A hard night

C.J. Griswold

From C. J. Griswold, Wife of the Blacksmith, and his keeper:

I don’t have a blog, and I don’t post much on the internet. I used to work at an ISP and did all the tech geeky stuff, now I pretty much use the internet for shopping and keeping up with my favorite authors.

I now work at a 911 police dispatch center. My job is the basis for this entry.

Today, for the first time in two and a half years, I learned to hate my job.

Now, before you start thinking, ‘Oh, just another disgruntled worker bitching about her job and how unfair it is’ hear me out…

Today, I had to listen to a friend and co-worker kill himself.

I’m not going to go into gory details, I honestly have no desire to type out the play by play. The Reader’s Digest version of ‘How I Learned to Hate My Job’ is all I’m willing to share.

Sunday nights are usually pretty laid back. People tend to be getting ready to go back to their daily grind, school, work, whatever. Sunday is a nice night to ease down from a long three day work weekend.

This morning, at about 4:00 am, one of our off duty officers called us and told us he was going to kill himself. He had his issued weapons in his vehicle with him and he, in his words, felt he was out of options. He was calling from a cell phone so we were pretty much unable to find him and he wouldn’t tell us where he was. All he wanted was for his last words to be on a taped line. He wanted his beneficiaries to know he was sorry and that everything would be left to them. He kept saying he didn’t want to hurt anyone else, just himself.

Well, needless to say, our dispatch center (Four of us working at the time) went into high alert. Nothing like a crisis to bring people together. We sent out area broadcasts and contacted the counties surrounding us. We sent police officers to his house, and the houses of people he was close to. We had a pretty good vehicle description and broadcast it to everyone in our county. We held all non-emergency calls and basically initiated a manhunt for our friend and co-worker.

Needless to say we found him. When we did he, in short, freaked.

I was answering phones at the time, and took his panicked and somewhat erratic call. I did all I could to keep him on the line (he kept hanging up on us) and try to calm him down. I was shaking so badly that I couldn’t type, so I just kept repeating what he said so that my co-worker behind me could advise the pursuing officers. I told him how much we all cared for him, that his fellow officers were there to help him, were worried about him.
No matter what I said, he wouldn’t stop.

His command officer came up to dispatch to talk with him. I handed over my headset with shaky hands and fought off wave after wave of panic and tears. Survive first, then panic. Panic never helps anyone in an emergency situation.

The officers in our county did not pursue him (as in lights and sirens stop this guy). They just followed at a safe distance, worried for him as we worried, wanting him to stop so they could help him.

He eventually made his way to a county adjoining ours. A county where the deputies knew nothing about this armed man other than that he may endanger their officers and their residents. He began to drive erratically, swerving into oncoming traffic at high rates of speed. The deputies had to stop him. I know they did. It doesn’t make the end result any easier to bear.

With his command officer still on the phone, and all of his friends and co-workers at dispatch listening in, he made one last plea for the deputies to stand down.

They did not, and a good man, friend, and police officer ended his life with the weapon he had used to serve and protect. It devastated all of us, his friends and co-workers at dispatch and in the field.

I’m not sure there is a moral to this story; there is certainly no silver lining that I can see. He is gone. He will never again come to see us, armed with a pizza and a smile. Never again call on duty with a laugh and a friendly quip. He succumbed to the feelings of despair and sadness that were in him, and passed them along to us with his dying breath.

So, maybe this, like all suicide stories, does have a moral. Think before you act. Your actions never affect only yourself. It is rarely as bad as it seems at the time. And even if you don’t know it, there are people there for you. If nothing else, there is always a soul at the receiving end of a 911 call. We may not be the person to give you answers, but we can send you help. And never think we don’t care. Never think your actions affect no one, because they always affect us.