Wednesday 8 December 2010

Caller in Distress

We've got this thing where we "upgrade" calls (that is, try to send help faster) dependent on the caller's level of distress. My fellow despatchers and I have discussed this policy at length and frankly, it's bollocks.

Thing is, everyone reacts to stress in different ways. For example, you might phone the police because your house was burgled while you were out at work. The offender clearly left hours ago so you're in no danger, but you're one of those people who reacts badly to someone being in your castle, so the calltaker raises the priority.

This will make absolutely no difference at all to the despatcher. If we've got an officer to send, we'll send him. However, if we've got another job arrive at the same moment from a caller who is completely calm but in actual physical danger, we're going to despatch an officer to that job first.

We risk assess every job and despatch to those with danger to life, danger to property, and then all the rest - in that order. Bollocks to how distressed the caller is.

Unusually, I'm going to share a piece of personal information with the readership here that - until now - only one other person knows about.

A while back, I had to call an ambulance for my then-partner, the person with whom I was at the time in love with and intended to spend my life with. I believe the ambulance call was necessary, but it wasn't life-threatening in any way - my partner needed medical help sometime within the next few hours, on a Saturday evening, through illness not alcohol, and 999 was the only way to get it.

I'd served my time in the call centre by then, and had been in Despatch for a while too, so I thought I knew the score. I'd been strong in front of my partner, and went upstairs to call the ambulance from the bedroom extension so as not to distress her any more.

And I cried like a little girl all the time I was talking to the ambulance call-taker.

She was completely professional and kept asking her scripted questions, clearly getting my answers through the blubs. I remember apologising for the state I was in, and being calmed by her calmness. By the time I went back downstairs the tears had gone and I was strong for my partner again. The ambulance arrived in due course and all ended well.

I'd like to thank the ambulance service for dealing with my call effectively, while weighing up its merits against other calls. Even when I was crying uncontrollably down the phone I knew that if the same situation had occurred during the week I'd have been on the phone to our GP - but I was distressed. If I believed my call was given higher priority because of that, I'd be deeply embarrassed.

My job is to look at all the incoming calls and treat them with the urgency I believe they deserve, based on the facts presented to me.

I wish my bosses would trust me to get on and do just that.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Gently does it

My last shift was an absolute arse, thanks to the weather which has been occurring over most of the country.

I came out proper cross (and made it home safely, thanks for asking) but not for the usual reasons. There was a lot of air traffic and my ankle actually still aches from pressing the transmit pedal, but it was unavoidable. I don't mind heavy air traffic when it's justified.

No, I was angry because this is the third year in a row that we've had enough snowfall to affect peoples' everyday lives and the county council and the force that I work for don't seem to have reacted in any way. The council are still on their policy of gritting A roads and nothing else. No pavements, no minor roads, no snowploughs - just grit lorries on the A roads.

On the area I worked, we managed to field one Land Rover, a dozen hours after it started snowing. All the other response officers were merrily getting stuck in the usual poxy Astras.

Unusually, a word of thanks goes out to the people of Bravo Sierra's force area. Yes, a lot of you called in because there were kids throwing snowballs and you deserve a special Chocolate Truncheon reward. But all the people out in their cars were generally sensible: we had hundreds of Section 170 calls, but no-one was daft enough to drive fast enough on snow and ice to injure themselves.

This will sound patronising, but it's not meant to: people of Bravoshire, congratulate yourselves on knowing your limits and driving slowly in dangerous conditions. Bumpers can be replaced: people can't.

A slightly more sarcastic "well-done" goes out to the usual characters: most of you managed not to have any domestics while we were busy getting stranded in the snow, so thanks for that.

Friday 19 November 2010

Abuse of Power

Never, ever annoy your despatcher - even if she is a civilian and therefore a lower form of life - because she will find an excellent reason to send you to the job that involves urine, faeces or vomit. Oh yes.

Tuesday 16 November 2010

More Airwave nonsense

I expect a load of old cobblers from the Daily Hate Mail, but unfortunately this story was also repeated elsewhere, including the BBC TV news. The article shows a quite embarrassing lack of understanding of what Airwave is and how it works.

Just for the record, I don't work for Airwave, I've got nothing to do with them apart from using their product every day and being reasonably well-trained on how it works.

To my mind, the biggest problem with Airwave is that police forces use it incredibly badly. The first thing to note is that it is not a radio system. It's a mobile phone network which can be forced to behave much like the old VHF/UHF radios, so – being people who generally don't like change – that's what police forces did when it came in.

