911 – Missouri House of Representatives Newsroom

911 Dispatchers get ‘First Responder’ status, more mental health help options

Missouri 911 dispatchers will now be considered “first responders” in state statute under legislation that becomes effective next month. That will bring a lot of changes, including increased access to mental health resources.

*Representative Robert Sauls (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

Language in two bills signed into law by Governor Mike Parson (R) will add emergency telecommunicators to the definition of “first responders,” which previously included people like firefighters, police, and emergency medical personnel. The change in designation will mean, among other things, that dispatchers will have access to the same mental health supports as those in those other jobs.

Sarah Newell, Polk County 911 Director, says that’s something from which she and others in her field can definitely benefit.

“I hear it every day. I hear it happen. I hear overdoses, I hear suicides, I hear fatality accidents in children. It happens all the time,” Newell told House Communications.

She said a dispatcher’s emotions can be constantly in transition. “We don’t stay consistent. We drop to a one, and then we’re at a nine, and then okay we’re back to a two, and here we are, ten, ten, ten, and so it’s hard for your body to adjust to those heightened adrenaline changes so often throughout the day.”

“Sometimes it’s minute-by-minute,” said Jamie Taylor, President of the Missouri Chapter of the National Emergency Numbers Association (MO NENA). “[A dispatcher] could be on a really serious call with somebody that’s wanting to harm themselves and they’re having to try to talk them down, talk them through it … they could get right off of that call and deliver a baby on the next call.”

Taylor said the proposed re-designation has been considered for years while legislators and state agencies worked to consider what changings it would bring, and how to best implement it, but he said legislators always seemed to favor the change.

Representative Robert Sauls (D-Independence) has proposed such language for several years. In his time as a Jackson County Prosecutor and later as a public defender he listened to a lot of 911 calls.

“Having seen many of the videos and listened to many of these 911 calls, I know they’re stressful, and this is something that should have always been the case. Opening that door for mental health is so important,” said Sauls. “These people are the absolute first point of contact in most instances involving a crime and what could potentially be someone’s worst day of their life. The stress that they undergo, the amount of pressure that’s placed on them at that time, these people absolutely should be treated as first responders.”

Joplin Representative Lane Roberts (R) worked in public service for more than 40 years, including as Joplin’s Police Chief and the state’s Director of Public Safety. He said he even did some dispatching early in his career.

*Representative Lane Roberts (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

“Those people, in my mind at least, are the most underappreciated element of public safety there is,” said Roberts. “Everybody sort of takes them for granted. They’re in this windowless environment. Nobody sees them, they don’t get to see anybody, they deal with all the emotion, they deal with all the psychological trauma, but they don’t get to do anything except move on to the next calls. But, when you’re the guy in the field and you get yourself in trouble, that dispatcher’s your lifeline and suddenly they become the single most important person on the planet. There is just no way to express your appreciation for a good dispatcher.”

Taylor said like anyone who has done the job, he has experienced calls that he’ll never forget – the kinds of calls that take a toll.

“The one that really hits me most is during a Christmastime several years ago I took a call on a non-breather who ended up being a newborn … and the outcome wasn’t the outcome that we wanted. The infant didn’t make it. During the holidays, and whenever you have kids of your own, that stuff really starts to set in, and you don’t have an avenue to get rid of those emotions or be able to talk about it or seek help.”

He hopes this change will help to slow what has been a notably high turnover rate in his field.

“Our pool of people that want to do this job is getting smaller and smaller, so we really have to take care of those people that are here doing that job today and to be able to provide for those new people coming in,” said Taylor.

He added that as much as anything, though, it will feel good for dispatchers simply to have this acknowledgement.

“It’s going to be huge for the folks that sit in a dark room or sit behind the scenes and deal with the public off and on, and handling those phone calls, and sometimes those dispatchers don’t get the recognition that they need. I know departments try to recognize them within the department but being recognized by the state, now, as a first responder, it just brings smiles to my face. Finally we get that ‘job well done’ piece that we’ve needed for a long time.”

The change could also create access to grant dollars that could see local agencies expand the latest forms of 911 access in areas of Missouri that don’t have it. Newell and Taylor expressed their thanks to the legislators who worked for so many years on this issue.

That change in designation will take effect August 28.

Dispatchers ask for help dealing with PTSD, seek ‘first responder’ designation

The state’s 911 dispatchers are urging lawmakers to add them to the state’s legal definition of “first responders,” before the legislative session ends. Some of them visited the Capitol to share personal stories illustrating why they need the help in dealing with post-traumatic stress that comes with that designation.

