Phones

Congratulations to the Communications Supervisors!!

What an outstanding job you all have done with the new phone system we now have. It’s nice to see that a lot of thought, time and preparing went into the planning of this. It’s nice that we are getting hung up on, cannot transfer our calls, sounds like you all are in a tunnel, takes longer now to answer the phone. I hope you get your acts together before we get the new dispatch system, but given your past and how you all run things up there, DD, VM, I’m sure it won’t be good!

I hope you all are expressing to everyone that the future of our center doesn’t look good at all. Is there an age requirement to work in the center? Cause we really need to get the minors off of the radio and get some adults that know what they are doing on there. But why would you all care about that. Our emails and complaints go no where with you DD, because you don’t care!!!

Just wanted to say keep up the great work you all are doing!! I give you guys another year, if that.

It's is truly a miracle that cpd's comm center has lasted this long. Cpd's comm center is a joke and is operated by uneducated supervisors', who wouldn't know how to function in the real world. I believe a person has to know how to read and write in order to implement a new phone system.

[wifeyto1goodcop]

All I know is from my own personal experience with the SO, (owning 3 different homes in unincorporated Pinellas County over the last 17 years) is that they (the SO) couldn't find my residence on more than one occasion.

One time a neighbor needed law enforcement, I called the SO and had to give the dispatcher directions. The dispatcher called back. They had no record of my street. O..... K..... They eventually found it l a t e r.

Another time CPD responded to me faster than the SO. Nice. This was an emergency situation that Clearwater basically dealt with before the SO even GOT to my house. It's either a dispatch problem or a deputy problem. ???

I'm not sure what issue's we have, but the sheriff office taking over our dispatch scares me. And I'm not the only one. Maybe it's irrational, maybe things have changed at the SO. But, they have so much territory spread out all over I imagine it's hard to get familiar with it all.

Unlike some of our experienced dispatchers that know the city in and out.

Just my .02 from someone with friends and family on the street in Clearwater. And their safety is all I care about.. not money, not politics, and the city should do the same.

Wifey back on LEO Affairs? Get a Life or take it to the spouse page.

Can't we all get along. It is easy to blame someone.

Wifey back on LEO Affairs? Get a Life or take it to the spouse page.

No name and what's it to ya? Anyone can post here. Why don't you get a life and stop being the "board police".

What do you mean give us another year...The comm ctr...in some form or the other has been here longer than your Wet Behind The Ears Self! I would hope no senior officer or comm person would make such a statement. Please dont group the proficiency of the comm ctr supvs together. If your a comm ctr person..CHallenge Them..and if your a patrol person Challenge Them..show their incompetence.....thats the only way you get change.

What was up with the patch the other night? Is there a reason why it takes so long to patch us with PCSO?? How come some dispatchers do right away, and others can't do it at all & have to have a supervisor do it for them?!?!?!?!

10 mins, it took to patch us with pcso. Just another example on how things are being ran up there. I also hear we lost a "key" employee up there, hope he comes back!!

Dispatchers have the ability to program 5 different Patch Scenerios into their computers like patch one could be 11/13 and patch two could be 11/13/LE1, etc. They fail to do this and then when Shit Hits the Fan (<overused cliche) and units are calling out everywhere and everyone is on the radio the dispatcher has trouble trying to get the patch set up which causes the supervisor to run over and do it for him/her. That supervisor started going around checking the dispatchers computer after that happened and after lineup.

I also hear we lost a "key" employee up there, hope he comes back!!


What a joke :snicker:

Perhaps Verizon was to blame.

Well lets see....i'm suppose to patch the city (using a completely different computer system), make sure I attach all 15 units to the high priority call (while you all are talking over one another on the radio), set a perimeter, while making sure the officer screaming like a little girl that someone is running is code 4 and finding out where he she/he is because they, ONCE AGAIN, neglected to tell dispatch where they actually were and who they were out with, and all the while type all the info into the call and get a K9 over from ANOTHER radio grp to come to primary and help with that call. Gee, sorry if we're not doing ALL THAT within 2-3 minutes for all you out there. Oh and run the tag info in NCIC/FCIC at the same time to see if the car is stolen. Gosh, guess i'm just a little busy at the moment to worry about immediately patching with LE1...especially when the eagle is not even on up in the air yet. Tell you what, why don't you come up stairs one day and sit in a chair and see how fast you can keep up, see how you can translate you're mumbling and see how you can handle it all. Untill then just deal with and realize we are not the enemy, we are not lazy...we work damn hard and a little respect would be nice once in a while along with a "thanks dispatch".

Well lets see....i'm suppose to patch the city (using a completely different computer system), make sure I attach all 15 units to the high priority call (while you all are talking over one another on the radio), set a perimeter, while making sure the officer screaming like a little girl that someone is running is code 4 and finding out where he she/he is because they, ONCE AGAIN, neglected to tell dispatch where they actually were and who they were out with, and all the while type all the info into the call and get a K9 over from ANOTHER radio grp to come to primary and help with that call. Gee, sorry if we're not doing ALL THAT within 2-3 minutes for all you out there. Oh and run the tag info in NCIC/FCIC at the same time to see if the car is stolen. Gosh, guess i'm just a little busy at the moment to worry about immediately patching with LE1...especially when the eagle is not even on up in the air yet. Tell you what, why don't you come up stairs one day and sit in a chair and see how fast you can keep up, see how you can translate you're mumbling and see how you can handle it all. Untill then just deal with and realize we are not the enemy, we are not lazy...we work darn hard and a little respect would be nice once in a while along with a "thanks dispatch".