The possibility of sending data through Airwave directly to the Control Room computer system was built into it from day one, but no-one ever used it until recently. We have an efficient and secure system for passing data, but because police forces don't like change, we still work on the 1960s system of saying everything over an open channel which every officer can hear. Like I said, Airwave wasn't designed to be used like this so forcing it to behave in a way that it doesn't really like means big bills.

I don't see why this is such a difficult concept for the Mail to grasp – after all, I have free data on my mobile phone contract, but I have to pay to make calls after I've used a certain number of minutes.

I also genuinely don't understand why the Dorset Police Federation is so resistant to using the data features. Common functions can be accessed with a couple of button presses, and updating incident logs can be done as easily as sending a text message. Many response officers are in their 20s and grew up texting so it really shouldn't be a foreign concept to them.

According to the Mail article, Former Scotland Yard Flying Squad commander John O’Connor said: ‘It is going to impact on their safety and operational efficiency. How can they be sure their text is going to be picked up so colleagues know their location? If you are talking to a colleague, they know exactly where you are and what you’re doing. This is another layer of red tape which is being imposed in order to save an unquantifiable amount of money. Chief constables should stand up and say they are not going to accept it.’

What a load of absolute balls. Mr O'Connor clearly hasn't been in a Control Room for some years. My force is advising a common-sense approach to using data messaging: the text system should be for non-urgent updates and clearances, but if you're heading into danger or running a major incident you should still use the air. There are situations where everyone needs to know what's going on, and we should keep the open channel for that – but it should not be full of chatter all the time.

As well as the text messaging system, officers can update their status at the press of a button. For example, they need to tell us if they're going non-deployable for whatever reason (meal break, vehicle maintenance, taking a statement, prisoner transport or what-have-you). This can be done by pressing one button on their Airwave set, which costs the force nothing. Or, they can call up on the air, make everyone's radios beep and chatter, an operator updates their status on the Control Room computer, and Airwave's chief accountant rubs his little hands in glee.  Which do you think is more efficient?

Again, we've got a common-sense approach to this. If you're the first unit to arrive at a big pub fight, you call up on the air and let everyone know you're there and potentially in danger. If you're going to the scene of a burglary, where the offenders have left and there's no risk, just press your “arrived” button.

There's not just the cost to consider, there's also the limited capacity of the human being back in the Control Room. It's hard enough to keep up with a busy Friday night as it is, without the air being full of non urgent updates. If you call up on the air with a minor update at 2am on a Saturday morning the operator might well ignore it in favour of the hundred other things he's trying to do. These days, I have the option of telling that officer to use data messaging instead.

Updating incident logs is not “another layer of red tape” - it is absolutely necessary. Dorset Police (and my force) are simply trying to find the cheapest and most efficient way of doing it.

As far as I'm aware, Mr O'Connor is right in saying that it would save an “unquantifiable” amount of money as Airwave billing is extremely complex. Unquantifiable exactly, but we can make an educated guess. For my force, we'd be talking tens of thousands – maybe £100,000 – per year. That is not to be sniffed at. If we can achieve that sort of saving just by using our existing equipment more effectively, then we absolutely should. We are spending your tax money and we have a duty not to waste it just because we don't want to learn a new way of doing things.

If Airwave are making massive profits, well, I'm glad someone is. Although I'm rather embarrassed that it's happening because we're incapable of training our officers to use a product that we've had for 10 years.

Thursday 21 October 2010

Knowing one's location

I'm working Quietsville when a beat bobby calls up, lots of noise going on in the background.

"Bravo Sierra Control, I've got two in custody for shoplifting, Sainsburys, Quietsville town centre - can I have a van on the hurry-up please?"

The van unit is free and immediately heads towards.  When he gets there, he calls up again.

"Control, can you confirm that officer's location?  We're at Quietsville Sainsburys and there's nothing going on."

The beat officer replies, slightly embarrassed, still with offenders swearing in the background.

"I'm actually in Othertown...  I normally work Quietsville but I'm here on attachment.  I'll switch to their channel."

Whoops.

Saturday 9 October 2010

Facebook Suicides

I've had more than one of these, now, almost identical in circumstances, so I reckon I can safely say there's a lot of it about.  If it's happened on my watch more than once I bet it's happened in other Forces too.

It goes like this:  someone in a foreign country (OK, honestly, an American male) has befriended someone from this country (OK, honestly, a female) over the internet.  They might have been talking for months, shared their life history and all their problems, and consider themselves friends, but never met.


