Friday, June 8, 2012
Patience Short Circuit
I think I may have finally had it with my partner...she's lucky there wasn't a homicide in dispatch yesterday!
Late Wednesday night, early Thursday morning we had a tragic occurance in the county. A 16 year old girl was taken from a convenience store and brutally killed, suspect is in custody.
My question to those readers who are dispatchers or current law enforcement, when is morbid curiosity too much? My partner would not let it go yesterday, constantly commenting on how she just "needed" to know as many of the gory, intimate details of the crime including COD.
Needless to say, my patience with her is done. Kaput. We deal with the most intimate details of peoples' lives and deaths, sometimes we have to leave them in peace.
One of the cleaning ladies works as a sectretary for the Sheriff's office and the minute she walked in, the questions started. I wanted to scream "enough!" but I couldn't get off the radio long enough to even complete a sentence.
I honestly need some feedback on this because it has bothered me since I left work, do I speak with a supervisor or just talk to her myself? I'm just afraid if I said anything, it would be taken badly.
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If someone is dwelling overmuch on things like this is our centre, we tend to get in touch with one of our Critical Incident Stress Tream members and advise them that said person likely needs to talk. Because that's usually what it is, in my experience -- and I've been there myself, too. Dwelling on the horrible because I'm not processing it very well myself.
ReplyDeleteI've been awake for 32 hours (don't ask) so I'm not sure this made sense, but hopefully it did!
Thanks! It does make sense, (and I know how the 32 hours straight goes as well). Being a small department we don't really have anyone other than the chaplain. Also, we didn't handle this call, it was handled by the Sheriff's Office whom we don't dispatch for, it seems to be just morbid curiosity. I will mention to my supervisor though and maybe someone can talk to her and see if there's an underlying issue.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Radio. There is something to her curiosity that is bordering on the edge of something nasty. Clearly, this isn't the only time she has pushed you to the edge with her verbal wonderings. If just this one incident of overly curious on a tradegy you would probably shrug off, to a point. But clearly she has lingual expulsion problem and is creating additional stress in an environment that already handles a great deal of stress and doesn't need the additional unnecessary roar. Sounds like she is creating a uncomfortable, maybe bordering on hostile, work environment that a supervisor will need to step and and clip overbeating wings.
ReplyDeleteI finally spoke with both of my supervisors today and they requested that I place all my complaints into writing. Her problems stem from what I can only gather was a miserable childhood and she compensates for it with behavior like this. Thanks for the feedback, until now I've never been able to determine what exactly the problem could be. Thanks again for the feedback.
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