Dispatchers must get it right every time

I READ WITH interest Ryan Boetel’s front page article (“She ‘did everything right,’” July 30) re: Esperanza Quintero’s reaction to AFD dispatcher Matthew Sanchez regarding the shooting of Jayden Chavez-Silver and noted AFD Fire Chief David Downey’s response.

Downey declares that Quintero “did everything right” and disparages Matthew Sanchez’s response, including his hangup on Quintero and finally his firing by AFD. Downey also suggests a number of policy and/or training improvements intended by AFD toward trying to make their operational system of emergency dispatchers more efficient.

But the one thing — and paramount, in my opinion — that David Downey doesn’t mention has to do with dispatchers learning to listen efficiently to their callers.

This is with the understanding that it was Sanchez’s repetitive questioning of Quintero regarding whether Chavez-Silver was still breathing and her curt reaction to him after same, that finally preceded his hanging up on her. And all this while Chavez-Silver lay dying of a gunshot wound to his chest! Nothing like encountering an emergency situation and attempt- ing to describe same to 911, only to have the person on the other end of the line saying, “Gee, would you repeat that for me, just one more time?”

Other than the possibility of foreign accents and/or the stress in a caller’s voice in attempting to report to 911, dispatchers overall need to be persons who can react well to emergency calls and — to the degree possible — get it “right” the first time around. BOB LIEBMAN

Edgewood