Where the Break Room Author Works

The COII at the far end of the room is working the "Black" channel; the frequencies are color-coded throughout the Department. If you want to see what I mean by that, click here.

The Black Radio covers all of Monterey County, and is handled by two separate CHP Area Offices: Monterey and King City. They share the channel and are separated by enough geography to make it hard for units in one Area to hear units in the other Area.

The map hanging down next to the console shows the area of coverage, plus beat assignments, tow zones for our rotation tow system, as well as some other super-secret, arcane information. (not really; it's just too hard to explain right here...)

Evan Platt took this particular photo standing behind the "Green Radio" dispatcher. The Green Radio covers all of Santa Cruz County, San Benito County and southern Santa Clara County. This radio position handles the Santa Cruz Area and the Hollister-Gilroy Area -- plus the Gilroy Inspection Facility (commonly known as the Scales).

Again, the different CHP Areas on the same channel often don't hear the units from the other Area.....it makes for some interesting coordination of communications!

This is a view similar to what can be seen from the Communications Supervisors' office. The service desks are visible through the window and when I'm sitting at my desk, I can see most of the Radio Room. There are speakers in the office to monitor both Radio positions, if necessary.

Our radio consoles have one disadvantage: they don't support radio and telephone functions through the same head-set; a hand-set is necessary to use the phone at the Radios.

(Service desk positions are strongly encouraged to use head-sets and NOT the hand-set, to reduce neck and shoulder strain from cradling the hand-set.)

Although the Center is equipped with adjustable key-board trays, it's not using a CAD system, so the dispatchers have to use the desk top in front of them for a writing surface. Although they constantly use a key-board to access a variety of computer data-bases, it's not convenient to set the key-board on the adjustable tray and keep pushing it away and pulling it out again to use it.

I purchased a digital camera not too long ago, so I'll be changing the images on these pages as I take more pictures. (Eventually someone's going to wrestle it away from me and take some of ME, I'm sure. We'll see if I post any of THOSE here.)