At the time Pulse happened, Jessica Brooks was an emergency communications specialist for the Orlando Police Department. On that evening she was a call taker. A call taker answers the 911 calls as well as non emergency calls and they collect all the information and they put it in the computer. A dispatcher then get that information and gets it out to the officers who are responding.
On June 11, 2016 she was on the 3PM to 3AM shift taking calls. The entire week had been insane to the point where they wondered what was going on. They were busier than they have ever been. They thought that maybe the Christina Grimmie murder at the Plaza Live was the end of the insanity. Everyone was burnt out. There had been a car jacking that day as well.
Six call takers worked the lines. She was handling six radio channels. She had worked as a dispatcher for eight hours and for her last four hours she became a call taker. Things usually slow down between midnight and two. At to AM it can pick up because that is when the clubs let out. She was on her last break and it was just before 2AM. She took a bathroom break and when she walked back in the room, the phones were ringing off the hook. Co-workers wee standing up. She heard there was an active shooter at Pulse nightclub. She wasn’t sure it was legit. She decided to plug back into her headset and take a few calls and she would take a break later.
She doesn’t remember many of the calls. The first call she does remember was the worst call she had ever taken. It was a female who was stuck in a bathroom. She was scared and begging for help. She encouraged her and let her know there was an officer on the scene. Then Jessica heard gun shots. They were not in the bathroom but they were close. Then they were in the bathroom. She heard screaming and horrible things. There was moaning for a while and then silence. She stayed on the line putting it on hold and handled other calls hoping she could go back to the line and get a response, but she didn’t.
The next call was a minor traffic accident with no injuries and she had to inform the driver that there were no officers available. Some of that evening is a blur. She took another call from someone what was trapped in an office at Pulse. She was on the phone with him for a while. There were ten others in the room. She got his basic information and kept him calm. Inside she was panicking because of hat had happened to her last caller. She didn’t want that to happen to him. Ultimately she got to hear who went in and pulled him get out. She could hear her co workers talking to people in bathrooms, and the same room as her survivor. She knew of parents who were texting their children who were trapped in the bathrooms.
It was a loud insane night. The final call she took that night was from the shooter. She couldn’t hear him because it was so loud in the room. He claimed his allegiance to an Islamic state. He said, “I am the Orlando shooter.” She muted her phone, and told her supervisor that she had the shooter o the phone. One of the lieutenants was there and he made his way to her so he could take over the call. She asked the shooter where he was, and he said he was at Pulse. Her computer screen showed a map, that map shows where the call is coming from. He was indeed right at Pulse. He spoke in another language at another point. Then he hung up on her. The lieutenant took her console and she was done for the night. She wanted to stay but they wouldn’t let her. Some people worked 16 hour shifts but they must have seen on her face that she had enough. The first call is what got to her the most. She could not sleep for 48 hours.
At home she did click on the news which announced that 20 had died. She felt sick and turned it off. She felt she would never be the same. A friend came over from work along with a pastor and she was surrounded by love. The next day she went to church in search of hope. She was off work for 4 days.