Bitchin' time!

The Florida Highway Patrol decided a while back to "consolodate" their communications operations into a regional response area. Bad idea. They've had nothing but problems since. We used to have a direct private "ring down" line to FHP dispatch and could, with the push of one button, speak with a Highway Patrol Dispatcher to make notifications or exchange information. Now, since the move, 9-1-1 Dispatchers have to wait in line just like everyone else who is dialing the 800 number or *FHP from their trusty little cell phones. The problem with that is this....it may ring for two or three minutes straight and then just stop...you get dropped off into some telephonic waste basket with nothing but dead air on the other end. If you are connecting a caller, department policy requires that you stay on the line with them until they are connected and actually speaking with a human. That may be 3, 4, even 5 minutes in some cases. In the mean time 9-1-1 may be ringing off the hook. Someone needs help but can't get an answer at 9-1-1 because I'm stuck waiting with some bullshit fender bender to hit the FHP lottery and actually get someone to pick up the blasted phone.

Have we ever lost a caller because no one could answer? I would imagine we have. Could some woman, for example, who has just a few seconds to dial 9-1-1 before her abusive husband finds her locked in the closet and decides to beat her to sleep, miss her opportunity to get help because the Highway Patrol hasn't seen fit to fix their damned phone problem in two years? Feasibly, yes. Would a jury give a flying wombat shit about some arbitrary department policy requiring calltakers to stay on the line with a non-emergency caller while lost in some endless automated loop with another agency? Hell no! Would they blame the FHP? Doubtful. Would they blame our policy? Most likely. So why is it so damned hard to get someone up at the top of the food chain to issue one of the "thou shalt's" or the "thou shalt not's" in favor of prioritizing a presumed emergency on a ringing 9-1-1 line over a known non-emergency on some impossible transfer? Why can't someone with a higher pay grade and a little more job security have the scrote to "leak" to the media the problem with FHP and their reluctance to address it? Perhaps that would force them into replacing the whole damned system if need be. Why can't someone insist that we get a permanent direct line like we used to have? Why can't FHP, like just about every other public safety dispatch center in our entire state, get a damned Nextel as a back-up so we can make contact? We have a confidential private number for the damned water company for pete's sake! They don't put us in line with everyone else. Why the hell does FHP? We're 9-1-1...not Joe Schmuckatelli! Gimme just one day as king...just one day and I'll fix the world, or at least a whole damned lot of it!