Communication Centers of the Future

Most people live their lives without ever calling the police. For those who do, it may the first time they call either 911 or the police business line. It is from this first point of contact with the police - the initial conversation with a dispatcher - that first impressions are formed. If the first contact is poor, officers, investigators, supervisors or administrators will struggle to counter that sentiment. Dispatch personnel are also a crucial link between callers and responding officers. It is imperative that they get as much information from callers and accurately relay it to responding officers without screening, misrepresenting or failing to pass along critical information. Highly publicized incidents with tragic outcomes have underscored the importance of the dispatch/communications function.

Despite the industry acknowledgement that “dispatchers are important” the cultural emphasis in policing remains on officers. If this were not true dispatchers would receive better training, get paid more, have more attention spent on their “wellness” issues, their staffing would increase and police organizations would stop locating communications centers in basements, and dingy windowless rooms. For many police agencies, the critical role the dispatch communications function plays seems to be swept aside by the urgency of officer safety and wellness concerns or the focus on preventing officer use-of-force or preventable error. All of this is important, but in the future, as artificial intelligence becomes more pervasive in policing and other technologies advance dramatically, communications personnel will take an increasingly more important role in facilitating community safety.

In this section we examine the future issues involving communications centers and the dedicated people who work within them. We hope to explore “everything dispatch” from facility design to technological advances and from dispatcher wellness to mining the generally untapped knowledge about police operations and crime and disorder that dispatchers possess.