*Representative Chad Perkins (R-Bowling Green) is among the legislators who has carried legislation aimed at extending mental health services to dispatchers.* *(Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

First responders – which state statute currently defines as firefighters, law enforcement personnel, and emergency medical personnel – are afforded mental health resources, and several legislators say those should also be available to dispatchers.

Representative Lane Roberts (R-Joplin) has been Joplin’s Police Chief and the state’s Director of Public Safety, among other things in his career of more than 40 years. Throughout all of that time he worked with dispatchers and even worked as one at times.

“We have always underappreciated these folks. They’re kind of out of sight, out of mind. They work in a windowless environment, but they are the first of the first responders. They’re the gateway to public safety,” said Roberts. “Every time they get an emergency call they get an adrenaline dump just like people who work in the field do. The difference is, the people in the field get to go somewhere, take action, use those chemicals, while the dispatcher will simply move on to the next call, take those chemicals home at night and go to sleep with them and suffer the health consequences.”

Independence representative Robert Sauls (D) was a prosecutor in Jackson County and a public defender.

“As a former prosecutor I would regularly listen to 911 calls and what happens in those circumstances and … often times people are contacting 911 operators on their worst day. Something’s happening, they’re scared, it’s a very stressful situation, and all of these 911 operators are under these stressful environments and the thing of it is, you’ve got to go on to the next one. You’ve gotten your one situation settled, you hang up the phone, and you’ve got another one. I think it’s very important to recognize these people as first responders.”

Polk County 911 Director Sarah Newell said what she and her colleagues do is often dismissed as just answering phones or clerical work.

“It’s not. We are the first point, so how that call goes is dependent on that dispatcher. How fast that call gets put out, what information gets put out, resource allocation and knowing and forward thinking to say, ‘they’re probably going to need an ambulance on standby so let’s go ahead and roll one of those,’ so all things that they have to think about out of the box at any given time.”

J.R. Webb, the Assistant Director of Springfield/Green County 911, said dispatchers, “have to be able to do a lot of things at once. They have to be able to take that phone call, at the same time they’re typing that information into a computer, at the same time that they may be dealing with first responders on the radio. The multitasking is incredible in a busy situation, and it takes a special kind of person to be able to do that. It takes a kind of type ‘A,’ take charge personality to succeed at our job and it’s not meant for everybody.”

The Chair of the State 911 Board of Governance, Alan Wells, said “Post-traumatic stress is a big, big thing for our 911 telecommunicators, and as of right now they do not have a lot of resources there to help with that.”

“Turnover is a big problem, burnout is a big problem that affects this industry, so we hope to be able to give them all the benefits necessary to sustain a good, long-lasting career,” said Wells.

*Representative Robert Sauls also carries legislation intended to include dispatchers in the state’s legal definition of “first responders.” (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

He said it’s not uncommon for dispatchers, especially in the smaller communities throughout Missouri, to know personally the people involved in the incidents they are handling.

“Sometimes it can be very horrifying for those operators,” said Wells. “It may be a loved one, a family member, an immediate family member, or in our case it was one of our own 911 call takers who had just left his shift, headed home on his motorcycle and hit a deer and it was a fatality. The same operators that were just working with him had to take that call and work that incident.”

Hailey Brunner is in her fourth year as a dispatcher at the Cass Co Sheriff’s Office. She remembered one week in which her rotation, “worked seven fatalities, whether it be between an accident, people harming themselves, anything of that nature, natural deaths, anything, and it’s just a wide variety, whether it’s young kids to old kids. My most recent one was a two year-old who died in a fatality car accident.”

Blake Johnson has been dispatching for five years in Green County. He said there is one call he’ll always remember.

“I had taken a call from a family who had lost a child and I can still hear the mom screaming for her kid. It’s absolutely horrible and it makes it worse when you actually know who those people are.”

Newell said, “I have a dispatcher who actually worked a motor vehicle accident. It was a rollover with ejection. There were four juveniles in the vehicle. She took the call and … right before she was ready to dispatch, she realized it was her son in the vehicle.”

Brunner said dispatchers can’t help but imagine the scenes that they are hearing play out over the phone, and that can result in very vivid and very upsetting imagery.

“You’re hearing all of this stuff that’s going on, on the phone. You’re hearing the screams and … they’re painting a picture for you, so you have this picture in your mind of what it looks like and it could be completely the opposite of what they actually see on the scene. It could be better, it could be worse. We never quite know.”

Webb said worse still, dispatchers often get no closure at the end of a call.

“You’re sending folks to help these people that are yelling and screaming at you and in their worst day, then you don’t really know for sure when the other first responders go there, and how this call turned out,” said Webb.

