09/25/2026
When people call 911 during an actual emergency, the caller begins to suspect that the dispatcher may be the only person involved who has somehow failed to understand there is an emergency happening.
Your husband has collapsed. He is lying on the kitchen floor. He is not breathing normally. You have called the number everybody has been taught to call when something has gone terribly wrong, and instead of simply saying help is coming, the person on the other end wants your phone number, how old he is, whether he is conscious, whether he is breathing and what happened immediately before he collapsed.
At some point it is perfectly understandable to want to say, I already told you the important part. He is on the floor. Please send somebody.
What you don't know is that very often, somebody is already coming.
That is one of the odd things about the way 911 works from the caller's perspective. You are hearing a conversation, so it feels as though the conversation has to finish before anything else can happen. But information may already be moving to police officers, firefighters or paramedics while you are still answering questions.
Think about a shooting call. Somebody has been shot at a house on Main Street. That is enough to send police. But then the dispatcher learns the person who did the shooting is still outside. Then that he is wearing a blue sweatshirt. Then that he walked toward the back of the house. Then that the caller believes he still has the gun.
If you are the officer about to pull into that driveway, those details change quite a bit about how you approach it, where you park and who you are looking for. And all of that information may have come from a caller who was becoming increasingly irritated that the dispatcher would not stop asking questions and simply send the police.
The thing most people calling 911 never see dispatchers are master multi taskers They ask you a question, while you're answering they mute their side of the call so you can't hear them, relay what you said to responding units, continue listening to you while those units ask questions, come off mute and ask you the next thing, while at the same time typing it all into CAD.
And while doing this, they may have another active incident on another radio channel they are also responsible for, with completely different officers, completely different information and completely different problems unfolding at exactly the same time.
On their end, they may be talking to you, listening to you, talking to responding units, listening to responding units, documenting the call and managing another incident at the same time.
And then there are the instructions. Lock the door. Stay inside. Move away from the person with the weapon. Put your own gun down before officers arrive. Start CPR. Do not follow the person who just left. Stay on the phone.
None of this is what you actually want. You want the police officer standing in the hallway. You want the paramedic kneeling beside your husband. You did not call 911 because you wanted a telephone conversation with somebody sitting in another building.
Neither did the dispatcher.
But until those people physically get from wherever they are to wherever you are, the dispatcher has a telephone, whatever information you can provide and sometimes a few minutes during which something you do may make a very large difference.
There is another complaint people occasionally make about 911 calls, which is that the dispatcher sounded almost too calm.
Somebody is screaming in the background. The caller is crying. Maybe somebody is bleeding. Everything on one end of the phone has become absolute chaos, and the person on the other end sounds almost unnervingly normal.
Good.
Imagine the alternative.
You tell the dispatcher your husband is not breathing and the dispatcher responds, “OH MY GOD.”
Probably not especially reassuring.
Dispatchers spend their working lives talking to people during car crashes, overdoses, shootings, suicides, domestic violence, missing children and medical emergencies. The person calling may be screaming because screaming is a perfectly normal response to some of those things.
Somebody in the conversation still has to be able to think.
So if you ever find yourself on the phone with 911 wondering why the dispatcher keeps asking questions after you have already made it abundantly clear that you need help, keep answering.
They heard you.
The ambulance may already be coming. The police may already be on the road. The fire department may already be pulling out of the station.
The dispatcher is trying to make sure that by the time they get to you, they know as much as they can about what is waiting for them.
Because arriving quickly is important.
Arriving quickly with some idea what you are walking into is considerably better.
- M. Conners, CPD
