This is going to be a series over the next few ays. It begins with an introduction and then part one ends with the events of January 30, 2009. Finally, I am breaking the silence.I worked dispatching for Waterville Police for 11 years. That is pretty much what I did every where I lived for most of my life, it was my career and I was good at it.
I started dispatching in Kittery in 1983. I also dispatched for a police department (3 different times) and Sheriff's Department and an ambulance company while I was in Texas. When I moved back to Maine I started dispatching in Skowhegan and eventually was hired at Waterville. I took a pay cut to come to Waterville, but it was better hours and closer to home, so it was worth the smaller pay check.
Right away I knew that Waterville dispatch was an exceptionally hard job. I had even been warned by people in the business before I resigned from Skowhegan that I may ought to rethink my choice. However, the appeal of the distance and hours won me over and I took the job. Working in at Waterville did present challenges. The dispatch department was understaffed, we were supervised by patrol sergeants who not only didn't know how to do our job if we had a question, but to them we were just a pain in the ass. We were a liability. We often worked alone answering an infinite amount of phone calls, dispatching police for three cities, fire departments for countless others and at the time the ambulance. But we were not cops, and as civilians were not respected.
The Waterville administration was hell bent on making our jobs harder by adding more and more departments for us to dispatch to make them self look better and had not a care in the world about anything other than budgets (the city made money off of soliciting more agencies for us to dispatch for). Still we had antiquated equipment, broken chairs, no ventilation, poor lighting, no contingency plans for evacuations, NO SOP and everything else that a good OSHA inspection could have written a book on. Years later the city did a half ass cosmetic remodel of our office and we finally did get our own dispatch supervisor. Essentially he was a patrol sergeant that wanted better hours, and a lackadaisical man whose main concern every day was to make certain he had somewhere to be other than at his desk. Needless to say, we went through a lot of personnel.
The thing was, I liked the job. It was what I did. I was my career. I liked the people I worked with, and I liked the excitement and gratification of the job. What I did not like was the bickering and bull shit from within. I never understood the enjoyment someone got out of being demeaning, and making our hard job harder, just because they had the power to do so according to their rank, and there was a lot of that going on. We had patrol sergeants who would come in to our office yelling and screaming and veins in their foreheads about to burst, often over nothing or a misunderstanding- one time one of them actually made me throw up. Yes really. We were always on edge. Did I mention we went through a lot of personnel?
I did not tolerate this bullying behavior very well but I was too meek to fight back and too sensitive to let it go so in roughly 2007 when an egotistical runt of an asshole officer with a head so big he could barely fit it in the cruiser got promoted to sergeant, it promised to be a very, very worrisome thing. For his first few months as sergeant he was tolerable, I even told him I thought he was doing a great job in hopes of it continuing. In retrospect I think, him doing a good job lasted exactly as long as his probation because as soon as that was up, he let his true colors show again. Then the torment we had been expecting came at us like pus finally bursting through and squirting from an engorged zit.
He was horrible, and even though I am very shy and afraid of retaliation it got to the point where I had to file complaints against him. I felt an injustice to myself to go home crying and miserable and nursing my ulcer yet doing nothing to protest his behavior. I started with oral complaints, then written complaints, then a meeting with his supervisor- I can not even begin to describe how horrible it was. I panicked every time I suspected I would be alone with this guy and finally one night it happened. He confronted me about the complaints. I just sat there with a look of sheer terror on my face, he sat there with a look of superiority on his and I knew that no matter what, I was insignificant and he had won.
Eventually, for a couple of reasons, I changed shifts. A large factor in my decision was that the new hours would mean that I did not have to work with him as often. I did not like the new hours though, they were weird and it meant being at the station at the exact time I had been used to sleeping for a decade. It was a major adjustment. Plus, I was not working with Rebecca as much anymore and we were each others rock. However, as expected, it did get him to back off for a few months, so I tried to make it work. I always knew though that he was just waiting for an opportunity to strike again. He would do underhanded things that wouldn't warrant a complaint, but would insure that you knew that he was still in charge and there was nothing you could to about it (I use a plural because I was not singled out).
This particular asshole sergeants shining glory opportunity to assert his superiority came on the evening of January 30, 2009 in which he drove to my house, in another county, in a Waterville cruiser, while I was off duty to tell me that he was ordering me into work the next morning. I had known there was an open shift due to someone calling in sick but no one had even called me to see if I wanted it. He just took it upon himself to come to my house for a confrontation. Well, being ordered in goes by seniority and I was second to the top with 6 dispatchers under me- plus I had already worked overtime the night before! Still, he got in my face belittling me about how I wasn't a team player and he didn't care about seniority or keeping score as to who worked when etc. I just stood there frozen, speechless and trembling. My son and daughter in law sat in my living room listening to his outrage. After my initial stun over him being there wore off, I remembered that the reason I had not taken the shift voluntarily was that I was already excused from work the day in question because I was having a sleep study done. Sleep studies are booked quite a bit in advance and I had submitted paperwork to my supervisor, it was approved and I couldn't just cancel it. When I told him that he got sarcastic, demeaning and was just out of control. He said "just so I know the facts, you are disobeying a direct order to work because you claim to have medical reason and documentation?" I offered to let him see it, he declined instead berating me for my supervisor for not making him aware of it. I was so upset that I wanted to burn down the room he had stood in. The incident ruined my whole night and as it would turn out... much, much more than just one night.
To be continued....
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