RCMP call centre operators are the ‘reassuring voice’ on people’s worst days

When trouble happens, RCMP officers are usually not the first to hear about it. More likely, it’s the “reassuring voice” on the other end of the police call line who tries to calm people on “their worst days,” says Insp. Will McGinns.

Last year, Nunavummiut across the territory’s 25 communities made 35,000 calls for assistance to the RCMP. That’s an average of 96 calls a day, or nearly one call for every resident of the territory.

“They are really working behind the scenes, so we wouldn’t be able to do our job without them,” McGinns, the administration and personnel officer for the division, said of the service’s operators who handle the calls.

Val Robinson has been answering those calls for the past 25 years, at different detachments across the country including Yellowknife, Whitehorse and in British Columbia. She came to Nunavut in 2018.

Now based at the RCMP call centre in Iqaluit, she has three computer monitors on the desk in front of her. She follows talk on the radios from several dozen RCMP officers across the territory, answers phone lines from all 25 communities, and keeps an eye on a map with the location of an RCMP plane that was flying over Kinngait.

“We identify the calls by their location geographically, the kind of call and … oh, hang on” — as Robinson speaks, a red light goes on at her desk and she has to respond.

“RCMP for Baker Lake,” she said.

All police calls in Nunavut are directed to this office at the Iqaluit RCMP detachment. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

All the calls from across Nunavut are directed to the office located on the second floor of the RCMP’s Iqaluit detachment. At all times, there are two or three civilian operators serving the territory.

“How many people live in that house?” Robinson asks the person on the other end of the line, while typing the details into the computer.

“Do you know if they have any guns in the house at all? Do you know how to spell his last name?”

Currently, Nunavut RCMP are short on operators with only eight staff members filling 12 positions, said Jill Imrie, who heads the service’s operational communications centre. Operators work 12-hour shifts, rotating days and nights.

Robinson said they usually receive more calls in the night than during daytime, and the types of calls are different from those in a big city.

“I mean we’re not going to get a police chase with a vehicle here, because they can only go seven kilometers one way or the other,” she said.

The most common calls in Nunavut are related to liquor. Business at the call centre “ebbs and flows” with the operating hours at the Iqaluit beer and wine store, Robinson said, adding that incidents of domestic violence and family disputes are also common.

Along with answering calls from residents, operators are in constant communication with the officers on the ground. In dangerous situations, operators listen in on the officers’ radios and call for backup if they feel it’s necessary, she said.

Robinson said really loves her job, and regrets that she only started doing it in her 40s.

“It’s very fulfilling,” she said, adding she wouldn’t have stayed on for long if it wasn’t.

“I’m not going to kid anybody, there’s been a few calls that have really stuck with me,” she said.

“You’ll hear somebody who’s really in distress, somebody screaming in your ear, and that’s hard to listen to. We can’t physically help them and really that’s what we want to do, help them.”