Randy Roberts has been the director of the Emergency Communication Center for one year. The center is located at the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, 111 E. 11th Street. The center is the communications link between the public with emergency service needs and law enforcement in Douglas County.

With 23 years on the job, Edna Brubaker has developed a way to cope with the stress of her job as shift supervisor with Douglas County Emergency Communications.

“I don’t take my job home with me,” she said. “I like to go home and relax and not think about work.”

Her boss, Douglas County Emergency Communications director Randy Roberts, said Brubaker’s temperament and approach have made her the second-longest serving dispatcher in the department. It’s a job that is not for everyone, he said. Many can’t deal with the stress of handling life-and-death incidents, the tension of providing response details to the 20 agencies the department serves, or the dispatchers’ unusual schedule, he said.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for dispatchers, because it’s not an easy position to be in,” he said. “It’s a 12-hour shift in that room where you can be exposed to very stressful situations.

“Not very long ago, we had a dispatcher talk a caller through a childbirth. It’s amazing what they get involved in and the help they provide. They take a lot of pride in that.”

Randy Roberts has been the director of the Emergency Communication Center for one year. The center is located at the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, 111 E. 11th Street. The center is the communications link between the public with emergency service needs and law enforcement in Douglas County.

That room Roberts referred to is the new 911 center in the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, 111 E. 11th St., which the dispatch operation moved to in August 2014. There, dispatchers answer the 650 to 900 daily 911 calls.

Roberts said those taking the incoming calls don’t just take information, relay it to the proper responders and move on. They stay with callers until emergency responders arrive at the scene, balancing the need to stay calm as they gather information and give instructions with providing what reassurance and support they can through a phone connection.

“That has to be part of the click,” Roberts said of a dispatcher’s connection with a caller. “They are trained to be able to extract information. They make callers repeat information to hopefully clean up any mistakes or confusion.”

Roberts started as director of the department a year ago, after a short retirement from a 27-year career in law enforcement. After three years with the Lawrence Police Department, he spent the rest of his law enforcement career with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, the last 17 years as a sergeant.

His days in law enforcement go back to the time when the county and city of Lawrence maintained separate dispatch call centers in the same room, Roberts said. It was a time he and other sheriff’s personnel would fill in on the 911 console when needed.

The big change since his part-time stints at the console was the consolidation of county and city emergency communications in 1994. At that time, the dispatch center also started serving all city and township law enforcement and fire departments in Douglas County, plus Kansas Highway Patrol and Kansas Wildlife and Parks.

Another big change has been the arrival of cellphones, which allow dispatchers to get much more direct information from the scene of accidents, fires or other emergencies, Roberts said.

He also touted the county’s Smart 911 program, which allows county residents to put profiles online, which pop up with 911 calls. The profiles are a valuable resource to dispatchers and can provide information that the caller might not be able to provide in emergency situations.

“I would encourage everyone to go online at smart911.com and fill out a profile,” Roberts said. “It’s free. You can put as much or as little on the profile as you want.”

To meet the call demand, Emergency Communications has two shifts per day, one starting at 6 a.m. and the other at 6 p.m. The department maintains two crews for each shift with dispatchers working a schedule of two days on, two days off, two days on and three days off, Roberts said.

The new center has amenities that make the dispatchers’ days more comfortable. The new center has windows along one wall, flooding the room with natural light and providing a treetop view of Rhode Island Street. Dispatchers also now have consoles they can adjust to sitting or standing positions, a must for staying comfortable throughout the long shift, Roberts said.

Each shift requires a minimum of five dispatchers, but he tries to have six, Roberts said. Right now, that’s difficult because the department is understaffed.

“We’re allocated 29 dispatchers,” he said. “We’re down six. We have open applications right now. I’m hoping to fill two positions in the next 30 days and it would be nice to have another two or three ready to go in the next six to eight months.”

Filling those open positions won’t immediately address the staffing shortage. It takes six to eight months to train new hires before they are ready to be on consoles on their own, Roberts said.

The training process involves assigning the newly hired employee to an experienced dispatcher, who serves as a monitor during the learning process and watches over early shifts on consoles. The new hires ride along with emergency responders to learn the routines of those agencies and get familiar with the roads and streets of Douglas County, Roberts said.

“They go out and do ride-alongs with each agency to get a feel of the geography,” he said. “If there’s a glitch in the system, they have to understand the geography and override the mistake.”