"911, Is This an Emergency?": How 911 Call-Takers Extract, Interpret, and Classify Caller Information

Policing in America is in crisis. Much of the nation is outraged by the level and distribution of encounters and arrests, infringements on civil liberties, and excessive uses of force by the police. Prior scholarship typically has attributed these problems to features of officer-initiated policing—specifically police officers’ decisions in who to stop and when to arrest. By contrast, reactive or call-driven policing has not received comparable scholarly attention. Yet, in many places roughly half of all police-work involves responding to the public’s calls-for-service. In these cases, a series of interactions take place between 911 callers, 911 call-takers, and dispatchers before the police arrive at the scene, all of which can produce information that shapes police responses. This dissertation is squarely focused on the role of 911 in American policing. It aims to answer the question of how 911 call-takers mediate caller demands and impact policing in the field. To answer this central research question, the author worked for two years as a 911 call-taker in Southeast Michigan, which allowed her to analyze the kinds of problems callers report, the decisions that call-takers must make, the challenges and dilemmas that they face, and the ways in which training and organizational norms shape the call-taking process. Using a mix of quantitative, qualitative, and conversation analytic methods, this dissertation reveals that the process through which private citizens’ requests become police responses is complex and presents unique challenges to policing. The chapters aim to show how the contemporary 911 system has come to offer the public wide latitude over the scope of police work. By dissecting the day-to-day duties of 911 call-takers, the chapters shine a light on two critical call-taking functions. First, the author reveals an overlooked call-taker function—risk appraisal. Through unpacking precisely how call-takers appraise risk, namely through extraction, interpretation, and classification of caller information, this dissertation provides a framework to evaluate call-taker actions. Second, the author complicates the previously documented gatekeeping function by showing how organizational rules and norms can constrain the ability of 911 call-takers to limit the public’s heavy reliance on the system. Taken together, the chapters find that call-takers exercise discretion when performing these critical functions and their actions impact police responses. This dissertation puts forth recommendations aimed at encouraging police agencies to reconceptualize the call-taking function in an effort to enable call-takers to more intelligently deploy discretion. Recommendations include developing protocols and criteria that empower call-takers to prevent inappropriate requests from receiving police services, training call-takers to assess risk in more sophisticated ways, distributing call-taker best practices to peers, and using technology to assist call-takers in preserving caller uncertainty. The author hopes that these findings and recommendations will help improve police encounters with the public and spur readers to strongly consider 911’s role in policing in the future.PHDPublic Policy & SociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163046/1/jgillool_1.pd

The Allometry of Host-Pathogen Interactions

Understanding the mechanisms that control rates of disease progression in humans and other species is an important area of research relevant to epidemiology and to translating studies in small laboratory animals to humans. Body size and metabolic rate influence a great number of biological rates and times. We hypothesize that body size and metabolic rate affect rates of pathogenesis, specifically the times between infection and first symptoms or death.We conducted a literature search to find estimates of the time from infection to first symptoms (t(S)) and to death (t(D)) for five pathogens infecting a variety of bird and mammal hosts. A broad sampling of diseases (1 bacterial, 1 prion, 3 viruses) indicates that pathogenesis is controlled by the scaling of host metabolism. We find that the time for symptoms to appear is a constant fraction of time to death in all but one disease. Our findings also predict that many population-level attributes of disease dynamics are likely to be expressed as dimensionless quantities that are independent of host body size.Our results show that much variability in host pathogenesis can be described by simple power functions consistent with the scaling of host metabolic rate. Assessing how disease progression is controlled by geometric relationships will be important for future research. To our knowledge this is the first study to report the allometric scaling of host/pathogen interactions

How 911 callers and call‐takers impact police encounters with the public: The case of the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156456/2/capp12508_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156456/1/capp12508.pd

Thermal Variability Increases the Impact of Autumnal Warming and Drives Metabolic Depression in an Overwintering Butterfly

