"911, Is This an Emergency?": How 911 Call-Takers Extract, Interpret, and Classify Caller Information

Abstract

Policing in America is in crisis. Much of the nation is outraged by the level and distribution of encounters and arrests, infringements on civil liberties, and excessive uses of force by the police. Prior scholarship typically has attributed these problems to features of officer-initiated policing—specifically police officers’ decisions in who to stop and when to arrest.

By contrast, reactive or call-driven policing has not received comparable scholarly attention. Yet, in many places roughly half of all police-work involves responding to the public’s calls-for-service. In these cases, a series of interactions take place between 911 callers, 911 call-takers, and dispatchers before the police arrive at the scene, all of which can produce information that shapes police responses.

This dissertation is squarely focused on the role of 911 in American policing. It aims to answer the question of how 911 call-takers mediate caller demands and impact policing in the field. To answer this central research question, the author worked for two years as a 911 call-taker in Southeast Michigan, which allowed her to analyze the kinds of problems callers report, the decisions that call-takers must make, the challenges and dilemmas that they face, and the ways in which training and organizational norms shape the call-taking process.

Using a mix of quantitative, qualitative, and conversation analytic methods, this dissertation reveals that the process through which private citizens’ requests become police responses is complex and presents unique challenges to policing. The chapters aim to show how the contemporary 911 system has come to offer the public wide latitude over the scope of police work. By dissecting the day-to-day duties of 911 call-takers, the chapters shine a light on two critical call-taking functions. First, the author reveals an overlooked call-taker function—risk appraisal. Through unpacking precisely how call-takers appraise risk, namely through extraction, interpretation, and classification of caller information, this dissertation provides a framework to evaluate call-taker actions. Second, the author complicates the previously documented gatekeeping function by showing how organizational rules and norms can constrain the ability of 911 call-takers to limit the public’s heavy reliance on the system. Taken together, the chapters find that call-takers exercise discretion when performing these critical functions and their actions impact police responses.

This dissertation puts forth recommendations aimed at encouraging police agencies to reconceptualize the call-taking function in an effort to enable call-takers to more intelligently deploy discretion. Recommendations include developing protocols and criteria that empower call-takers to prevent inappropriate requests from receiving police services, training call-takers to assess risk in more sophisticated ways, distributing call-taker best practices to peers, and using technology to assist call-takers in preserving caller uncertainty. The author hopes that these findings and recommendations will help improve police encounters with the public and spur readers to strongly consider 911’s role in policing in the future.