‘Officer needs help’ calls like one prompted by Sheriff Troyer not uncommon. Should they be?
Massive police responses like the one triggered when Sheriff Ed Troyer squared off with a newspaper carrier earlier this year are not uncommon in Pierce County, a News Tribune analysis found.
There were 230 “officer needs help” alerts sent out by South Sound 911 dispatchers from 2011 through January, records show. South Sound 911 dispatches for nearly all law enforcement and fire agencies in Pierce County.
Troyer’s Jan. 27 altercation, which led to criminal charges being filed against the sheriff and a lawsuit against the county, was one of three “officer needs help” calls that month. Over the last decade, each year ranged from 10 to 34 sizable emergency responses in Pierce County.
Many of the calls were false alarms or quickly resolved. Only a dozen or so resulted in police reports being written or anybody being taken into custody.
By comparison, Thurston 911 Communications could only recall one or two “officer needs help” calls in the last decade, and the King County Sheriff’s Office said they had fewer than 10 in the last 14 years. Snohomish County 911 estimated it had a call like that every few months.
The number of “officer needs help” calls vary so much between agencies because each has different criteria for when that code should be used.
One expert says taking parts of each agency’s policies and blending them together would be best to ensure officers in trouble get immediate help but cut down on unnecessary massive police responses.
South Sound 911 can issue an “officer needs help” alert if police ask for it, or if a passerby calls in with concern about an officer appearing to be in trouble. In King and Thurston counties, that code is used only if an officer hits an emergency button or radios in that there is an imminent threat.
“Every agency is a little bit different in terms of how they manage officer needs help calls,” King County sheriff’s Sgt. Tim Meyer said.
How such calls work in Pierce County
When South Sound 911 was setting procedures for how to deal with various calls in 2012, they checked in with local law enforcement agencies to see what would make officers feel most safe and comfortable.
In Pierce County, the answer was to err on the side of caution when someone’s life could be at stake.
That’s why there are several situations when South Sound 911 dispatchers can send out an “officer needs help” alert. An officer or deputy could radio and ask for priority backup, a passerby can call 911 to report seeing an officer in trouble or dispatchers might choose to use the code if they hear microphone clips or yelling on an officer’s frequency that could indicate danger.
“If we have reasonable indication that an officer needs assistance, we treat it as an emergency,” South Sound 911 deputy director Scott Hamel said. “It doesn’t matter to us who says an officer needs help. If they’re reporting as a reliable witness, we want to make sure we get help started and sort out who it is and whether they need assistance.”
Out of the 230 “officer needs help” alerts sent out from 2011 through January, only 12 resulted in police reports, indicating that most of the incidents were not life-threatening.
In Troyer’s case, a dispatcher used the code because he was concerned about the sheriff’s safety after Troyer said the other man had threatened to kill him. Five of the dozen calls since 2011 were prompted by law enforcement officers seeking help, and six were from passersby calling 911.
All but two were actual emergencies.
In both the non-emergencies, women with suspected mental health problems called 911 with what turned out to be fabricated stories. In August 2016, a woman called and told dispatchers a sheriff’s deputy had been shot in the face. That sent 38 deputies speeding to the scene, where it turned out there was no shooting. The woman, who was arrested on suspicion of making a false report, told deputies she got information on the shooting from telekinesis.
In May 2020, a woman called 911 to reporting seeing a Tacoma officer down after a struggle in an alley where four gunshots were fired. Forty-seven officers from multiple agencies responded and found no danger. The woman was involuntarily committed for observation.
Police expressed concern about the false report, pointing out that having 47 officers start to respond to a scene placed any number of them in grave danger due to the “urgency of a call of this nature,” according to the police report.
Half of the “officer needs help” calls that resulted in police reports involved officers struggling with suspects.
One was from an off-duty officer calling in shots fired at a concert. Another was because a deputy’s patrol car was struck by a driver who lost control in the snow on Spanaway Loop Road. Then there was a trash collector who called 911 in November 2020 to report seeing a deputy down behind a patrol car in a parking lot. The deputy had suffered a medical emergency and died at the scene.
