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But about 90 percent of major metropolitan fire departments across the country now employ highly trained civilians, rather than firefighters, as dispatchers. Emergency communications experts say civilians have proven to be more effective dispatchers than firefighters or police officers because their primary expertise is in what they do -- dispatching.
And even though they are more effective than uniformed counterparts, civilian dispatchers earn less than firefighters or police, whose higher pay is designed to compensate for the dangerous nature of fire- and crime-fighting.
San Francisco Police Department dispatchers manage more than 1 million 911 calls each year, more than three times the volume of calls that fire dispatchers handle. These police dispatchers undergo 10 months of intensive training, compared to the two weeks that fire dispatchers get.
Yet police dispatchers make significantly less than their Fire Department counterparts. Police dispatch salaries range from 7 to 60 percent less than fire dispatcher pay, depending on experience, and Rex Martin, communications director for the San Francisco Police Department, says that there is no logical reason why firefighters should be working as dispatchers.
"Firefighters should be out fighting fires. Police officers should be out fighting crime," says Martin. "That's the most effective use of those personnel."
Although careful not to criticize the San Francisco Fire Department directly, Oakland Fire Battalion Chief Don Parker concurs with Martin's assessment: "In order to be able to take a call, to dispatch the proper people and to follow up -- it's not necessary to have a fully trained firefighter to perform those tasks."
In past years, many emergency dispatch centers were staffed by default. The firefighters working there were on temporary posting, or were rotated through dispatch as trainees. In the case of the San Francisco Fire Department, dispatch centers have historically been repositories for "limited duty" police or firefighters who couldn't do their regular jobs because of illness or injuries.
In most cities, though, dispatchers are now considered specialists in their own right.
The San Francisco Fire Department steadfastly refuses to civilianize dispatching and other non-firefighting jobs, despite the mounds of evidence that support such a move. Each time the idea of civilianization has come up, the Fire Department has given the same answer: Firefighters are the only people capable of handling the job.
As long ago as 1980, city budget analyst Harvey Rose recommended that the Fire Department replace firefighters with civilians in the Communications Center and several other such "non-suppression" units. The report argued that civilian dispatchers could be just as effective as firefighters, but much less costly. Rose projected that his recommendations would save city taxpayers nearly half a million dollars a year -- or roughly $8 million to date in 1997 dollars.
"If the civilians were properly and thoroughly trained, and if the transition from uniformed employees to civilian employees were accomplished gradually, we believe that the quality of services provided would not be adversely affected," the report said.
Predictably, the Fire Department vigorously opposed the concept, claiming that only uniformed firefighters could provide the dispatching necessary to protect property and public.
Today, some 17 years later, the Fire Department's line remains the same.
Assistant Deputy Chief Frank Scales, who manages the Communications Center and all other Fire Department support services, says the SFFD has no intention of installing civilians in dispatch.
"A civilian does not have the sensitivity of a firefighter," Scales says. "When you have a system that is working properly, you do not gamble with the citizens of San Francisco's lives just because you want to try another system."
The San Francisco Fire Department is under no obligation -- legally or logically -- to provide limited or light-duty positions for injured or disabled firefighters. As Rex Martin, the veteran S.F. police dispatcher, observes, "Many departments don't have light-duty positions. Either you're able to perform full time at full capacity, or you're off on worker's comp or a rehab program."
But the Fire Department keeps plenty of "light" assignments around. Several of those cushy, high-paying jobs are associated with the vague Fire Department operation known as the Jones Street Tank.
Seven firefighters man the Jones Street operation, which is staffed in rotating 24-hour shifts, just like the Communications Center.
But the tasks at Jones Street are even more amorphous than the light dispatching duty that goes on amid the cooking and sleeping at the Communications Center. The Jones Street operation provides firefighters with help during large fires. In such situations, tank operators will turn valves that increase the water supply available from fire hydrants near a particular blaze.
Most of the time, though, the job requirements at the Jones Street Tank are minimal (so minimal that one of the tank operators was spotted planting a garden outside the station and trimming leaves during a recent shift).
The Fire Department has difficulty saying exactly what employees at the Jones Street Tank do during the long stretches of time when multialarm fires are not in progress, beyond monitoring three major water tanks used by the Fire Department for leaks.
The Jones Street jobs pay full firefighters' wages. Even though superiors struggle to describe what Jones Street workers do with most of their time, those workers receive generous overtime pay.
But it is almost to be expected that the Fire Department would pay overtime for vaguely defined, ephemeral "work." Abuse of overtime seems to be a Fire Department tradition.
A 1994 civil grand jury said the Fire Department's overtime costs were, quite simply, out of control. The grand jury's report cited several examples from the previous year: The department's fireboat pilots and marine engineers were making as much as 33 percent more than their base salaries in overtime and holiday pay. A similar situation held with the Fire Department's training staff.
"The Civil Grand Jury was surprised at the intensity with which SFFD personnel have traditionally manipulated a loosely controlled system of compensation to enhance their income," the report said. "The drive for overtime pay, particularly that resulting from working on holidays, has so permeated the Department that it has become part of the culture of the SFFD.