The English, female party then intimates or threatens suicide.  The American 'net friend acts like a concerned and responsible friend, exercises his internet detective skills and does his best to alert the local police force.

Mostly, we can't find any evidence to suggest that the women even exist.  That is, it's a false name and address, there's no record of them anywhere, and if the address even exists the people who live there are completely baffled by our turning up on their doorstep with blue lights on.

There was one very satisfying occasion where we found the person responsible and although I won't go into detail here I think that person ended the day very, very embarrassed.

I've mentioned before that I don't find suicide funny.  My blood goes cold when these jobs come in, I do my level best to double-check the informant's internet detective work, and then dive into police systems to see what I can find.  No-one is going to die of laziness on my watch.

But when we do, inevitably, find out that it was some sick fuck's idea of a joke, I shudder.  Pretending to someone who cares for you that you've killed yourself, even if he's never met you?  That's inhuman.

Friday 10 September 2010

Walk On By

My force serves quite a nice area, generally, and robberies are rare (although they do happen).  For those without the in-depth law knowledge that I have, as a highly trained civilian police despatcher, a robbery is a theft from the person with an added element of violence or the threat of violence.  Something like that, anyway.

Anyway, something that I have never, ever, ever seen or heard of is the MO of someone crashing their car and hiding in it, or pretending to be drunk/ill, falling over, and then leaping into action when someone stops to help.

I could probably dig into our control room software and find several hundred jobs that read like this:

"There's a car in the ditch on the B1234 Rural Road, I was just driving past and I didn't get the registration, and I didn't stop to offer assistance FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.  I just thought I should call it in in case there's been an accident."

"There's a man asleep or passed out on the pavement on Urban Avenue, just outside Shitsville Town Centre.  I was just driving past so I've got no description and I didn't stop to offer assistance FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.  I just thought I should call it in in case he's dead."

For heavens' sake, people!  I'm paid to protect the public so the last thing I want to do is put you at risk, but why can't you make the tiniest attempt to look out for each other?

If you're in a car, drive as close as you can, have your mobile phone in your hand so you can call 999 straight away if necessary, open the window and shout out.  Maybe, even, phone your local Force's non-urgent number and ask the call-taker to keep you on the line while you talk to the bloke. 

Just, please, show a little compassion.  If you'd crashed your car, or had a stroke and fallen down in the street, you'd want someone to stop and help.  Right?

Thursday 19 August 2010

Knowing the ground

As I've mentioned before, we're a small force with a small central control room.  We operators can therefore get moved around to different areas.

I've been working on a part of the force area that I don't know very well lately, and although I've slowly got to know it (and of course we have maps), there's just no substitute for knowing the ground.

Today I was back on my favourite patch, the area that I actually know, live in, and drive about in.  I know the landmarks, I know the local names for things, I know the wealthy areas and the dodgy areas.  More than once, I directed officers to certain locations from my own knowledge, not the map.

It was like slipping into fifth gear.  With a decent map and software that I know, I could, theoretically work anywhere in the country - but it's so much easier with local knowledge.

Sunday 1 August 2010

Suicide and Cynicism

A surprising amount of police work is what you might call social work with a stab vest on.

Well, I say surprising...  it surprised me, when I was new, but any police officers or staff reading this will just be thinking, "and?"

Social Services are even more strapped for cash and resources than we are, and they don't operate 24 hours, so we tend to find ourselves very familiar with the vulnerable people, mad people, and suicide risks on our patch.

Small digression: I visited our local Ambulance control room a while back and spent an entertaining half-hour playing the name game - we had all the same regular callers and swapped some good stories about the real characters.

Anyway: we (call-takers especially, despatchers and officers slightly less so) hear threats of suicide so often that they start to wash over us.

There's the frequent callers, who generally don't get beyond a nice chat with someone in the call centre.  All the calltakers know them, and they know the drill.  There's the crooks, who think it will get them out of a spell in custody.  There's the people actually standing on a motorway bridge or tall building, who are generally quite happy to come quietly once an officer arrives.  I rather suspect this last category are people who know they need help but haven't managed to get it through the NHS, so they get themselves sectioned - I actually feel an enormous sympathy for them, being forced into that situation to get the help they need.

And then, just occasionally, there's the one who succeeds.

They're never called in by the victim himself - it's always a manager, concerned because he hasn't made it to work, or a neighbour worried by the lack of movement and buildup of post.  He - and it's always been he, in my experience - has never indicated anything of the like before.  He's kept it all to himself, never shared his dark feelings with anyone.  Often, he's completely unknown to the police or social services.  He's just very efficiently done away with himself.

