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Dec 13, 2008 Tri City News

Stress, budgets and a shortage of qualified workers mean staffing levels at Port Moody Police Department’s Communication Centre are dangerously low, according to a report to the city’s police board.

According to the report, one of the problems is that the PMPD’s budget allows just one dispatcher at a time to be working in the communication centre to handle emergency situations.

“Emergency calls place considerable stress on our dispatchers,” the report states. “The expectations of a single person to perform all these duties and tasks may be too high and create a potential for calls being missed or forgetting to do something in the heat of the moment which could have tragic consequences or create public embarrassment to our police department.”

The report by PMPD office manager Sheldon Boles was first presented to the police board in November 2007 and was updated in June of this year. It says that part-time, auxiliary dispatchers, who are in great demand throughout the province, don’t like working alone because they find it “too stressful and they miss the support and assistance of another communication operator.”

“For this reason last year, one highly skilled auxiliary dispatcher resigned from our police department because they didn’t like working alone. [And] one of our records clerks [trained dispatcher] is now declining to work any night shifts because she is unwilling to be subjected to the stress of handling emergency situations by herself,” the report reads.

The report also states that the department is having a difficult time maintaining communication centre operations because of sudden illnesses or prolonged illnesses of their full-time dispatchers, a situation that has been escalating since early 2006.

The primary problem being that the police department does not have a large enough auxiliary dispatcher worker pool to easily accommodate unscheduled time off, the report says.

“Throughout the province of British Columbia, there is a global shortage of trained dispatchers,” it explains. “To address these shortages, police agencies are raiding other police communication centres by offering higher wages and better working conditions or more flexible working hours.”

The report says that between Sept. 24, 2007 and July 5, 2008, the communication centre has had 17 shifts it was unable to cover with auxiliary dispatchers or with re-scheduling full-time dispatchers, forcing management to temporarily transfer the centre’s operations to either the Emergency Communications for Southwest British Columbia (ECOMM) or to the Coquitlam RCMP detachment.

According to the report, the transferred calls created significant stress and strain for both ECOMM and Coquitlam RCMP detachment staff.

In May, the office manager for the Coquitlam RCMP detachment advised the PoMo police department it can no longer provide such assistance because it creates union issues that the city’s human resources department wishes to avoid. And in June, ECOMM also advised Port Moody police that similar union issues were being raised at its office and that its staffing levels were too low to take on the transfers.

“It is embarrassing for our police department to increasingly seek the assistance of another communication centre we are unable to provide back-fill for our communication centre,” the report says.

“Each time, we are obligated to implement these short-notice emergency transfer arrangements with another communication centre, there is an increased risk of possibly missing a telephone call or missing a police officer’s call for assistance.

“The situation facing our police department is that we need to address the above noted problems in our communication centre.”

The report offers options to fix the situation:

• establishment of an auxiliary dispatcher training program;

• adding four regular part-time dispatchers; and

• amalgamating PoMo’s communication centre with another agency.

The report ends by recommending that, “the Port Moody Police Department retain its communication centre provided that the core problems are addressed” by proceeding to add four regular part-time dispatchers.

At Tuesday night’s council meeting, police board member Tarrance Grieve presented the police department’s proposed 2009 budget, which included an increase of $91,383 that would pay for the four new positions.

Mayor Joe Trasolini spoke in favour of increasing the budget for the communication centre, calling the current system as “not sustainable at all.”

“This is an essential budgetary priority,” Trasolini said.

In an interview with The Tri-City News Thursday, Boles said he hopes the money is forthcoming because the staffing situation is bad.

“We have had five robberies in the last four weeks,” said Boles, noting that over the last few years, there has been a rapid increase in both the number of 911 calls and in the severity of the crimes being reported.

“During the armed robbery, 19 calls came in to one dispatcher, who had to put people on hold while co-ordinating tactical information to get our members out on the scene,” Boles said. “Two people hung up while on hold because they were waiting too long.

“I talked to one of them the other day who said, ‘The guy just walked by me — I could have told you which way he went.’

“We’ve got to do something about this now because this can’t continue to go on. Something is going to happen.”

bwalkinshaw@tricitynews.com

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