Dispatch honored for Dantzler incident

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Two dozen Grand Rapids police dispatchers were recognized as Team of the Year for their work during the Rodrick Dantzler rampage in July.

The Michigan Association of Public Safety Communications Officials honored the members, as well as Communications Manager Karen Chadwick, who was chosen as Director of the Year, in a ceremony in Frankenmuth on Oct. 27.

That team award will be shared by the 24 dispatchers who were on duty July 7.

The Team of the Year award is for the professionalism and dedication exhibited during the Dantzler incident . He killed seven people, shot two others, took three hostages and ended up killing himself after a police standoff.

"During this time, the employees of the Communications Center pulled together and worked non-stop during the nine-and-a-half-hour ordeal to manage the massive incident," officials said in a statement.

The award and recognition are nice, three of them told 24 Hour News 8, but they never want to relive a day like that again.

That day they received about 1400 calls - about twice as many as on a normal day. The most disturbing came from Dantzler himself, moments after he burst into a house on the northwest side and took three hostages.

"We had two different people who spoke with him," Chadwick said. "One was brand new and she had only been here five months."

Dispatchers are trained in situations like this to keep someone like Dantzler on the phone as long as possible.

"Well, he might say something. He stays distracted, away from the hostages," Chadwick said. "He was in the house with the hostages. As long as he stays on the phone, he is not focused on them, and so you just want to try to keep him busy."

Chris Korstange was among those 24 dispatchers on duty. "Everytime I answered the phone," he said, "I was afraid it was going to be someone who had found another scene."

He said it was a very emotional day.

"We've got a job to do and we gotta do it," Korstange said. "When we get home we can decompress a little bit and, yeah, I had a hard time wrapping my head around how somebody could do that. That will be with me for the rest of my career."

The 24 dispatchers, Chadwick said, "stepped up and worked wherever they were needed, they stayed, they shifted, in short, they were brilliant throughout the entire incident."