a couple of subjects

[Guest guest]

Comments on a couple of subjects:

1/To any member of the Topeka PD/ee County

Communications who may be on the list, I'd like to

extend my deepest sympathies for the loss of your

helicopter officers yesterday morning. If there's

anything we can do for you here in Riley County, let

me know.

2/Down to the wire: I understand that you are new and

may not feel comfortable in rocking the boat (and that

many agencies have a probationary period that allows

either party to termintate employment with or without

cause), but expecting a trainee (or a rookie, or even

a veteran dispatcher, for that matter) to copy ALL

radio traffic perfectly EVERY time is ridiculous. I

would excercise any rights I had to take the matter up

with higher-ups. If you have an established chain of

command, go through it until you receive an answer

about why you are being treated this way. It is

reasonable for a trainer to establish ambitious goals

for a trainee (how else do you get someone to

strive?), but setting impossible standards is

counterproductive. The standard being set for you is

impossible to meet and if it is applied across the

board this trainer will never graduate a trainee. I

would bring this up with someone. If you are having

specific problems, it is up to your trainer to

identify them to you and work with you on formulating

a plan for overcoming it. Training should not be a

punitive process. Find out who has the final say-so

about whether you are retained or let go (or at least

who your trainer answers to) and meet with them about

the problems you are having with your trainer. Ask to

be switched to a trainer who is not a jackass, if one

exists at your agency (I understand your previous

trainer was " bored " with training, or something to

that effect; I'd bring that up with management too).

If no relief is found with the higher ups, I would

suggest that this is probably not an agency that you

should be very interested in working for anyways,

because in general stuff like this only gets worse as

they start to expect more from you. That is little

consolation when you have bills to pay, but you must

think of your mental health as well. Good luck!

3/NCIC confirmations: I work at an agency in Kansas

too, and have had similar problems with other agencies

not going through the proper NCIC processes. ALL

requests from other agencies to either confirm

warrants on the air or on the phone are met with an

emphatic negative. I've had employees at other

agencies whine about not understanding how to send a

YQ message too, and I always refer them to the KBI

help desk (or KHP, who are the ones who certify all of

us to use the damn system in the first place). On the

old system, I can kind of understand the difficulty;

the free-text messages actually worked about 1/10 of

the time and it was almost impossible to get the

message through in the required 10 minutes. But now

it's fill in the blank. What's the big deal? At the

most, over the phone I will suggest that they make

sure they aren't trying to send a KYQ/KYR message, but

otherwise they need to deal with the KBI if they

simply refuse to do things the right way. For my

money, it's MY NCIC certification, MY agency that gets

audited, and ultimately MY butt that's in the sling if

all of the required documentation isn't there. Don't

back down, even if they get pissy, and I'd make

someone aware of agencies that are " habitual

violators " of the NCIC regulations. It's not

nit-picking; if agencies show consistent patterns of

non-compliance eventually they will get in trouble

either through their certificiation-granting bodies,

or through lawsuits.

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