It's a job that keeps you on your toes, and Michael Groff has been doing it for more than a decade in West Chester Borough. It can be high-stress and high-stakes meeting the community's needs and serving as a lifeline to officers and others in the field.
"You have your equipment in front of you. You know your job, you have to have confidence in yourself, and you just have to take it as it comes," Groff said.
NPSTW was designated by President Bill Clinton in 1994.
"In emergency response and police work and the emergency services, first responders are often thought of as the firefighters, those on the ambulance, the police officers, but the first of the first responders are usually the communications officers, the dispatchers," said West Chester Borough Police Chief Joshua Lee.
"They experience much of the same stress and much of the same trauma that everybody else in the emergency services do," he added.
That's why there's currently an effort in Harrisburg to change 911 dispatchers' official classification to first responders. A bill doing so recently passed in the Pennsylvania House. Action News spoke with one of its authors.
"I was shocked when I found that they're currently classified as clerical workers. That, in my opinion, just does not adequately reflect the work that they do, and it also means they are not entitled to the same benefits as folks who are classified as first responders," said Rep. Jessica Benham, a Democrat from Alleghany County.
Benham says she was driven by personal conversations with 911 operators about challenges that come with the job. The bill opens the door to more wellness and stress management programs and resources for dispatchers.
"We want make sure those folks have the respect and resources that they deserve. In the future, when these folks are classified properly as first responders, they will have access to those sorts of programs on the federal level that they really should've qualified for all along," Benham said.
In West Chester, nine dispatchers serve around 30,000 residents and field 30,000-40,000 calls a year, none of which ever go unanswered. Dispatchers are a group you rarely see, but they're always there.
"Being recognized for Telecommunicators Week is important because it tends to highlight a job that seems to be swept under the rug, just taken for granted," Groff said.
Representative Benham's Bill now heads to the Senate. There's no timeline for when it will be considered there, but it passed the house unanimously.