The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office has 30 openings for dispatchers and emergency call takers, out of 121 authorized spots. Prospects are in training, and the department is looking to hire more. Of 105 dispatcher positions, his department has 88, he said. “Especially when every call that comes in is negative.” “It’s very difficult to find someone willing to work the midnight shift,” said Eddy Durkin of the Tampa Police Department. Salaries range from about $40,000 to $64,000, plus benefits and a $1,500 signing bonus. In Pinellas, the job requires 20 weeks of paid training. “A lot of people don’t want to go into buildings for work anymore,” Heinze said. Some of Tampa Bay’s other large departments are experiencing glaring staffing shortages. According to April Heinze of the National Emergency Number Association, a pre-COVID-19 vacancy rate hovering below 20% has jumped to over 30%. It’s a modest gap, but since the pandemic, many 911 call centers have been reporting record retirements, mid-career quittings and openings they’re unable to fill. Where Swetson works, there are supposed to be 30 dispatchers, but the department is down three. “You’re not going to call the sheriff’s office because you’re having a good day,” Swetson says. You have to be able to juggle a half-dozen calls at a time, find out what suspect might have a gun and alert officers before someone gets hurt.Īnd you have to take people at their worst. To be a dispatcher, Swetson says, you have to be patient. She hears the starts of hundreds of stories, and almost never the endings. She operates solely in the present, responding to people’s paranoia and panic, sending help to strangers who will never hear her voice.
Pinellas county 911 dispatch license#
She runs checks on license plates, scours reports of past calls, radios deputies to make sure they’re safe.
She tells them when back-up might arrive. She helps officers figure out which calls to respond to and in what order. “It’s a mobile home park there, right? Let me get the lot number.” “So a dog breeder? A fraud call?” Swetson asks as her shift starts at 2:20 p.m.
Her official title is Public Safety Telecommunicator.
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