He said an increasing number of suicides in Missouri also directly impacts dispatchers.

“It could be someone, honestly, wanting an audience while they commit suicide. That happens way too much.”

Some call centers, like that at Springfield, have mental health resources that are made available to dispatchers there and in surrounding communities. Such resources aren’t available to all dispatchers in Missouri, though, especially in many smaller communities.

Several bills would address PTSD and mental health resources for dispatchers and other first responders. These dispatchers and lawmakers are among those who hope at least one of those bills is passed before the session’s end on May 12.

Missouri legislature proposes statewide funding mechanism for 911 services

An issue that has faced lawmakers and the state’s counties for about two decades might finally have been addressed, as the Missouri House on Friday completed passage of a proposed statewide way to pay for 911 services. This makes the first time such a bill has been approved by the legislature and sent to a governor.

An emotional Representative Jeanie Lauer presents a proposal for statewide funding for 911 that became the first such bill sent to a governor, after nearly two decades that the issue has been debated in Missouri. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications – click for larger version)

The issue consumed much of Representative Jeanie Lauer’s (R-Blue Springs) eight years in the House. On Friday, as she is about to leave the chamber due to term limits, she got to see her work culminate in the passage of House Bill 1456.

The heart of the issue is that most 911 services in Missouri are paid for by charges on landline phones. As fewer and fewer people have landlines, the amount of money each county receives to support local 911 has diminished, but efforts to charge the ever increasing number of cell phone users often met with too much resistance to pass. Missouri has for years been the only state that doesn’t have a statewide 911 funding mechanism.

Lauer said that’s because there are so many players involved in deciding what such a mechanism should and should not include, it took years to come up with something they – and legislators – would all support.

“We have 114 counties and 163 representatives and 30-some senators, and everybody has something different that we’re trying to address and make sure that we can accommodate in the legislation so that everybody can be safe in Missouri,” said Lauer. “It has been rather complex – a little bit like a Rubik’s Cube putting it together – but it came together and it is so, so exciting to have that done.”

The funding plan in HB 1456, Lauer hopes, will not only allow Missouri to have 911 service statewide – a handful of counties have no service at all – but will also allow counties to have the latest 911 technology. That would allow emergency responders to do things like locate cell phones when a caller can’t give his or her location, receive texts, and other upgrades and functions that many Missouri counties haven’t been able to afford.

The issue has been an emotional one for Lauer. In the eight years she’s worked on it she’s heard multiple stories of people who were in need of emergency services and their outcomes were worsened because they were in a part of Missouri where no 911 service exists, or they couldn’t be located because the 911 service hadn’t been upgraded.

“This has never been about a bill … it is about what it does,” said Lauer. “Of all the things that we’ve done here in the Capitol and that I’ve been personally involved with, this truly has significant impact on the life and wellness of people, and I couldn’t be more gratified.”

Lauer and other lawmakers have seen several 911 funding proposals fail over the years, either for lack of support or by running out of time in the final days of a session.

HB 1456 would allow counties and certain municipalities in Missouri to seek voter approval for a fee of up to $1.00 on any device that can contact 911. Areas adopting this new funding source would replace their current 911 funding source; they could not keep both.

Representatives Elaine Gannon and Glen Kolkmeyer congratulate Representative Jeanie Lauer upon passage of her 911 funding legislation. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications – click for larger version)

The bill would create a 3-percent charge on the purchase of prepaid phones, to go toward 911 funding. A portion of that money would go to 911 service in the county the phone was bought in; the rest would go to a statewide fund to support and improve 911.

The bill would also address the need for 911 facilities in many parts of the state to consolidate. Lauer said in Missouri’s 114 counties there are 185 Public Safety Answering Points, or PSAPs.

Under the bill, where consolidation is needed, voters could not be asked to approve a new funding stream unless a plan for consolidation is developed. Lauer says some locations are ready to consolidate but need the bill to be passed to make it possible.

Now that legislature has voted to send the bill to Governor Eric Greitens, Lauer is hopeful it will be signed into law.

“He has been supportive at the very beginning. I have continued to talk to his staff and they have continued to assure support, so I would certainly hope that he would find this important,” said Layer.

Greitens could sign the bill into law, veto it, or allow it to become law without his consent.

Earlier story: Term-limited House members hopes for, at long last, statewide 911 funding solution’s success

Term-limited House member hopes for, at long last, statewide 911 funding solution’s success

The latest effort in a House lawmaker’s years-long quest to address 911 funding in Missouri has been sent to the state senate.