Thanks guys for what you do. Many times you guys have been there for us, and for me personally I know. It only takes one to spoil the bunch or to blanket everyone as the problem. Far to often all of us including Officer, Supervisor, Comm. Center, and Command Staff make judgements on one another due to the poor actions or comments of one person or click of people. Thanks for what you do, and you are right you are not the enemy, but don't let the harsh words of a few speak for the rest of us.......

Dispatch you are awesome. It's easy to forget that when **** hits the fan. Keep up what you do best.

thanks for the postive feedback, its nice to hear that for a change. As for the new phone system...we hate it too! Comm center employees got an hour overview of it and half of the functions on they system didn't even work for the demo. We were told by Vesta to "don't worry it will all be working when the new phone system is implemented". Same goes for the new cads system. If you guys out there are frustrated just imagine how we are. Half the common places in the city STILL don't take. I can't even get US 19 to take...we have to actually type out US Highway 19 N, for it to take in the new system. A pain when you pull a traffic stop. You put an address in and 5 pop up boxes come up one after another making sure that is the address you REALLY want. The new system is a HUGE pain in the A**. Also some of the address that are clearwater show up as the SO's jurisdiction so then the call gets sent to the wrong dispatcher. The new system is defaulted to send all "SO jurisdiction" calls to Dist 2 dispatcher. Then we find out that on your computers you can't even read half the stuff we have in the calls... nor can you efficiently run someone for code 5, DL and registrations. What used to be a 1 step process to attach you to a call is now more like a 3 step process. Not very good when stuff hits the fan and everyone is wanting to be attached to that certain call. So believe me...we know your frustrated and so are we. Just have to grin and deal with it untill they fine tune the new cads system.

[Lenny Briscoe]

There is nothing wrong with our dispatchers. The problem is the dolts that are making the decisions to make us S.O. WE ARE NOT S.O. AND WE DO NOT WANT TO BE!!!

Between the ACISS and the dispatch and phone system, it makes one wonder if anyone is driving the damn bus. Does anyone in top management have a clue??

From take home cars to the rest, Hey UPPER MGMT. Get a clue will you. This is our careers you are screwing with.

71 cents a mile to take a PD car home, but 26 cents to take a gas truck home. Who is the genius that came up with that. Is anyone in this department questioning the crap that comes out of the MSB?? We can't park on certain floors, cause some fat a-- can not walk 10 feet to his office, we do not write our tickets for parking anymore, GEE did the city manager show a little leadership and cut his milage allowance or park his take home car and pay for his personal cell calls?? Did he not quickly hire another assistant instead of doing the salary savings thing and suck it up and work more with less like we are asked to do year after year. NOOOO.

He did not even promote from within. But the county is interested in him.

Does anyone ever admit in the management that maybe we made a mistake and gave up a perfectly good report writing system for the crap the S.O. uses. I like doing 35 % less work in the same amount of time. I like getting kicked out of the system and losing my reports constantly. IT'S FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let's speak up people.

Maybe it is time for someone on the third floor to grow a set of N-TS and speak up. Or else next time a citizen complains give out the city managers home phone number.

Stop cancelling the back ups and go straight by the book. Do not go to calls with no back up. If they do not give you one then stage until you get one. No more 3 man squads. Maybe then they will get the message.

Give up the tickets and take back ups, give warnings. Protect your brothers and sisters, not the city pocketbooks.

Lets not pick at each other when it is quite possible that it may not be the people working the tools we are given to work with, but THE TOOLS THEMSELVES that SUCK!

Enough for now.



Will the third floor monitor of this site please respond.

Lenny,

If everyone thought like you, I would not be reading this message board as an ex-employee. It makes for a great story when it does not involve your livelyhood, but I guess I am on this site right now because I still care. Mind you, I don't care enough to bend over and continue to accept it myself. I wonder if that makes me more or less of a human.

Take care of yourselves because no one else is going to do it for you. An LT, wet behind the ears from West Point (with no field experience) can order a platoon up a hill or across the sand to die... so becomes city government.

God bless the pee-ons that make the world go round,
And curse they that make decisions with no reasons to be found.

I thank you guys for a doing a great job and for being on our team. We forget too often that we are on the same team just performing a different function. I think most of the real complaining about dispatch recently is more of a technological flaw with the changeover rather than the operators. People wrongly assert blame on the operators when it is clearly a functional issue with equipment. Both sides are extremely frustrated with issues right now which hopefully will be corrected in the near future.

Thanks again for the support of dispatch. It really is a technology issue. We have also made complaints...again they have fallen on deaf ears. We also get 4 messages before we can see a tag that we've run. It really is an officer safety issue. The best bet is to start going to grp 12 and have them run the tag...it will be faster. As of now we only staff 1 person on info due to not much traffic on that group because you were able to run a tag/person, etc with no problems on your computer. If more units start going to info grp to run tags and code 5s we'll start staffing 2 people back there like the old days and we can get that info to you faster.