On the beaten path

After spending a few hours at the Plattsburgh State Police Barracks recently, I left with a bigger respect for the men and women in the gray and purple uniforms.

They are fathers and mothers, community volunteers and military veterans, trusted friends and husbands and wives who have devoted themselves to protect their community, even if it means risking their safety and potentially their lives.

I never fully realized the daily life and routine of troopers, officials, investigators and dispatchers until I had a brief glimpse into their world, one that changes in an instant and is marked by seemingly constant crisis and service.

Seeing the dispatchers man the communications center, with a steady flow of calls, visits and inquiries exhausted me. And I was only watching them.

In the limited time that I was there, the icy roads sent numerous drivers off the roads, into trees and other vehicles. So troopers were dispatched.

They aided drivers, waited for wrecker crews and directed traffic.
In the meantime, an alleged drug offender was in custody being processed.

Investigators were rushing around handling a heavy caseload.
Something had to be transported to headquarters, so in came another trooper. But another accident sent him back out on yet another call.

Two people stopped by for employment fingerprinting.

One man needed to drop something off.

Another walked in after falling on ice, wanting to make sure that highway crews take care of a slippery walkway.

Then there were a few calls about the weather.

There were complaints about a bad check and an area hotel reporting damaged property.

Then the next mission. Locating someone who was about the flee the area. Check the bus station and a friend’s house.

There were calls about a domestic incident in progress. A few more were dispatched out. They had just returned.

With each complaint and call, the dispatchers somehow remained calm and handled the action with surprising ease.

They were sitting, standing and bustling around the station: logging each call, giving messages, making appointments for routine patrol-vehicle maintenance, printing out reports, calling towing crews, calming frantic callers, confirming information and dispatching troopers in and out.

And I thought I had busy days at work.

As I was about to leave, I was talking with the dispatchers about how unbelievably busy they were.

Their response?

This is just an average day; you should see when it’s really busy.

I think the brief glimpse into their daily life surprised me more than anything.

There’s always someone to help and something they need to do.

And to each of them — the troopers, dispatchers, investigators and officials — a heartfelt thanks for everything you do every day.

It’s something that I never fully realized and something I will never forget.