We get very blaise about suicide threats - especially when (as so often!) they come from hardened crooks or regular nuisance callers.  I hear my colleagues say, "let him do it then" or "why should we stop him if that's what he wants?"

I understand where that frustration comes from.  I know why they say it.  But I never say things like that.

And when they do succeed...

When I have to deploy an officer to a bloated, flyblown corpse, everybody's defences go up, and the tasteless jokes start flying... 

Who mourns them?  Who grieves for these sad, lonely people, with no friends and no family?  Who lifts a glass and sheds a tear?

I do.

Tuesday 20 July 2010

Who Owns Stuff

Give me two seconds with the Police National Computer and I can tell you who owns most vehicles on the road, barring exceptions where the record has been lost (sometimes accidentally, usually deliberately).  Those cars are invariably being driven very quickly away from the scene of a ram raid.

All my cars have been cheap old bangers, as I'd rather spend my money on fun stuff than car loans, so I don't tend to think of cars as being very valuable items and yet tracking their ownership is easy.

The real headache is tracking down stuff I actually consider valuable.  This week I've spent what feels like an inordinate amount of time trying to find out who is responsible for: a private road, a piece of rural land, a large derelict building, a dog and two horses.  That's plus the small bits of property - bicycles, those electric thingies that old people get around on, lost bags...

I don't own a lot of stuff, but my valuable electrical items are marked, and my dog is microchipped.

Bring on the day that everything - and I do mean everything - wears a numberplate.

Wednesday 14 July 2010

National press talks rubbish. Again.

My attention was drawn to this story by a friend in London who saw it on the local TV news there.

It is, as I have come to expect from the press in general, a load of absolute bollocks.

I can't comment on exactly how the LAS are using Airwave, but I will claim an expert knowledge of the system itself.

Airwave doesn't work in the rain?  Absolute stuff and nonsense.  There is anecdote and rumour to suggest all sorts of things - it doesn't work in the rain, sets close to each other cancel each other out, it works best if you lie down...  I've heard the lot from our officers and I'm sure Ambulance crews have come up with equal amounts of toss to scare each other with.  I'm surprised that the HSE fell for it though.

The handheld terminals are very sturdy and I'd be extremely surprised to hear of a panic button not working.  I've known sets to still work after a pretty comprehensive beating, and even a dip in a swimming pool.  Anecdotally, the transmit button seems to wear out first - guess what, it's the button that gets used the most.  Even if a panic button were to fail, the user should realise that immediately from the way his set reacts and start yelling for help with his normal transmit button - that should get a pretty swift response from a professional control room!

As always, the response you get will depend on the training level of control room staff and other officers.  I remember the first time I got an emergency activation, in training.  All the awoogas and flashing lights went off and I didn't have a clue what to do, so my tutor immediately took over and got that officer the help he needed.

Apparently on the TV news report there was criticism of the old LAS pre-Airwave radio system because it didn't work in the tunnels during the 07/07 incident.  Well, duh...  An advantage of Airwave is that it can be made to work in tunnels through a system of repeaters along a cable, given a fairly hefty investment.  If the will and the cash are there, it can be done.  If not, we're reduced to yelling - no kind of radio signal will ever be made to penetrate solid rock.

Airwave is not perfect.  It is also not new.  It's tried and tested, and if it's used properly it's a damn sight more effective than the old-fashioned radios.  It's not cheap to implement, and staff using it need to be properly trained.  It all costs money.

I use the thing for 36 hours every week and I'm highly trained on it.  I know what its strengths and weak points are, and how to work around them should it become necessary.

Suggesting that there is a fundamental problem with the system itself is irresponsible and wrong.  Shame on you, BBC.

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In addition, Reynolds has just posted something about this on his most excellent blog.

Tuesday 13 July 2010

No more Pledge!

Hurrah!  No more Policing Pledge - we now exist only to fight crime.

Or do we?

Does this mean that we stop looking for teenagers who've gone "missing" because their parents can't be bothered to discipline them and look after them properly?  Picking up drunks and mad people from the street?  Dealing with verbal-only domestics?  How about all the welfare checks on confused little old ladies that we do?

Yet another example of a politician spouting out a nice soundbite without actually having any understanding of the situation.  Why do I even sound surprised?

Tuesday 29 June 2010

Why are you a copper?

It's not a question that has the same significance, if you were to ask it of a  librarian, an accountant, a secretary, or a salesperson.  It's a question with special significance, with consequences outside of the normal realm of the workplace.

