AURORA | Jennifer Marquez will always remember the call she received April 4, 2016.
That’s when Marquez, a 911 dispatcher in Arapahoe County for the past five and a half years, spoke with three people who were shot, one fatally, following a bizarre altercation in Centennial.
“That call has always stuck with me,” she said. “I think I was the last person that one of them actually talked to.”
That call — the audio of which was played in Arapahoe County District Court during the prosecution of the convicted shooter, Kevin Lyons — was just one of the some 300,000 requests for service dispatchers like Marquez field in Arapahoe County each year.
And as of Feb. 5, the county is granting its 27 dispatchers a new title and improved benefits to help them better respond to those often frantic cries for help.
“Given the vital and stressful work these dedicated professionals do every day, and the critical role they play in responding to life-and-death situations, it’s only fitting that they should have access to similar benefits as other first responders,” the Arapahoe County Board of County Commissioners said in a joint statement.
Arapahoe County became just the second jurisdiction in the state on Wednesday to designate its dispatchers as “first responders,” granting them the same status as police, fire and emergency medical personnel. Dispatchers were previously classified as clerical workers.
The change will put county dispatchers into a seven-year step system that will afford them better pay and increased access to mental health benefits, officials announced at a press conference.
Arapahoe County Commissioners last year signed off on an $180,000 budget request to fund the change, according to Board Chairwoman Nancy Sharpe.
The change follows a surge of increased national efforts to get the country’s some 100,000 emergency dispatchers better pay and benefits, according to Monica Million, president of the National Emergency Number Association, an industry advocacy group.
“Reclassification, especially at the local and state level is about more than just name and description, it’s about changing the conversation around what it means to work in 911,” Million said. “ … They’re providing life-saving pre-arrival instructions during heart attacks, strokes and other medical emergencies. They’re the voice of comfort and hope during a citizen’s most terrorizing moments.”
At least six states have enacted similar reclassifications in recent years, Million said. And last spring, Democratic U.S. Rep. Norma Torres introduced a federal measure that would designate all of America’s dispatchers as first-responders, though the measure is still awaiting a committee hearing.
Arapahoe County Sheriff Tyler Brown said Arapahoe County chose to pre-empt any federal efforts due to the fickle and sedated nature of the U.S. Congress.
“If we start to take these steps right now then I think we’ll be ahead of the curve,” Brown said. “And we might be able to push more counties to do it.”
Million said she was not aware of any other Colorado counties or agencies pursuing similar re-designation efforts, including in Aurora.
Aurora residents are unlikely to speak with an Arapahoe County dispatcher when calling 911 unless they find themselves in various pockets of unincorporated Arapahoe County sprinkled throughout the city, according to Brown. County dispatchers handle calls that are received from land lines or cell towers based in unincorporated pockets of the county, as well as a handful of smaller, southern municipalities the sheriff’s office helps police, including Centennial, Deer Trail and Cherry Hills Village.
Though Aurora maintains its own emergency 911 department, county dispatchers can become involved in high-priority incidents that could leave the city’s typical dispatchers overwhelmed, like the Aurora theater shooting in 2012.
The city technically considers its dispatchers to be first responders, even though it doesn’t have an official “first responder” job classification, City Spokesman Michael Bryant wrote in an email. Though city dispatchers are hired separately from certified police and fire, they are eligible to receive the same psychological counseling services available to sworn officers, according to Bryant.
“They also participate in the police department’s peer support teams, which provide emotional support during and after times of personal or professional crisis,” he wrote.
Pitkin County is the only other jurisdiction in the state to afford its dispatchers first-responder designation.
Marquez, 33, said she’s excited about a possible pay bump and plans on utilizing the additional mental health components.
She said the constant inundation of calls can lead to a lack of closure for call-takers during particularly troublesome incidents.
“We don’t know the outcome of most of the calls that we take,” she said. “We hear all of the cries and screams and fighting and gunshots, and then that’s it. Then we have to answer the next call.”
Brown said that pattern of loose ends can prove difficult over time.
“(Sheriff’s deputies) usually get to see some type of closure to a call, but as soon as we’re done with the basic work that needs to be be done, a (dispatcher’s) role is usually cut out because they have to go answer the next 911 call,” he said. “So they don’t get the fulfillment of what happened on that call where sometimes we do. And the human mind sometimes fills in the blanks where it’s not supposed to, and that can be traumatic.”
The county is currently aiming to fill nine vacancies in its dispatch center, according to Cathy Raley, Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office Communications Manager.
“Yes, we are hiring,” she said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misnamed the man convicted of murdering one man and injuring two women in a Centennial shooting in 2016. His name is Kevin Lyons.