Dispatcher Honored, Most Overtime

A story in the Newport News (Virg.) Daily Press notes that city dispatcher Valerie Hoggard works an average of 12 to 20 hours of overtime in a week, a willingness that “recently earned her the dispatcher of the year award” at the police department’s semi-annual ceremonies. There are 41 dispatchers working now, but there are 15 vacancies, or a 27% vacancy rate. There are three persons in training, and another 16 are being evaluated for hiring, said Lt Morgan Tietjens, who manages the comm center. “Stress is a lot of it,” Hoggard told the reporter. “The phone’s just ringing off the hook. You have peoples’ lives on both sides.” Haggard is a 38 year-old mother of three children, and is an 8-year veteran. She “has been working 60-hour weeks most of that time.,” the story states. Read the entire article here.