MI Officials Working to Fully Staff 9-1-1 Center

HILLSDALE, MI—Hillsdale County's 9-1-1 administrators are working tirelessly to recruit new emergency dispatchers to bring staff levels back up to 100 percent.

Emergency dispatchers are the first point of contact in an emergency and are often referred to as "the lifeline" for personnel in the field such as firefighters, police officers and paramedics.

Doug Sanford, Hillsdale County's emergency management and 9-1-1 director, said the dispatch center — located in Hillsdale's Industrial Park — has been a few employees short for a few years now, but they did not interview potential new candidates for the last year due to COVID-19.

Now, with a few positions open, and with hundreds of job openings throughout the county elsewhere, Sanford said it has been difficult to find the right candidates.

The dispatch center has part-time employees nearly working full-time hours with some full-time employees working overtime right now to fill gaps.

"It's inconvenient," Sanford said. "But we're not in a crisis mode, not yet anyway."

Earlier this week, the dispatch center had a job preview session where potential recruits heard the positives and negatives of the job and then sat with a dispatcher for up to four hours to get a true understanding of the job.

Sanford said this preview session usually leads to half the candidates voluntarily withdrawing interest from the career field.

Those that make it past the preview session are subjected to criminal background checks and those with felony convictions or serious misdemeanors are eliminated. A drug test is also conducted and anyone with marijuana in their bloodstream is also eliminated, although recreational marijuana is legal in Michigan. This is because dispatchers need access to the Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN) program which is controlled by the federal government.

And then, after this, potential candidates are subjected to a psychiatric review to ensure they can continuously answer emergency calls from people in severe distress day after day.

"We don't want to hire someone that's not set up to succeed," Sanford said. "And we don't want to set them up to fail."

Sanford said the PTSD rate amongst emergency dispatchers is only second to the military.

"We don't want to bring someone in here and ruin their life," Sanford said.

Once a candidate is hired and begins working there is still a chance they leave due to the strenuous nature of the work.

"If they make it past two years, they're hooked," Sanford said.

Hillsdale County Central Dispatch is not the only emergency agency adjusting to personnel shortages.

The Hillsdale County Sheriff's Office is short on-road patrol deputies, Reading Emergency Unit has been seeking qualified paramedics and area fire departments are nearly always seeking new part-paid firefighters.

The shortages have led to some "outside the box" type thinking and restructuring.

Hillsdale City and Jonesville have adopted automatic mutual aid dispatches for structure fires and Jonesville has a similar agreement with Litchfield.

Sheriff Scott Hodshire has begun investing in his employees by sending corrections deputies tied to Hillsdale County to the police academy to become road patrol deputies while backfilling corrections positions instead of hiring deputies from outside the county who may decide to return home after a few years.

Reading Emergency Unit has worked diligently to review pay and benefits to be more comparable to surrounding jurisdictions.

All done to ensure that when someone calls 9-1-1 on the worst day of their lives someone is answering the call and responding.

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