RCMP call centre tackles holiday season

Next up is Dec. 31, which brings in torrent of calls

While other Edmontonians settle in around the dinner table over the holidays, Lisa Tilley will be on the phone.

She will be answering calls at the K-Division Operational Communications Centre, where calls to 58 RCMP detachments in northern Alberta are received and dispatched.

“When you’re working shift work like this, the holidays are just another day,” Tilley said. She worked her seventh Christmas at the centre, located on the second floor of Edmonton’s RCMP headquarters at 11140 109th St.

The call centre’s decorations hang from the centre’s ceiling, red and silver garlands are wound around columns and there’s a Christmas tree in the middle of the room. But despite the festive appearance, the facility is all business for the 14 to 18 operators on duty throughout the holiday season.

“Unfortunately, we don’t deal with a lot of happy people at Christmas. We end up having to deal with situations where there may be domestic violence, a party has got out of control, a motor-vehicle collision, someone stuck in a ditch, a bar fight,” RCMP Insp. Ian Currie said.

New Year’s Eve is also a very busy time for the centre, as winter storms and icy highway conditions lead to a torrent of calls.

“We take calls on anything from stolen garden gnomes to homicides,” operator Krysta Petruk said, standing at her desk facing three large computer screens.

“Around the holidays it always seems to pick up in domestic calls, with people at home fighting and drinking more.”

Whatever the call, Petruk said her job is the same.

“However I act on a call will help affect the outcome. If (the caller) is hysterical and I keep calm that will help alleviate some of their stress and make it better for them, the caller. That’s my focus, to stay calm and in control of the call.”

Despite the tension, the operators say they love their job, even when they would rather be at home.

“We’re always busy doing something. It’s always changing,” Tilley said.

The Edmonton Operational Communications Centre and a second centre in Red Deer that serves southern Alberta will receive more than one million complaint and administrative calls this year, and another quarter of a million 911 calls.

The centres have seen a massive increase in 911 calls in recent years, from 22,500 in 2005 to a projected 240,000 in 2012. Roughly 60 per cent of 911 calls are not emergency situations.

“A true emergency is when a person or property is in danger at that time,” Currie said.