A legislative hearing at the Capitol
this week focused on staffing
shortages in law enforcement,
looking at county jurisdictions in
particular.
One place staffing shortages are
being felt acutely across the
state in 911 emergency
call centers among dispatchers.
What has led to the shortages and
what can be done about it?
We turn to Columbia County Sheriff
Roger Brandner, who testified at
the capitol. Sheriff, thanks very
much for being here.
You're welcome, glad to be here.
So describe the shortage of
dispatchers in your county.
Yeah, I think we're consistent with
the rest of the 901
PSAP dispatch centers across
the state. There's been a struggle
to get qualified dispatchers
in the door and get them trained.
In our county, we're four short.
We've been four to five short for
just over a year and a half,
which is a great strain on the other
dedicated dispatchers that are
currently there.
Yeah, indeed.
Now, I read that the pay is between
about $50,000 and $70,000
a year.
Why is it hard to fill or retain
these positions?
Is it that the pay cannot make
up for the stress of the job?
I think it's a combination of both.
You know, most dispatchers
around the area are going to be
making around that $25, $26
an hour, you
know, which is not a bad paying job,
but you're working nights,
weekends, holidays.
It's not Monday through Friday shift
work.
These are long hours,
very stressful.
You know if you can just imagine,
you know taking that call from that
mom whose young child is
not breathing or.
From a car accident or a
domestic sexual assault.
There's a lot of stressful calls
and these dispatchers are the
ones that answer that call to get
the first responders to that scene.
And so with a shortage,
in addition to that, they're
working a lot of overtime hours.
Oh, absolutely.
Uh, I know dispatch centers across
the state that have contract
with other dispatch centers.
Um, I don't know one county where
the sheriff is actually dispatching
at night because they're so short.
Our dispatchers are working a lot of
overtime. It's not nothing for them
to work 20 extra hours
in addition to their 40 hours a
week.
What does a shortage of dispatchers
mean for emergency response in
your community and others?
Yeah, we've been able to backfill it
with our dedicated men and women in
our dispatch center.
But the fear across the state and in
our county, especially is
when they burn out
and they leave and we get any
shorter, uh,
we're gonna struggle with having
someone answer that
call for service when
someone calls for that immediate
need of fire EMS or law enforcement.
You know, we need a proper timely
response.
We need a trained dispatcher to
gather all the adequate information
to get the right first responders
there.
And if they're tired, if
they are calling in sick, if we
don't have the staff to sit in
that dispatch center, there is
going to be a delay in
first responder services, which is
a public safety issue.
So how frightening for you
is that as the lead law enforcement
official in your county
to be worrying about
emergency response times?
Oh, it's critical.
This has been our number one focus
in our county for about
the last year.
There's no question there's a
shortage of qualified law
enforcement officers that work the
street.
Our jailers in our County jails,
many County jail are not at full
staff.
But our dispatch center, they
have to be there.
They have to answer that
call for service.
They just have to.
We have to have someone sitting in
those chairs and there cannot
be a delay.
Seconds truly make a difference
when you're calling for assistance.
What are some of the solutions being
looked at?
Well, in our county specifically, we
really did a adjustment of
pay. We did some premium
incentives for working at
night and on weekends.
We have done some
other financial type
of incentives.
So if you're here a year, three
years, five years, you get a bonus.
We have changed the hours.
One unique thing with us is
we just consolidated the Wisconsin
Dells Police Department Dispatch
Center.
Which, you know, was about a
million dollar project, and we had
to increase
our space up there, our dispatch
stations, the equipment, update
them.
So that was a big project, you
now, because Wisconsin Dells area is
busy in the summertime especially,
but you know actually all 12 months
out of the year now, so we've
given them more help.
We've increased, you
no, some of the little things up
there as crazy as it sounds,
we got them a treadmill.
Uh... We started some yoga classes
here we
do a lot of stress management uh...
With helping them cope uh...
What the stress of taking these
calls because our dispatchers work
twelve hours a shift and
that's a long time to be sitting
there and they don't get the
opportunity like so many other
workers to get up and walk around
to move around to
leave the station and go get fresh
air outside they have to stay close
to that radio at any given second
that emergency could happen.
What a hard job.
Sheriff Roger Brandner, thanks very
much.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Someday, not that they need
the distraction, but we'd
love to come take a look at what
that job is like.
Oh, you're absolutely welcome.
We've got our local media here.
We can get you up in that dispatch
center and it's, it's really
interesting. We have five stations.
It's like an air traffic controller
out there.
Oh, they have so many screens to
look at.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, thank you for your time on
this today. It's really important.
Absolutely, thank you for the time.
Appreciate it.
Okay, bye.