Saving Lives is Routine for NYC 911 Operator

Giving birth, getting your car stolen, getting robbed, having a heart attack; These are situations most of us will deal with rarely—if ever— in our entire lives.

As a 911 police communications technician, Synette Lewis-Brown has encountered them every day for the last 25 years.

“You’re getting everything and anything that can happen in New York City,” Lewis-Brown said. “You’re definitely scared when you first walk through the door, because you’re new. But then you get this tough skin.”

In the buzzy 911 call center at 11 MetroTech Center, officially called Public Safety Answering Center I, dozens of operators answer emergency calls around the clock. Lewis-Brown answered hundreds of these calls as an operator, from people with a minor toothache to those who had been shot.

“Everybody’s emergency is an emergency,” she said. “You take everything at face value. You’re not judgmental.”

In 2008, Lewis-Brown was promoted to the city-wide dispatching unit, a higher level of dispatching where operators call on a wider variety of law enforcement agencies.

“Whatever you need is at your disposal,” Lewis-Brown said. “If you need to talk to the CIA, we could connect to them.”

The city-wide crew works 12-hour shifts, and are heavily relied upon during a large-scale emergency situations, such as the shooting at the NFL headquarters in late July.

Lewis-Brown was in the office that day. In the heat of the moment, she communicated with dozens of different departments about floor plans, hostages, elevators, and other logistical concerns in order to ensure safe evacuation.

“It’s a very high strung atmosphere,” she said. “You’re talking to 50, 60 people at one time.”

Lewis-Brown’s mother and father both worked as first responders—her father in the fire department and her mother as a 911 operator. She cited them as her inspirations, and joked that she only ever had two options pick from for her own career.

“It was like, ‘Whoever calls you first, that’s the employment you’re going to be doing,’” she said.

Lewis-Brown’s mother retired in 2006, but her co-workers have proved to be another kind of family.

The first time Lewis-Brown picked up the phone as an emergency operator in 2000, a woman giving birth was on the other end of the line. She recalled co-workers asking the time and how much the baby weighed so they could put the numbers into PowerBall.

“I love my people,” she said. “I wouldn’t change them for the world. We’re some unique people.”

In 2011, Lewis-Brown’s brother was assaulted and killed while she was at work. While she didn’t take the initial call, she heard about the killing immediately, and described it as the strangest moment she’s had in her time at the call center.

Looking back, she said the incident made her a more compassionate operator and dispatcher.

“It makes you a little bit more attentive,” she said. “Not letting the officers walk into something blindsided, because you want them to go home to their families.”

After a quarter-century on the job, Lewis-Brown is planning to call it quits in about four years, when her city contract is up.

It will be a well-deserved rest, and a peaceful time when emergency situations are no longer a daily occurrence.

“I have a four year old grandson,” she said. “I’ve been married for 26 years. [I spend free time] with my kids, my husband, and shopping. I love sports, my Knicks.”