Increases in thermal variability elevate metabolic rate due to Jensen's inequality, and increased metabolic rate decreases the fitness of dormant ectotherms by increasing consumption of stored energy reserves. Theory predicts that ectotherms should respond to increased thermal variability by lowering the thermal sensitivity of metabolism, which will reduce the impact of the warm portion of thermal variability. We examined the thermal sensitivity of metabolic rate of overwintering Erynnis propertius (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) larvae from a stable or variable environment reared in the laboratory in a reciprocal common garden design, and used these data to model energy use during the winters of 1973–2010 using meteorological data to predict the energetic outcomes of metabolic compensation and phenological shifts. Larvae that experienced variable temperatures had decreased thermal sensitivity of metabolic rate, and were larger than those reared at stable temperatures, which could partially compensate for the increased energetic demands. Even with depressed thermal sensitivity, the variable environment was more energy-demanding than the stable, with the majority of this demand occurring in autumn. Autumn phenology changes thus had disproportionate influence on energy consumption in variable environments, and variable-reared larvae were most susceptible to overwinter energy drain. Therefore the energetic impacts of the timing of entry into winter dormancy will strongly influence ectotherm fitness in northern temperate environments. We conclude that thermal variability drives the expression of metabolic suppression in this species; that phenological shifts will have a greater impact on ectotherms in variable thermal environments; and that E. propertius will be more sensitive to shifts in phenology in autumn than in spring. This suggests that increases in overwinter thermal variability and/or extended, warm autumns, will negatively impact all non-feeding dormant ectotherms which lack the ability to suppress their overwinter metabolic thermal sensitivity

First Report of siRNA Uptake (for RNA Interference) During Ex Vivo Hypothermic and Normothermic Liver Machine Perfusion

RNA interference is a naturally occurring specific method to silence genes with wide potential for treating human disease. Engineered RNA oligonucleotides targeting proprotein convertase subtilisin-kexin type 9 were recently shown to reliably lower LDL cholesterol, with a single injectable dose lasting 6 to 12 months.1 Applying short interfering RNA (siRNA) therapy to livers via ex vivo machine perfusion before transplantation may open the door to using organs from extended criteria donors that would otherwise be discarded. Treating isolated livers would also reduce costs compared with systemic therapy. We show for the first time that siRNA against the Fas receptor added directly to perfusion solution is uptaken into rat livers during hypothermic (4°C) and normothermic (37°C) perfusion. The Fas receptor expressed in liver signals hepatocytes to apoptose after binding its respective ligand. In mice, reduced FAS expression via siRNA confers protection against chemically induced acute liver failure.2 We aim to silence FAS during the ischemic period before transplantation and thus reduce or even reverse graft damage. Transfection into hepatocytes is achieved by coating siRNA with lipid nanoparticles, which facilitate endocytosis across cell membranes and release siRNA into the cytoplasm.3 SiRNA-lipid complexes were delivered in perfusion solution via portal vein cannulation, and distribution was observed with fluorescent confocal microscopy (Figure 1). Full methods are described in Supplemental Materials and Methods (SDC,http://links.lww.com/TP/B651). Further studies will quantify FAS knockdown and the effect of FAS in a rat transplant model. SiRNA therapy during organ machine perfusion is an exciting frontier with transformational potential to improve clinical transplant outcomes

On theory in ecology

We argue for expanding the role of theory in ecology to accelerate scientific progress, enhance the ability to address environmental challenges, foster the development of synthesis and unification, and improve the design of experiments and large-scale environmental-monitoring programs. To achieve these goals, it is essential to foster the development of what we call efficient theories, which have several key attributes. Efficient theories are grounded in first principles, are usually expressed in the language of mathematics, make few assumptions and generate a large number of predictions per free parameter, are approximate, and entail predictions that provide well-understood standards for comparison with empirical data. We contend that the development and successive refinement of efficient theories provide a solid foundation for advancing environmental science in the era of big data.10 page(s