Was it to drive fast cars?
Fire a taser?
Ponce about in a uniform and feel self-important?

I've known officers who seemed to aim for each of those.  But ask one in a recorded interview, and "helping people" will always crop up somewhere.

I'm not blowing my own trumpet here - I joined because it looked like an interesting job with better conditions on a higher salary  than I had before.

And yet...  that "helping people" part of the job description hastened my hand when filling in the application form.  I still tell people that's a large part of the attraction of the job, and it is.  I feel disappointed if I go home at the end of a shift and I don't have a feeling of having helped someone.

I rather feel that that feeling is the closest I ever come to the satisfaction of being a real copper.

And yet... 

I put out the scared little old lady who's barricaded herself inside her house, and no-one offers up.

I put out the rogue trader who's promised to return to his victim at a certain time to collect the rest of his paycheque for doing the square root of fuck all and no-one offers up.

I put out the 12 year old boy, too scared to walk past the bigger boys to get home and hiding in the bushes in the park and no-one offers up.

I put out the stolen Mercedes SLK passing from a neighbouring force into our our area and you all drop your paperwork and leap into your poxy diesel Astras, hoping for an exciting pursuit.

You should be ashamed of yourselves.

I hope to join, one day, and I will never ever forget this.

Sunday 27 June 2010

Central Control Rooms don't work, apparently.

I'm a long-time reader of the Police Inspector's Blog and would normally highly recommend it.

I find myself heartily disagreeing with this post, however, written in response to this Daily Mail article about the failure of Cumbria Police to respond to a call from a young mother who had accidentally locked her baby in her car on a hot day.

The Police Inspector blames a lack of resources and the fact of Central Control Rooms.

Assuming the facts of the Daily Mail story are correct (and I admit that is a pretty big leap of faith) I tend towards the view that this was simply a good, old-fashioned cock-up, with no political point to be made out of it.

Yes, we need more Response police officers - but that point could be made by the many response targets that I miss every single day, it's just that most of them don't make it into the papers.

I have also seen situations where call-takers have blindly quoted the Pledge targets rather than the actual reality and said things like, "help is on its way" when in fact we're not likely to have anyone available for hours.  So yes, that call-taker did something dumb.  A more experienced (or less dumb) call-taker would have realised that there was a real urgency to this job, and phoned the Control Room to hurry things along, or graded it as a One - we don't ignore those.  S/he might then have considered phoning the Fire Brigade or the AA, as Chief Inspector Rutherford suggests.  I've expressed concern before about the level of training and experience in our Contact Centre, but I have no way to know if this is a national problem or just our force.  I also don't know anything about how Cumbria's call-taking works.

Obviously a decision was made at some point that police wouldn't be attending, as Ms Woodburn was told on her second call.  She should have been phoned at that point with an update, so another mistake was made there.

Blaming Central Control Rooms though?  Sorry, Gadget, but that seems to have come out of nowhere.  Maybe there's been a problem with the way it was implemented in your force, but in a small force like mine it works extremely well.  Because we're geographically small, events often cross borders and we often share resources, so all I have to do is shout at the operator on the next desk, "Stolen car heading your way - details on Bravo Sierra Three One's job," "I've got no units left but I've got an assault right on our border - can you spare anyone?"  It smooths the way no end, and because we as operators move around the desks there is no rivalry, as there might be if we were in different control rooms, so we just help each other out when necessary.  This sharing of resources internally, too - we were very short staffed on our last run of nights, and someone went home sick leaving one desk with only one operator.  Because we're all in the same room, I was able to move over onto that desk - it only left two operators per desk, but we can manage with that at 0400 when there's not much going on.

Finally, I can't see this happening in my force.   I don't know if we're a particularly sentimental bunch, but any job where a child is in danger we tend to drop everything and run.  We absolutely would have attended this.

The press like to give the police a kicking, and I suspect Cumbria is about to come in for more than its fair share, so I'm sorry to have added to it.

Thursday 24 June 2010

Targets

In recent years, governments have been keen to give the public sector all sorts of targets to chase - league tables for schools, the Ambulance service's ORCON target and, until recently, detection rates for the police.

While I completely accept the need to measure how well a police force is doing, we don't seem to have ever got it quite right.  The problem with measuring detections is that it's too easy to massage the figures - if an officer is told that he doesn't have enough detections this month, he'll suddenly start volunteering to take all the poxy stupid "death-threats by text message/Facebook" jobs that officers normally prefer to avoid.  The victim knows who the offender is, so it's a detection in the bag.  Does this make our streets safer for the general public?  No - it just makes some idiot who's too stupid to de-friend someone on Facebook, or change their mobile number, feel like they've had a bit of attention.  We should be helping real victims of crime, not pandering to these people.

