911 modernization, after all, is one of the signature projects of the Bloomberg era. It has already cost taxpayers $2 billion - nearly twice its original pricetag - and is still not finished.
Most disturbing are the report's conclusions that city officials have operated the 911 system contrary to the "best practices" of emergency response organizations nationwide.
The NYPD, for example, typically requires 911 operators to ask callers a dozen questions. They ask about the caller's borough, exact location, cross streets, apartment number, building floor, name and phone number. Then the operators have to verify that information via computer even before asking the nature of the emergency.
According to the report, operators don't ask the type of emergency - a crime, a medical problem or a fire - until question No. 12.
The questions, which have been part of NYPD protocols for decades, consume valuable seconds and do not conform to best standards, the report concluded.
The new report to Bloomberg, done by the Virginia-based Winbourne Consulting Group, urges the NYPD to "consider changing the order of the questions asked the caller to first ask 'what is your emergency,' before trying to determine the caller's location.
If the caller says 'fire' or 'heart attack,' the 911 operator should then immediately connect the person to an appropriate Fire or EMS dispatcher, the consultants recommended. That dispatcher would then take over asking the remaining questions while the police operator stays on the line and simultaneously inputs the responses into the NYPD computers.
The way things operate now, the NYPD operator asks all the location questions first, and if a fire dispatcher or EMS dispatcher is later connected, those dispatchers have to repeat the same location questions.
Emergency officials said operators ask the location questions first in case a call gets dropped. Records from Los Angeles show operators there ask for the nature of the emergency by the third question.
The proposed change would "eliminate redundant data entry," "improve the 911 call processin*g time," and "leverage the call taking expertise" of Fire and EMS dispatchers, the report concludes.
But the problems don't end there.
The city is also masking how long it actually takes emergency responders to answer a 911 call - commonly referred to as "response time," the reports says.
All over the country response time is defined as "the total time from the time a 911 call is made to the arrival of the responding units," the report says.
That includes four components: waiting for a 911 operator to pick up; the "call-processing time" by the operator; the time spent by dispatchers from either police, Fire or EMS sending units out; and the time it takes units to arrive.
But the city's calculations of response time have never publicly counted the first two steps - the time it takes 911 to answer the phone, and the time the 911 operator is asking the questions.
"This practice inhibits the ability of the NYPD and FDNY Fire and EMS to generate accurate response time information," the report said.
In other words, you can't trust what City Hall says about response times.
Other parts of the report point to the historic turf battles between the Police and Fire Departments.
Despite all that money spent on modernization, Police, Fire and EMS still maintain their separate maps of the city for their dispatchers, their own separate databases of addresses, and their own separate computer dispatch systems.
The separate systems lead to periodic mixups in dispatching emergency workers because the same location can have a different address depending on the database.
They are all now co-located in the same emergency call center in downtown Brooklyn - but each still preserves its own turf.
The 911 system itself is in need of emergency care.
The report Bloomberg sought to hide is aptly titled l "911CPR."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/report-concludes-city-2-billion-911-modernization-redundant-inefficient-article-1.1075364#ixzz1uUXTSc6A
In earlier posts I have lectured about how to make a 911 call. First thing to do, in ten words or less, state the emergency. Then you give location information.
But I think what really bothers me, is clearly the call takers are using a script to make up calls for service. Like the medical aid emergency dispatchers here, they follow a script, depending on the callers answers they go to the next screen of what to ask.
Don't think I could work that way. Maybe because I was taught/trained differently. If script driven call taking is all I know how can I imagine the free format of thinking and responding call taking?
I think script driven call taking is too restrictive. It has its place (especially in medical aid calls), but when you are taking calls for help and truly listening to the callers voices (inflictions, breathing, stalls) and the background, you sometimes know there are other questions you need to ask to get the full story.
And when you are script driven you don't have that freedom. You can actually get written up and disciplinary action taken against you for deviating from the script.
A well trained dispatcher knows what to ask, in the proper order, without the benefit of a script.
Hey New York, try answering 911 calls as, "911, What's your emergency?"
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