Hello, 9-1-1.
Police.
Can you tell me exactly what's happened?
A guys showed up with a knife, walked in and said he killed my daughter.
Stay with me on the line, okay?
I need to be picked up by the police I stabbed my girlfriend to death.
I killed her.
Any call can affect you.
[Ian Hanomansing] It's 7 p.m.
I'm heading out with constables Stacey O'Connor and Oxana Gulaya.
[Stacey] We don't always get domestics just at houses.
We get domestics that come in while they're at the grocery store.
[Ian] A domestic at a grocery store?
Oh yeah.
Both are veteran officers but this happens to be their first night working together.
[Oxana] Within a minute, family can be destroyed.
[Ian] Quickly a quiet shift can turn urgent.
A priority-one call.
A suicidal male.
[Oxana] Did you call us?
[Ian] Nobody knows where he's gone.
His partner is distraught so police searched the neighborhood.
And though they don't know it yet
it is a domestic dispute.
When you call 911 in Calgary, it comes here.
There's no telling what the next call will bring.
Kate Van Kampen has been a dispatcher at Calgary 9-1-1 for ten years.
And in that time calls for domestic disputes have doubled to nearly 20,000.
More than 50 a day.
Most often it's men assaulting women.
But partners are not the only victims.
For me my very first really difficult call
was one that was very difficult to process.
It did involve a child.
It was late in her shift, around 4:00 a.m.
when suddenly everything changed.
[Kate] In a situation of domestic violence and especially if it's extreme violence
I become very hyper focused.
It's very tunnel vision.
What do I have to do to get the help and to save lives.
[Ian] Imagine hearing an assault in progress
trying to buy time until the police arrive.
I'm going through the critical questions but I'm also trying to de-escalate the situation
and I'm using every tactic I know.
I'm asking about violence about weapons.
How many people are in the house.
Are there mental health concerns we should know about?
I'm also running all of the background checks for my attending units to ensure their safety.
And as suddenly as it began the call was over.
I didn't have to do the: could I have done anything better?
Could I have changed anything?
I certainly needed some quiet time to reflect on things.
And I think about the child involved often still
and it's been many years and I think of that child all the time.
[Ian] That child survived.
Dave Jones is coming up to his ninth year with the Calgary Police Service.
He's worked as a patrol officer and in the domestic conflict unit.
The unit that follows up on initial calls.
People see me in a uniform, they see this.
They don't see the human underneath it.
A lot of people don't know that I have a family at home.
That I have a greater appreciation now being a dad
that kids are a trigger for me.
Kids are a hotbed.
[Ian] What is that like in terms of seeing domestic violence cases with kids?
It's hard to go to those calls when you have a nine-year-old calling and screaming
in absolutely hysterics because mom or dad's new boyfriend/girlfriend
is doing something to hurt them
or they're a witness to something.
It makes my heart hurt.
[Ian] So how do you describe what's on this wall?
Gord Robertson recently retired from the Calgary Police Service.
In 27 years he has seen a lot.
It's the memories.
I had a really unique opportunity to bodyguard Dolly Parton.
Young in my career.
That pictures taken after about a 45 minute high-speed chase with a really prolific car thief.
This one here was just given to me when I left the domestic conflict unit.
Murders, undercover drug operations.
I asked him about what stays with him.
And again it's a case with a child.
Every policeman I think over their career
probably has the cases that haunt them.
And for me one of those is a domestic violence case
that ended in the estranged father killing the young child and then himself.
And that kind of sticks with you.
It stands out.
It sticks you and there's different parts of that.
So it was me who went and told the mother what had occurred.
I gave her the death notification.
She requested that I attend the funeral because I'd been part of the family in her words.
And it's an experience and an image that haunts you.
[Ian] Have you taken advantage of the counseling or mental health services
but particularly with domestic violence cases?
[Dave] Over the years, the calls that do bug me if I let them bottle up for a little while
I have taken advantage of our psychological services.
And just to talk with somebody who is not a cop
who understands the profession but they're not a police officer.
What do you think an older retired officer might be thinking
if he or she heard you saying that?
People work in different ways.
I found something that works for me
ensuring that someone else's bad days isn't my bad day.
[Ian] You're a New Age officer.
When you started seeing that change happening at the Calgary Police Service...
EAP programs, counseling, you can reach out.
Mental health is part of regular health.
Did you envy that?
Did you kind of look at that and go, jeez, I wish there was like that 25 years ago.
Definitely in some regards.
But the obstacle that has to be overcome in relation to that is
the peer pressure and the stigma.
Depending on where you're working
there's a certain expectation amongst your peers that you are that big tough cop .
It's getting better.
It still exists.
[Ian] Back on the street
Gulaya and O'Connor are searching for a man who said he has nothing to live for.
We've been careful not to identify anyone on this call.
He's left his home, his family is frantic
and the officers follow a hunch that he'll seek shelter somewhere warm close by.
They go inside to help.
They're in the coffee shop for about 20 minutes and he explains what's happened in his life
and his relationship that's made him so distraught.
The officers come back to the car and for several minutes they're quiet.
[Ian] What can you tell us about what happened?
[Oxana] What happened?
Well, we have two people.
A couple, they've been married for some time.
However, someone decided to leave the relationship.
[Ian] This is a different kind of domestic.
The threat of violence was to himself but you get a sense a little sense of
how all of this can weigh you down.
How does that leave you feeling?
Well, I guess this is the nature of our job.
We still have some feelings
because we're all human beings.
We understand people have emotions.
People have children, people love each other.
Now what can we do to help them?
We do appreciate their candor and the access the Calgary Police Service and 911 centre gave us.