So, the latest scheme to hit policing is the Single Measure of Public Confidence.  A few forces are piloting this and it looks set to become the national standard: no more targets, no more chasing the figures, we're all about public confidence now.  It's measured by someone from the Customer Service team ringing up a victim and asking if they were happy with the calltaker, the initial response, the investigation ad infinitum.

I see three problems with this.

First of all, it's completely and utterly unscientific.  The public at large don't have a clue what we do (much as I don't have a clue what makes a really effective teacher) and don't really know if we're being effective or not.  It's completely and utterly subjective.  Someone might respond to the survey and say they were completely happy with the whole process just because they fancied the response officer who turned up to take initial details - whether we actually caught their burglar or not.

At the other end of the spectrum, I recall talking to a lady who had reported a group of youths kicking a football about and being noisy on the green opposite her house.  As it happened, it was a quiet shift and we had a unit less than a mile away, so we got there in less than the 15 minute Grade 1 response time.  Unfortunately the youths had chosen that very moment to go home, so it fell to me to phone the lady back and report ASNT.  She was furious - "This has been going on and on for months, and the police do nothing, I pay your wages" and on and on and on.  She would be totally dissatisfied with us - despite the fact that we'd given better-than-mandated service.

Secondly, public opinion is too easily swayed.  The press seem to enjoy giving the police a kicking - a big front-page article in the Daily Hate Mail, and suddenly all the surveys would be negative.

Finally, it ignores all the behind-the-scenes work.  An enormous amount of intelligence work goes into preventative policing, and we get some great results from intelligence gathered by our own officers, and the intel people who look at all the call logs from the public.  The obvious example to use here is cannabis factories - we might find one and bust it on the basis of something suspicious that a PCSO notices when out on his beat, thereby removing a lot of criminal activity and the comings-and-going of some seriously nasty people from what's usually a fairly innocuous suburban street.  You might never know a thing about it, apart from vaguely wondering why you were woken up in the night with a bang as we bashed the door in, but we've just made your street a whole lot safer and more pleasant.

I don't have an answer to this, I don't know what the best way to measure police performance is.  But I can see that it must be measured, and relying on unscientific polls of what the public think is not the way to do it.

Monday 21 June 2010

Being Busy

A busy shift, or a busy hour (we take it in turns to be on the radio, swapping on the hour) can be described in many ways:

it's gone a bit banzai
the shit's hit the fan
it's all gone tits-up

and my personal favourite:

the wheels have all fallen off

These can all be used in different tenses and contexts, of course, like:

"Sorry but there will only be two of you on the desk tonight."
"No problem, we'll be fine unless all the wheels fall off."

I've also settled on a few definitions of busy-ness in a Control Room.

There's the kind where the public are busy calling us, new jobs are piling in all the time, and we have to read the new incoming call logs, understand them and prioritise them in our heads.  This is like an English exam set by a teacher with a cruel sense of humour and a real ability to deal out punishment.  Suddenly seeing four new jobs appear at the  same time, with the little counter next to them telling us how fast we need to work in order to meet targets, delivers a big rush of adrenaline - not the most useful thing, when you need to calmly read four logs, risk-assess them, figure out what units you have available and prioritise accordingly, with the radio babbling in your ear all the while.  The punishment?  That nasty tickling at the back of your neck, all the time there are unread jobs on the queue, that horrible feeling that there's a nasty surprise in there - that the calltaker has accidentally mis-clicked (it doesn't happen often, but it's easily done, especially when you're in a hurry) and sent us a suicide-in-progress as a low-priority "grade three."

*

There's the really satisfying kind of busy, when a really juicy job comes in with loads of useful information on it, and you're off the air and have the time to dig deep into our various computer systems and come up with some leads before a police officer has even seen it.  It has been known for despatchers to lead arrests in this way - digging deep into our intel and recording systems and finding out where offenders are likely to be.  A colleague of mine was credited with getting someone on Attempt Murder not long ago in this way.

*

There's the kind when you're on the air and it just will not shut up.  Radio discipline should be: call, respond, acknowledge, out.  So, for example, if I want a unit to go to a job it goes like this:

  • Bravo Sierra Three One, Bravo Sierra Control
  • Bravo Sierra Three One receiving, go ahead
  • Three One, I've got a grade two intruder alarm for you, 11 Acacia Avenue, Quietsville, received?
  • Three One, that's received, I'm towards.
  • Thank you, Bravo Sierra Control Out

"Out" is the signal that I've finished - there should follow a respectful pause and then another unit may transmit if they so wish.

