Not everyone wakes up one morning and decides their calling is to be a police dispatcher, but that’s exactly what happened to Robbinsville resident Ashley Ricci.
“Honestly, I woke up one day and decided it was something I wanted to do, so I went and joined the fire company,” Ricci said.
While she was training to become a volunteer firefighter, Ricci received the necessary training to become a dispatcher. When a job opened up in her hometown, she left volunteer firefighting behind to join the township’s dispatch.
“I grew up in Robbinsville and I wanted to do something to give back a little bit, because I really do feel a close connection to the town and the people here—I’ve lived here my whole life,” she said. “I like to push myself every once in awhile, and it was a good challenge.”
Out of the seven Robbinsville dispatchers, Ricci is the only one from the township. While the others hail from different towns, they all share Ricci’s desire to help the Robbinsville community. Many of the dispatchers come from volunteer backgrounds or go on to become police officers.
It’s the commitment to helping people that earns the dispatchers high praise from Acting Chief Lt. Sandy Bainbridge.
“I have always said for years that these guys are the unsung heroes of the our police department,” Bainbridge said. “They never get credit for anything, and it’s a shame because without them we don’t exist.”
The dispatchers are the first line of everything for the police department—receiving calls, helping people in the lobby of the police station and assisting police officers while they’re out on a call or traffic stop.
“Their job is to keep our officers safe, and their job is then to help the public, and they do a great job,” Bainbridge said. “Without them, we’re nothing.”
This close relationship between between the police officers and dispatchers is becoming more and more unique, as more towns and counties are switching to a centralized dispatch.
With a centralized dispatch, 911 and police calls are directed to a separate center outside the police station that is typically responsible for answering calls from all over the county. Many counties in New Jersey have a centralized dispatch center, including Burlington, Gloucester, Somerset and Morris counties.
“I’m just glad that we have a dispatch for Robbinsville, that we’re not centralized,” Bainbridge said. “A lot of towns have gone to centralized, where one dispatch company will dispatch for many towns, and there’s no personal service. We have only Robbinsville with us, and the townspeople call here and they get Robbinsville.”
In addition to answering police calls, the dispatchers also take calls for the fire and EMS departments. Dispatcher Kathy Murr said that even in towns where they keep their police dispatch in-house, the fire and EMS are usually handled by a separate centralized service.
Many towns switch to a centralized dispatch center as a way to cut back on the budget; however, for Bainbridge, the extra cost is worth keeping the “human element” in police work.
Murr said the main advantage of keeping a local dispatch service is that they are all familiar with the area, which is especially important when the caller doesn’t know where they are. Even with technology that is often able to pin-point the exact location of a caller, having a person on the phone who knows the entire town is invaluable, Murr said.
“A lot of people who move here do not know where they are, and if they describe to us where they are we can get someone there,” said said.
Ricci said she’s become acquainted with many residents in town, from either talking to the same people who call the police line or getting to know the people who come to the station’s lobby window.
“I think that’s something that a lot of other towns don’t have,” Ricci said. “They don’t have the personal touch, that really personal connection with their residents—that we do have here.”
While the dispatchers enjoy their relationship with the residents, their number one priority remains keeping them safe.
In addition to answering all 911 calls made within the township, they answer all calls to the non-emergency police line. When officers make a motor vehicle stop, they check with the dispatcher, who looks up information about the driver and checks to make sure the driver doesn’t have any warrants and is properly licensed.
They also help run Operation Reassurance, which checks in daily with elderly residents who live alone. If they don’t hear from the resident by a certain point in the day, then the dispatchers give them a call to check in on them. If no one answers, they send a police officer over to their house.
Ricci and Murr estimated that they answer roughly 100 calls per shift, which ranges from 10 or 12 hours, although the majority of the calls are non-emergency. Ambulance calls for a medical issue are the most frequent ones that come in, they said.
Despite going through all the training courses, and going to at least one new course each year, Ricci said there’s nothing that can prepare someone to take the calls quite like being in the dispatcher’s seat.
“I’ve never gotten a call that was routine,” she said. “I’ve never gotten a call that was like how it’s going to be in class.”
Murr said that no two calls are ever the same, and just when you think you’ve heard it all, that next call comes in with someone completely unusual. Certain calls have stuck with the dispatchers for years afterwards, and each dispatcher has a call that stands out above the rest.
Ricci once answered a call about a car crash, and after taking down the license plate information she realized the vehicle belonged to her brother.
“My heart just dropped,” she said. “You’re just never, ever ready for that—your family being involved in a call that comes in.”
The types of calls that come in have changed over the years, especially recently. Murr said the department has seen a major increase in domestic violence calls, and Ricci said a lot of the ambulance calls are for heroin overdoses.
Murr said answering those calls is an acquired skillset, and most of the dispatchers handle the high pressure situations by later talking to coworkers, who understand how hard the job can get.
“We’re probably our best therapists because they know what you’re talking about,” she said. “And you can’t [save] all of them. There’s some calls that will stay with you forever.
But with every life threatening call the dispatchers receive, there are the calls asking about school closing, the power being out and other issues the police don’t deal with.
Once, Murr said a man called the police to request they save him table at DeLorenzo’s Tomato Pies because he couldn’t get on the phone with anyone in the restaurant. Ricci said a woman once called and asked the police to send someone over to a bakery because they messed up her cupcake order.
“I think the biggest misconception is that we have answers to everything,” Ricci said. “When the power goes out, they’ll call us and ask when it’s coming back on, or if school is closed, what time is the parade… I’m honestly just a citizen like you, and I really don’t know.”
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