The variety of calls coming in a variety of ways “stresses the importance of reporting emergencies, and if we didn’t take those phone calls as emergencies, there could be a delay in service,” South Sound 911 Communications Center director Deann Baumann said.
It’s up to the individual officers and deputies to decide whether it makes sense for them to respond based on the type of call and their location.
“The premise for telling everyone is because we don’t know where everyone is,” Hamel said. “We relay what we know is going on, and the units for the agencies decide if they’re going to respond or not.”
Although dozens of officers might start to respond to these types of incidents, the number of those who actually arrive on scene are significantly lower because dispatchers will either relay updated information or the first officer on scene will call others off.
For Troyer’s confrontation with a newspaper carrier, more than 40 law enforcement officers started to respond but only 14 arrived on scene.
Sixty percent of the “officer needs help” calls in Pierce County over the last decade were deemed calls where officers did indeed need help. The others were changed later to various types of calls, including suspicious people, agency assist, weapons violations, disorderly conduct and vandalism.
How they work elsewhere
Other emergency dispatch agencies have stricter guidelines for when an “officer needs help” alert can be sent out.
For Thurston County 911 Communications, the request must come directly from law enforcement. Dispatchers can then send out the alert on the radio or via mobile computers in patrol cars directing all available units to that area.
Currently, officers in trouble would have to request help on the radio but the agency is in the process of a $30 million upgrade that will buy radios with emergency buttons that officers can press if they’re unable to make a call.
The upgrade was deemed necessary after the Dec. 18, 2017, Amtrak train derailment near DuPont that killed three people and injured 65.
Each dispatching agency had a different radio system, which complicated communications for rescue efforts. The agencies had to have a representative physically post up at the incident command post to relay plans back to their respective departments.
“In the new system, we will have greater interoperability and can be on mutual aid channels together,” executive director Keith Flewelling said.
He’s been on the job since 2014 and can’t recall a single “officer needs help” alert going out in Thurston County.
At the King County Sheriff’s Office dispatch center, there are three ways for the “officer needs help” code to be triggered. The request can come directly from a deputy in trouble, another law enforcement agency can ask for help or a deputy could be heard over the radio fighting with someone but not respond to communication attempts from dispatchers.
“We just don’t get a lot of 1033s,” Meyer said, using the standardized code for “officer needs help.” “I’ve been here 14 years, and I have heard less than 10, and that’s maybe a generous number.”
911 calls from passersby who suspect an officer or deputy is in trouble cannot trigger massive emergency responses in Thurston or King counties, though dispatchers would directly check in with the officer believed to be in trouble to see what’s going on.
Snohomish County 911 falls somewhere in the middle of operations at Pierce and King and Thurston counties.
Hattie Schweitzer, one of the Snohomish operations managers, said “officer needs help” alerts are only sent out when law enforcement is “in a fight for life or a life-threatening situation.”
That means the officer must call for help or press the emergency button on his or her radio, though passersby can also call in apparent emergencies that dispatchers will follow up on.
Those types of emergency responses are not common in Snohomish County though.
“It’s not usual for it to happen,” Schweitzer said. “I would use the word rarely. It’s not as rare as it used to be, but we’re a busier county than we used to be.”
One expert’s opinion
Although nationally recognized organizations for public safety communications provide standards for how to set up operations, they do not provide specifics on how to handle certain types of calls.
That’s why there are so many differences in how dispatching agencies in Washington state handle “officer needs help” calls.
Christine Burke, founder of Strategic Intelligence Services and a consultant for police dispatch communications, said she has concerns about how South Sound 911, Thurston 911 Communications, King County Sheriff’s dispatch and Snohomish County 911 each handle massive emergency responses.
“I don’t agree that only the officer should be able to call for help because you have situations where the officer may be unconscious or unable to speak or use their hands. You can’t get on the radio because you’re fighting for your life,” Burke said. “On the other hand, dispatching everybody all the time may not make sense if it’s not adjusted based on the call type.”
She recommended giving dispatchers the responsibility to analyze the information available and decide how many law enforcement officers are necessary to respond.
In Troyer’s case, Burke said she understands more than 40 officers and deputies starting to rush to the scene with the information known at the time.
“That’s the sheriff. That’s your top guy,” she said. “If your sheriff calls, you go.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