What actually happens during a busy hour on the air (or a really shit hour, as I tend to call them) is a load of fragmented conversations, like the one above but interspersed with units interrupting each other, desperately trying to butt in with their own updates, and tell-tales scrolling up one side of the screen telling me that people are trying to transmit but are unable to get in.  There's a domino effect: when the air's busy enough to overload the one poor human operator who's running it, it's also too busy for our radio system and there are a lot of police officers out there pressing their transmit buttons and getting a disappointing "busy" beep back.  When they do get through, they're frustrated and annoyed because they've had to wait so the tension goes up another notch.

Hours like that are characterised by lots of fragmented events: lots of jobs going out all at once, lots of officers calling for an ambulance, lots of officers stopping vehicles, then just when you think it can't get any worse, CCTV calls up with a big fight on Shitsville High Street...  and then the calm voice of the Custody Sergeant cuts across it all with a laconic, "Do you have a double-crewed unit available?  Only I need to transfer a prisoner to hospital."  At that point, your brain explodes and kind people lead you away to a nice cup of tea while your colleague takes over.  Actually, that's a complete lie - you swear very loudly, then press the transmit button, say, "Received, will do," and get on with it.

A Really Shit Hour is characterised by the feeling that you've just spent an hour bareback riding on the really big horse in that Western film, just about hanging onto its mane by your fingertips, all the while knowing that incoming jobs are piling up unread and trusting to your colleagues to yell if there's something that you really need to pay attention to.

*

There's the Really Big Incident.  Mostly, we can predict demand - we know that we need more officers and more operators at 2300 on a Friday than 0400 on a Wednesday, for example.  But the really big, bad bastard of a job can turn up at any time.  It sits there behind you while you've got your feet up on the desk reading the paper on a mid-week night shift while all the good folks are asleep, waiting to catch you with your pants down and bite you in the arse.  It's the armed siege, the fire in a block of flats, the unexploded WWII bomb, the dog-walker who's come across a badly burned body.  There was a moment when a despatcher saw the Cumbria shootings come in, thought, "what's this then?", clicked on it and thought, ooooooooooh fuck.  Then shortly after that, lots of people in the Control Room started shouting very loudly.

Last Really Big Incident I was involved in, there were only two of us on the desk for that area.  My mate was on the radio and I was on the phone when the Inspector came over and said to him, "I want a new channel opened up for this incident and I want you running it because you're up to speed with the job."  He said, "Yes Ma'am" and did so - neither of them realising that I was on the phone (not easy to tell when we all wear headsets!).  I can't even remember who I was talking to - I just hung up and took over the normal Bravo Sierra Control channel while my mate went off to Bravo Sierra Major Incidents with everyone who was on the Really Big Incident.

*

There's my own personal hell, my least favourite kind of non-busy.  You see, there are times - a lot of times - when we don't actually have any response capacity.  Shift change.  Briefings that run on and on because the SMT have decided to talk to the troops.  Times when we have simply run out of troops and have nothing left to give.

At these times, the radio goes quiet but the jobs keep coming in.  You read them and digest them, impotently doing all the intel checks in full knowledge that no-one's going for hours yet, knowing that somewhere there's a frightened person waiting for a uniform to turn up and fix it, all the while digging your fingernails into the desk, in fear of a really serious job coming in while you know you've got no-one to send...

*

...then there's the kind that all Control Room Inspectors dread, where there are two incidents that require their attention running (two separate firearms incidents, for example) and they start to get a feel for how we despatchers operate all the time.

Friday 18 June 2010

Police Staff

I know I'm late on this one, but I can't really set myself up as a police staff blogger without commenting on the recent stink in Surrey.  I caught the BBC News clip on iPlayer and it was fun to see inside another force's control room - quite surprised that they let cameras in though!

There's a summary of the proposal in national terms here and a more local view of things here.  The Thinking Policeman comments here.

I'm just a worker bee, so I'll refrain from too much comment on the national issues - people like Chief Constable Rowley are paid much more than me to understand such things.

