Dispatcher takes calm command of the frenzy on city's streets

Boston Police 911 dispatcher Brenda Ortiz knew immediately that the officer standing near the corner of Warren and Townsend streets in Roxbury was worried, from the inflection in his voice.

"Four to five shots fired," the Boston School Police officer yelled into his crackling radio.

The officer was huffing as he screamed out his call sign and jumped into his car to follow a suspect in the shooting of a young former high school football star, who was to become the city's 22d homicide victim this year.

He shouted a suspect description at Ortiz, telling her the man had jumped into a white car, perhaps a Toyota, with another man.

"Get me some units up here," the officer said on a tape of the incident played yesterday for the Globe.

Tuesday was a violent night in the city. B6

With her doe-eyes and smile, silk blouse, and fashionable jeans, Ortiz, 29, does not look like someone who routinely orders around dozens of the city's most hardened gang and drug investigators.

But that's exactly what she does.

When Boston's streets erupted Tuesday shortly after 5 p.m. with two fatal shootings within a half hour, Ortiz's deep, no-nonsense voice cut through the chaotic chatter of dozens of officers and blaring sirens, commanding officers to quiet down so she could hear the pursuit, tell the lone patrolman chasing the armed gunman that help was on the way, and broadcast a description of the car.

"You guys just head in there," she snipped, talking over the officers. "Clear the air traffic. Where do we have that white vehicle pulled over?"

During her 4 p.m. to midnight shift Tuesday, Ortiz also handled a call for a lockdown at the city's busiest hospital after a fight there led to a false report of shots fired and another for the arrest of several juveniles, one of whom pointed a gun at officers.

The hot dog that Ortiz cooked at home and brought for dinner went cold under her desk before she had a chance to think about eating.

Ortiz doesn't mind the action. A "Law & Order" junkie and an aspiring homicide detective, she is set to take the civil service exam Saturday so she can become a sworn officer and move from the 911 center to the streets.

The Jamaica Plain native who studied criminal justice at the University of Massachusetts at Boston is a world-class multi tasker; she has to be.

Even as she was keeping track of the ambulance responding to the fatal shooting in Dorchester in which a 21-year-old man was killed and a 27-year-old woman was struck in the leg by stray gunfire, Ortiz talked to an officer who yelled into his radio that he had stumbled into the Roxbury homicide scene.

Ortiz stayed with him while getting other units in the right place and managing the investigative response to that shooting.

"You know if he's on Latin Academy, Townsend, he's either going to run through Warren or run through Humboldt," she said of the suspect, talking rapidly as she recreated the frenzied scene. "So, you want guys to come up Warren, come up Humboldt, set up a perimeter, lock him in."

Ortiz then told dozens of officers who were setting up the perimeter that two gang unit officers had stopped the suspects on Quincy Street.

Meanwhile, officers on Warren Street were asking where the ambulance was.

"They're coming, sir," she replied. "They're pushing it."

Ortiz also arranged for a department- wide alert, gave clerks basic information so homicide and special units could respond, briefed commanders, contacted the MBTA to reroute buses, and set up street closings.

Ortiz's boss -- Deputy Super intendent Kenneth Fong, who oversees the department's 911 operation -- said the role of the dispatcher is critical.

"The dispatcher is the lifeline to the cops out there," he said. "They could have a whole bunch of guys stopped in an alley there by themselves. It's 3 o'clock in the morning. The dispatcher's all they have."

Ortiz's best friend is an officer in the city's busy Mattapan area who taught her to stay calm for the sake of the officers. So Ortiz, as she handles the department's busiest channel on the busiest shift, listens carefully to the voices of the officers she works with day in and day out.

"Their tone of voice is different when they're in distress or when they need help," she said in an inter view yesterday.

"If I sound afraid, I'm going to make them afraid. . . . It's a relief for them that they have someone that knows where they are, what they're going through, and that I'm going to get them help."

Ortiz realized she was good at her job one day several months ago when she juggled an officer firing his weapon, an infant struck by gunfire, and a car chase in three hours.

"That was the day I said, 'Oh, my God, I'm a good dispatcher,' " she recalled. "Because I was sweating, the sweat was just coming out of my pores, and it was a good three hours before someone could take my channel and I could get up. My knees were knocking; they were just trembling."

Tuesday was a similar kind of day, but Ortiz said that as soon as the call on the Roxbury shooting came in she was ready to go.

"I knew exactly where he was when he said I got shots fired at Latin Academy," she said. "I can picture it totally. . . . This is your city, you're supposed to know."

Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.