Another one for the list
On a busy shift you sometimes hate the little computer messages which flash up on your screen to say you have another job on the list. It could be a case where someone’s life is actually and really in danger or it could be someone who can’t be arsed to block someone from Facebook and wants the police to sort it out for them, and everything in between.
If it’s an emergency, you have to pick the job up on the computer as soon as you can because, though we don’t collect stats any more, yeah right, Mrs May, we are measure don how long it takes to pick up the phone and if it’s a grade one, or emergency job, we have 3 minutes between the time the call is answered and the time a police unit is despatched. And that includes taking the relevant information from the caller, creating a log, filling in all the fields, sending it over to a controller, a controller picking it up and reading it, a controller risk assessing it to decide who, how many and if to send someone straight away while doing background checks on any names mentioned or previous incidents at the location which might tell us whether the last time polcie attended they were attacked with a knife, or something, then finding a free unit to attend. Three minutes.
When the call-taker files the job before sending it over, they should check to see whether we already know about it. On a lot of incidents many people report the same thing within a few minutes, those calls call go to different controllers who all create a job, the first one created goes to the controller, all the others should be matched to it so you don’t have half a dozen open logs for the same incident.
Sometimes the log creator doesn’t do this, or sometimes they do but either don’t realise that the other job of the same nature, at the same time and in the same area is the same job. Confusion can occur when people don’t know exactly where they are, or get the street name wrong.  So we can get several logs, all grade one calls reporting the same thing and while we are picking up each log, we are still trying to deal with the first log, it can be bloody infuriating, especially when it’s blatently bloody obviously the same job but people haven’t checked or put two and two together.
Hibbo says:
First!
October 9th, 2011 at 05:46
ExRAD says:
Doesn’t your C&C offer an automatic match on Immediate Response incidents created on the same beat within a couple of minutes?
Mind you that still depends on the call taker viewing the offered match and then (shudder) taking the rersponsibility to match them.
October 9th, 2011 at 06:44
200 says:
ExRAD,
yes we do but as you say, it relies on someone matching them together or realising that reports of 3 upturned blue cars at exactly the same time on exactly the same motorway but a couple of miles apart must actually be the same accident
October 9th, 2011 at 14:40
Buffy says:
Yesterday we had the same, 3 jobs about the same loose horse.
But they appeared in no more than about 15 seconds, so even if call takers had looked they would not have seen the other jobs as they simply were not there at the time they pressed ‘ok’.
But it is very annoying when it happens 2 minutes later and you are on scene at the first job !
October 11th, 2011 at 14:34
David Sanderson says:
There should be a seperate force set up just to deal with people who have ‘disputes’ on facebook or text arguments, I am quite a patient person but people who spend their lives on facebook generally aren’t very interesting, although I suppose coppers get to meet all kinds of people.
October 24th, 2011 at 07:03