Comments on: Dispatcher’s Words Now Part Of Murder Charge

By: Jesse

Jesse — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 08:29:08 +0000

5 years as a firefighter 6 years FLEO. My time as a firefighter had me take a bunch of courses at the NFA in MCTO as well as ICS, NRF.

At DHS now and of course those courses are repeat courses for us.

First off the ICS system Clarence refers to is on scene command. Dispatch is not part of the ICS. They make notifications but thats it. They are never the incident commanders.

Zimmerman said this is where I am and my truck is. If you look at an overview of the neighborhood. He gave great directions. Why the dispatcher ended the call prematurely not sure maybe they had a bunch of calls coming in.

Second the mention of hollywood is speculation and there is no place for that period. Not based on fact but opinion. This case was marred by A LOT of opinions and libel by the media. We do not need that.

Keep them on the phone till police/fire/EMS arrive. Don’t give advice just keep them calm get as many plus 1 identifiers as possible and location info.

A great dispatcher is the one with the woman on the phone where two guys came in her home looking for drugs.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 08:13:19 +0000

NEED is the operative word. That proves its not an instruction and 2 dispatchers should not be instructing. Since most are not trained and more importantly only have partial information.

Also Zimmerman acknowledged with OK and stayed calm and said he would meet with police.

By: Clarence

Clarence — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:57:38 +0000

The first person to arrive at the scene always assumes command. That is for police, military, firemen, EMT, or whoever, until higher authority arrives to take over as command of operations. Everything depends on this chain of communication and when it is not followed, bad things happen fast. Believe me, it is taken very seriously by people involved. Dirty Harry is in Hollywood, not the real world. Zimmerman took command of the scene and started the chain of command, the only problem is he did not obey the communication back to him for one thing. For another, he did not report back his plan of action, now nobody knows where he is at or what he intends to do. Sound familiar? Straight out of the movies isn’t it? People in the real world do not do this on the scene, especially after having communication back on what to do. You cannot have this happening on your scene, bad things happen fast. If Zimmerman remains calm by letting communication control the scene; after all, there was no emergency, then everybody goes home that night. You see, the whole scene always hinges on the chain of communication.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:22:14 +0000

This just goes to show— BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU TELL YOUR CALLER. If you give them direct instructions, such as “keep following the suspect”, you are potentially placing them/the public at risk which is an erroneous liability on YOU and your department. ALWAYS err on the side of caution and place any decision making on your caller. If they do something stupid or careless, do not allow yourself to be blamed.

We easily become complacent in our line of work…. But a complacent/lazy dispatcher could have made the outcome of this case much, much different.

My hat is off to the dispatcher’s excellent handling of this call! Remember that this could be any of us!!!