When Colleen Simmons talks to you, you can immediately sense the focus that has served her so well in her long career as a dispatcher. She can simultaneously answer a reporter’s question, respond to a call on the radio and, while barely looking up, call out to a citizen in the Healdsburg Police Department lobby who is looking for the battery recycling container.
Simmons comes from a law enforcement family; her father was a patrol sergeant in San Francisco and her sister is also a sworn officer. Simmons started her career in the warrant bureau in San Francisco, but quickly became bored and in 1979 moved to dispatching.
“I wanted more excitement,” she said. “The other job was an office job and this is more … we have something new everyday.”
She transferred to Healdsburg 32 years ago, and has stayed ever since. “An average day, being that we are a smaller department, we do everything,” she said. “We deal with people at the counter, we deal with processing reports, we deal with car chases, we do everything. We can be doing nothing now and we can have a traffic stop, and then the guy is running and there are shots fired. It’s what makes this job so exciting because it’s always different.”
The other thing Simmons loves about working in Healdsburg is being part of the community. “Being in a small agency you can really help the community,” she said. “You can reach out to, say, the elderly and help them understand. In a larger agency there’s 25 dispatchers on at once and you don’t have that time to spend with people so that’s kind of awesome.”
She describes HPD as a family environment, and her closeness with her patrol officers and her co-workers is clear — they come to her with all manner of questions or information. “The patrol staff and us, we are truly like family which you don’t always get in a lot of places,” she said. “The sense of community, without sounding corny, is really good. On the flip side, it brings more stress to us regarding car chases and shootings etc. because this is our family.”
Healdsburg’s Chief of Police, Kevin Burke agrees with her assessment of the importance of dispatchers in the law enforcement family. “Dispatchers have an important role in every bit of police work that we do,” he said. “They are kind of like the glue that keeps the place together.”
“They are the first line — they take calls, they tell us what’s going on,” said Sergeant John Haviland. “Half the time, all the information we have is what they can get from the reporting parties. We go into calls blind — unless it’s an officer-initiated thing and we’re still blind but we’re on alert — but what information they get and how quickly they get it and get it to us makes the difference, really, in solving crimes and providing aid.”
Simmons has seen a lot of change in her time in town, as Healdsburg transitioned from what she calls a “6,000-person cow town” to the tourist Mecca its become today. Laws also change. “When I started marijuana was a very bad thing and today it’s legal,” she said. “It’s interesting to see what transpires over the years.”
But as much as Simmons loves her job and community, she’s had a hard time finding others to share the love, despite good pay and benefits. The department has been short-staffed for four years, and they have had little luck finding additional dispatchers. While no specific training or education is required to be considered, once accepted there is a 12-15 week training program, and prospects must submit to a lie detector test, an extensive background check and psychological evaluation. You must also pass the POST (Police Officers Standards and Training) test.
But the reality of the job and the shift work proves too much for many people, even after they’ve gone through the training process. Dispatchers work 12 hour shifts, either 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. or vice-versa, and weekends and holiday are part of the shift. Although they do get three to four days off each week, they are expected to be on call and can get called in if a co-worker gets ill or if there is some other issue.
“It’s really hard to get people who want to do that, who are actually in it for the team work, because it is a huge commitment,” Simmons said. “You are coming to work nights, weekends, holidays. You sit down to dinner and you get this call that so-and-so is sick, she’s got to go home, and you’re it. A lot of people are like, ‘What? Eight to five and I’m gone.’ No, you’re not, it’s not that kind of job.”
Never was that more apparent that during the October 2017 firestorms, when Simmons and all dispatchers had to step up and become the front line for the crisis. Simmons was called in the early morning of Oct. 9, and after getting her animals situated, came to work toting her pajamas.
“That’s kind of when the rubber meets the road,” she said. “You are leaving your own unknown at home to go help others. A lot of people in the private sector would be like, ‘I’m not going to work, I’m staying with my family’ and you are leaving your family to go to work and that was really difficult.
“The girls and boys at the sheriff’s office will have my respect forever for the stuff they were planted at work dealing with,” she continued. “We were inundated, but not to the level they were. But then, under the sense of community, you have Dustin Valette bringing in food for us every single night, because we need to eat and nothing was open and we were bringing our pajamas to work because we didn’t know if we were going home.”
Simmons says the ideal dispatcher has strong listening skills, intuition and the ability to be a multi-tasker. “Someone who can remain calm in crises because that’s difficult,” she said. “It makes it very real when you are dealing with the grieving mother on the phone. We’re also counselors. We take everything in, we are the first responders, everything comes through us, and we filter everything before we disseminate to (the officers).
“It’s not easy being the filter. How do we make sure they know everything? Did I miss an officer safety question? Or, you’ll get somebody that is like shooting the breeze and we need to have the wherewithal to say ‘Are you OK?’ And then they say no. We’ve had a couple of calls like that, where it was really good listening skills that got them the help they needed, otherwise it’s ‘peace out’ and their boyfriend is going to kill them,” she finished.
“I have worked around many dispatchers over the years, and can say, without hesitation, that if I personally, or a friend or family member was ever in an emergency situation and needed to call 9-1-1, I would want that call to be answered by the Healdsburg Police Department Dispatch Center,” Burke said. “Our dispatchers are highly trained, very experienced and take extreme pride in their work — keeping our officers and the community safe.”
“People have no idea how hard their job is,” said Haviland. “At a lot of larger agencies they dispatch, that’s all they do. They don’t even answer phones. They have a call taker who takes the call and screens the call. They aren’t checking people for warrants or probation status, they are strictly communicating between themselves and dispatch and the officers. Here they dispatch, they take calls, they deal with front desk, they are running warrants for us, they are dealing with medical emergencies. Santa Rosa probably has a separate dispatch just for that.”
As difficult as some calls can be, Simmons says finding outlets outside of the office is key to long-term success. Simmons herself has a small farm and is an avid horsewoman; she credits her animals with helping her have that outlet.
“There are as many personalities as situations, but my thing is to understand how to deal with it for yourself,” she said. “Typically, the burnout rate would be within the first five years. If you can make it in the first five years, typically you’re good, but it’s not for everybody for sure. For the people that love it, they love it.”
For anyone who may be interested in becoming a dispatcher, Simmons recommends a “sit-along.” “We don’t do a ride-along,” she joked. “Instead come and sit with us for a whole shift.”
Anyone interested in applying can contact the Healdsburg Police Department at 707-431-3377.