Representative Jeanie Lauer, who is in her final term in the House, has worked during most of her legislative career to create a statewide funding mechanism for 911 services. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications – click photo for larger version)

Representative Jeanie Lauer has been working for six years on a statewide way to fund 911 services. That’s because some counties in Missouri don’t have it, and many that have it don’t have the latest technology that can locate cell phones or accept emergency text and video messages. As fewer and fewer people use landlines – charges on which are one of the primary ways 911 services are paid for – counties are having more and more trouble paying for even outdated 911 service.

Lauer said the issue has long been personal for her. Each year she has heard more and more stories of people who have needed emergency help and didn’t get it in time because they were in an area with poor or no 911 service.

“It is not just a bill. This truly is something that is dealing with people’s life and their wellness, and at the end of every session it truly hits me emotionally to not have it accomplished like we would like to because I know until the next session we’re still going to lose people through death because of this situation,” said Lauer.

The issue has been around for more than a decade, predating Lauer’s legislative career. At its core is that cell phone use continues to increase but Missouri remains the only state that does not collect a fee on cell phone usage to pay for 911. Previous efforts to institute a charge on cell phones met with resistance, but Lauer thinks she has finally arrived at the solution.

House Bill 1456 would allow counties and certain municipalities in Missouri to seek voter approval for a fee of up to $1.00 on any device that can contact 911. That fee could go up to $1.50 per device with special justification and approval from the state 911 service board. Areas adopting this new funding source would replace their current 911 funding source; they could not keep both.

The bill would also address the need for 911 facilities in many parts of the state to consolidate. Lauer said in Missouri’s 114 counties there are 185 Public Safety Answering Points, or PSAPs.

“That is ridiculous. These facilities are so small they’re not providing the level of service, they’re usurping moneys that the areas don’t have to fund it, so it’s inefficient, it’s ineffective, and we’re not getting the response times to people that we need,” said Lauer. “It’s doing a disservice to our citizenry because constitutionally we are required to keep our people safe, and we’re not.”

Under the bill, where consolidation is needed, voters could not be asked to approve a new funding stream without a plan for consolidation. Lauer says some locations are ready to consolidate but need the bill to be passed to make it possible.

In recent years the House has approved legislation similar to HB 1456 but like so much legislation, it stalled out in the Senate. Lauer is cautiously optimistic for better results this year.

“The difference this year may be that we have been able to run the Senate version of the bill through the Senate committee, and that was actually voted out by a vote of 9-1,” said Lauer. “Then we come to the same point of getting on the floor in the Senate.”

HB 1456 was sent to the Senate on a vote of 111-31.

Lawmaker wants Missouri on track to next-generation 911

Some Missouri lawmakers think you should be able to send text, photos, videos, or data to 911, and they want to put the state on a schedule to achieve that goal.

Representative Lyle Rowland (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

A House Committee has been asked to consider House Bill 1094, offered by Cedarcreek Republican Lyle Rowland after he was approached by a friend who sits on the Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He was told people who are deaf could use text to communicate with 911 operators.

Rowland’s bill would require the Advisory Committee for 911 Service Oversight to develop a plan and target dates for Missouri to test, implement, and operate a next generation 911 system.

“This will provide our deaf communities a way of getting emergency help when it’s needed,” said Rowland.

The Committee heard from Opeoluwa Sotonwa, the Commission’s executive director. He explained what it could be like for a person who is deaf or hard of hearing to use 911 in most of Missouri.

“A hard of hearing individual who speaks may be able to share his or her needs, but may not be able to hear questions being asked. I may not be able to understand what action others are taking if I cannot hear them speak. Moreover, I am not able to speak directly with a 911 operator,” said Sotonwa through an interpreter. “You can count the resources used to track a suspect, evaluate the cost of replacing a house, and tally deaths of those who cannot receive help fast enough, however what is not measureable is the fear, insecurity, and indignity of the Missourians who are not able to access 911 services because our state’s technology is simply outdated.”

Representative Bruce Degroot confirmed as true what Sotonwa said would happen if, in most of Missouri, a person sends a text to 911.

“I did exactly as the witness suggested and texted 911, letting them know it wasn’t a true emergency, and sure enough I got a message back,” said DeGroot. “’Make a voice call to 911 for help. Text to 911 is not available.’”

Steve Hoskins, the Vice President of Association of Public Safety Communications Officials, told the committee his organization also backs the bill. He said a next generation 911 system wouldn’t just help those with hearing problems.

“What if you’re calling 911 but the reason you’re calling is because you’re choking and you can’t speak? That’s why we need this kind of technology,” said Hoskins.

No one spoke against Rowland’s bill. The committee has not voted on it.