Dispatching First Responders: Language Practices and the Dispatcher’s Operational Role in Radio Encounters With Police Officers

Abstract

The delivery of emergency services is often contingent on social processes launched when someone calls to request help. While initial encounters between civilian callers and institutional call-takers have been extensively studied, little is known about subsequent encounters between dispatchers and first responders. This paper examines police radio dispatch calls and the language practices enacting the dispatcher’s operational role. It sketches the technological constraints and communicative challenges of the two-way radio medium, and the overall activity structure of radio dispatch. It then focuses on the design of dispatchers’ instructions to officers. The instruction has a recurrent base form but may be expanded with optional material addressing atypical or specialized circumstances. Accordingly, dispatchers are not passive conduits of information transfer; working within the constraints of the radio medium, they elaborate and reframe the available information in ways that triage the problem and aid in its downstream management.