When Video to 911 Supports Mental Health
Written by Roxy VanGundy, ENP, RPL, published November 1, 2022
When people ask me why I feel technology is so important, I think about a night twelve years ago. I worked in a center that didn’t have any NG911 technology. It also did not have any type of computerized mapping system. We served several extremely remote, rural areas that didn’t have access to 911 service at all. The only way for these places to access public safety was through an 800 phone line. Knowing if a call was coming from the surrounding area, or literally any other place in our state, was a different ring. That was it.
And on that fall night in August,a man called my center screaming. I couldn’t tell what city he was trying to say. The phone connection was poor and between the screaming and the scratchy connection, there was little information that I was able to understand.
When I finally got out of him that everyone in his police department had been shot and that he needed help, we were well into the call. It was my first and second in-the-line of duty deaths in very rapid succession.
Obviously with any kind of critical incident, like a shooting, seconds count. It took me a significant amount of time to understand the city he was trying so desperately to say into my ear.
But what he told me, wasn’t a city in my area. I didn’t know where it was. And even if I could find the city, I had no idea where the two people were laying on the ground, shot, desperately needing help.
Two people died as a result of that call.
Within the month, I took another call for a couple who were on the way to see the “Into the Wild” bus (an abandoned bus in the Alaska backcountry, popularized by the book “Into the Wild”). I didn’t know how far or where they were in the river. I could only guess where they had tried to cross and how fast they were floating.
Countless calls in 17 years have centered around a guess.
To say both calls, which happened so closely to each other, had a lasting impact on me, would be an understatement.
I realize that both outcomes to these calls probably would not have changed had I had all of the technology in the world. But I truly believe they would have given me the opportunity to give more situational awareness to those I was sending to respond to each incident, both dangerous in different ways.
Technology impacts mental health. To me, I think having multiple tools to utilize in critical situations, gives the telecommunicator reliable redundancy. If one thing doesn’t work, they have something else they can try to get people help. In both situations above, I had a 25-year-old map book and basic knowledge of the area. That’s not enough. Not having the tools you need to adequately do your job creates a scar in your heart that I can’t adequately describe. After 12 years, I can still remember those calls like they were yesterday. Could I have put them both to bed if I felt some sense of closure? If I had felt like I did everything I could? Maybe so. I believe that technology can facilitate that.
While both of these calls were horrific and quite honestly, I did not deal with them as I should have, they did lead to something positive. They both led me to become a person who would not allow my employees to feel the same way I did after those calls.
It led me to seek out new and innovative ways to meet our callers where they are. How can we streamline our workflow, but offer multiple options to connect to us for emergency services? How can I give my employees as much reliable redundancy as I could, in order for them to have all the tools they needed in every situation?
Recently, as a rural center in middle America, we started to become an early adopter of different forms of 911 technology services. Our goal is to always stay ahead of the technology, so we can absorb it and integrate it into our workflow, our way.
911 has spent too long playing catch up. I wanted to be able to run alongside what’s current and emerging.
Enter Video to 911.
When the conversation started with video to 911, I was initially extremely against implementing it. It seemed like any time video was mentioned, it became a conversation of sides. Who was for it and who was against it. The people who were against video had a laundry list of reasons why it wouldn’t work.
Mental Health – I don’t want people to see something that they shouldn’t.
Telecommunicators already have enough on their plates without having to look at a video of something.
Evidentiary concerns: How would we fulfill requests for video to attorney’s or the courts?
I was definitely a part of the against it group. I had reached out to many 911 Directors in the nation, trying to find anyone who had a good working policy or some idea on how they would solve some of the major concerns. Nobody really had any answers.
But if I was being honest with myself, it was a scary thought. Seeing what I’d spent so many years hearing and making up in my head. I didn’t want to open myself up to the fact that it could, in fact, be helpful.
What changed my mind was a Dispatcher’s Roundtable. Ricardo Martinez, host of Within The Trenches Podcast, talked about video and he said something that became a lightbulb moment for me. What if video actually gave us closure? That perspective hit me like a ton of bricks and immediately brought me back to these two calls. Wouldn’t it have helped me to have some visual of these calls, where I could have known that the officers were actually pretty close to downtown, and fairly accessible to help? Having access to video could have shown me that people were actually helping these officers while I was worrying that nobody knew what had happened to them.
Reframing my thinking about Video to 911, made me hungry for more knowledge. How could it work? What could we leverage with this technology?
The prospects started to get me excited.
After a chance connection on LinkedIn with the CEO of Prepared, a company that provides video to 911 to centers for free, we decided to make the jump into video. We are one of a handful of counties utilizing video services in our state.
I am definitely not a spokesperson for the company, but what I liked about Prepared is that they were keenly aware that Video to 911 is a huge shift for our industry. They knew and acknowledged the fears that I think everyone has about video. The company is focused on mental health resources for telecommunicators, and they have feature sets that are driven by telecommunicator requests, like video blur.
They want to make this transition as least impactful as it can be.
We’ve had video in our center now for almost three months. I don’t mandate that it’s used on every call. I want them to look at it as a tool. If they feel there could be value in initiating a livestream, or asking for a video or picture, I want them to use it. Slowly, the use has started to pick up.
Our telecommunicators have been using it to text back 911 hang-ups. They’ve been able to get pictures of lost dogs, so we can hopefully keep them out of the animal shelter. Our community is starting to send us more pictures of events happening in town that are suspicious. We’ve found that our responders actually enjoy getting to show us some of what a scene looks like when we are too busy or a call doesn’t allow us to initiate a video. One of our deputies went through a crash with us that we were receiving conflicting information on. It was very cool to see exactly what happened versus what some frustrating callers were trying to tell us.
I’ll admit it guys, we were scared at first. I won’t lie and say we weren’t. There is a lot we still don’t know. But months later, we are still going strong.
A slow rollout is good for us: successful technology adoption needs to go at your employee’s pace. What do you feel like they have the capacity to handle?
If you are considering going to Video in your center, you can go all in, or temper your approach. Prepared was very supportive about this. They provided us resources to develop policy and procedure prior to our roll out, so everyone knew what was expected.
And if we see something that isn’t pleasant, we will walk through that time together. We’ll walk through whatever it is as a team... and a family.
As we’ve continued to find more and more ways to utilize video, one thing I want to stress is that 911 didn’t change. It grew. But the core of what we do and who we are as 911 didn’t change that much at all. It got better. Adding video to our service offerings has only made us better. Video hasn’t drastically changed any of what we were doing before.
Finally, the reason that I wanted to write this is to encourage you to move forward with video if it’s been on your radar. It is a big step, but an important one. Video is coming regardless. So, let’s get on board together and walk through how we can make it successful for all of us.
We are a 911 center in the middle of America, and we are thriving. You can implement this and be okay.
Sometimes the best things come from stepping into our fear. I think video can be one of those things too.
Thank you, Roxy, for sharing your experience with us. If you are interested in writing a blog, please email amanda@911derwomen.com. Sign up for our newsletter on our homepage to stay up to date with 911der Women programming, exclusive content and blog updates. Click here and scroll to the bottom.
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