1st Edition

Emergency Dispatch and Human Rights Before the Sirens

By Peter Marina, Pedro Marina Copyright 2027
138 Pages
by Routledge

138 Pages
by Routledge

Through real calls, field narratives, and thinkers from Du Bois and Weber to Simmel and Foucault, this book reframes the dispatcher’s role from a clerical function to a moral one. Dispatchers make split-second decisions that impact the fate of everyone a call involves, yet they remain the most consequential and least examined actors in policing. Sociologist Peter J. Marina draws on urban... Read more

1. Human Rights Between Possession and Experience in Emergency Dispatch 2. Dispatcher Power, Dual-Subject Asymmetry, and Human Rights Practice 3. The Call Behind the Call: Sociological Listening and Context Recognition 4. Three People, One Call: Tri-Subject Asymmetry and Rights-Based Decision Making 5. Seven Calls: Case Scenarios on Bias, Language, Crisis, and Agency in Dispatch 6. The Long Game: Institutional Change and the Future of Dispatch Centers

Biography

Peter Marina is a New Orleans native, sociologist, and criminologist, and an Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology. Trained at the New School for Social Research, Marina’s scholarship focuses on urban ethnography, transgression, and social inequalities, with particular attention to human rights, policing, and communities living on society’s margins. He is the author of Human Rights PolicingDown and Out in New Orleans, and several other books and articles. Marina’s thinking examines power, resistance, and social control across diverse social worlds, from Pentecostal tongue-speaking churches and Caribbean ritual life to street performers and urban occultists.

Pedro Marina is a retired lieutenant with the New Orleans Police Department who served for more than thirty years in patrol, narcotics, robbery investigations, vice operations, and SWAT. A sociology graduate of the University of New Orleans, he held supervisory and command positions throughout New Orleans, including in the French Quarter, and received numerous commendations for exemplary service during his career. Lieutenant Marina lives in Lacombe, Louisiana, with his dog, Meggie.