From a local point of view, I'd say that our Control Room has a healthy mix of officers and staff.  We are mostly staff, with a few PCs who are off active duty for various reasons and a few retired officers who have come back as civilians.  It would be a complete and utter waste of your money to have a PC in each of those chairs, but it's really good for us staff to have their experience in the room so that we can ask for advice if we need to.  On the other hand, I worry that our Call Centre is too civilianised - we see some bizarre things on call logs sometimes which suggest that the calltaker doesn't really understand the way we work and what's going to happen next.  I'd like to see calltakers encouraged to go out on attachment with officers in various roles, and have some current and ex-PCs scattered through the room, as we do.  Or maybe replace the civilian supervisors with Sergeants.

Should SOCOs be police officers?  I'm not sure about that one...  our civvy SOCOs do a good job, but would the experience of having been a police officer be useful to them, as it is in the Control Room?  You'd have to ask one.

I think the role of PCSO is a really useful one, as long as we don't see too much "mission creep" and they do stay in a support role.  They also generate a certain amount of work for officers, as they are likely to come across something outside of their powers while they're out-and-about and need to call up asking for Police assistance.

You, the public, asked for more "bobbies-on-the-beat" and the Pledge says that local officers need to spend 80% of their time "visibly policing."  Clearly it would be a massive waste of money to train and pay Police Constables to stand around on Quietsville High Street just to keep to the pledge, so Quietsville gets one local Police Officer and a team of PCSOs.  I don't see anything wrong with this scenario.  Obviously Shitsville needs a different mix, because PCSOs don't have the power of arrest, but I would hope we can trust Neighbourhood Inspectors to make that decision.

I can't disagree with The Thinking Policeman's maths - 1575 police staff must indeed cost more than 255 police officers.  It looks like the balance has gone a bit too far there.

I also agree, as a general rule, that we need more officers.  We don't have enough to cover demand as it is - which is why the overtime bill is so large.  Elsewhere, Mr Rowley has promised Surrey 200 new officers - let's hope we see that promise carried through.

I'm sorry, though, that The Thinking Policeman felt staff were not willing to do without breaks and so on.  My colleagues and I very rarely take meal breaks, and those of us who were stuck at work in the snow earlier this year put in 12 hour shifts to cover for our colleagues who were stuck at home.  We're proud to be part of the police and work hard in support of our sworn colleagues.

Thursday 17 June 2010

Control

To you, I am Bravo Sierra Control.  I am the fount of all knowledge.  I send you to jobs.  I do checks for you, if I feel so inclined.  I track your cartoon police cars on my screen, so I know where you all are.  I know if you're hiding in a police station with your feet up.  I have overall sight of the division, so I know which officer is most appropriate to send, and I make that decision - not your Sergeant.  I have divine right to interrupt any of you because the system is designed to give Control Room transmissions higher priority than anyone else.  I am your God.

So who gave some of you bastards handheld radios that seem to be able to cut across my transmissions?

Wednesday 16 June 2010

Changes

When someone important in a business has a good idea, a project is started to look into it, feasibility studies are done, a budget is set, and then the work is carried out.

Things are a little different in the public sector.  Someone important has a good idea, writes it down, and we on the front line are just expected to get on and do it, somehow.

For example, remember the Policing Pledge?  Leaving aside the obvious facts that some of it is meaningless and some of it is impossible to deliver (how can a calltaker possibly know how long it will take an officer to get to you when he doesn't know which officer we in Despatch will choose, where he's coming from, or which sort of diesel-powered car he's driving?), the main problem with it was that we heard about it about three days before it was made public - and with a huge advertising campaign, at that.

Did hundreds of new Neighbourhood PCs and PCSOs turn up the next day so that they could spend 80% of their time "visibly working" as well as all the other valuable work that they do, you know, inside buildings?  They did not.  Did we get loads of new Response officers and cars so that we could handle non-emergency calls quickly, and promise to have someone available to go to all 999 calls immediately?  I think you probably know the answer to that.

I don't disagree with the bits of the Pledge that actually make sense, and it's good for the public to have clarity on what they can expect from us.  But as it stands, it's just words.  Without an investment in recruiting new officers, it's completely meaningless.

We just carried on exactly as before, doing the best we can with limited resources.

It happens on a local level, too.  Without going into detail, one of the Supers decided to fiddle with the way that a certain thing works on our despatching software.  They obviously thought it was a brilliant idea and just went ahead and trialled it on a particular area.  Unfortunately, they didn't ask us despatchers what we thought about it, and they didn't tell us, or our line managers, what they'd done.

You can imagine the swearing from my colleague who was working that area when her screen suddenly starting doing something unexpected.  She also realised within about a minute that it couldn't possibly work.

Tuesday 15 June 2010

Complaints

A quite frightening amount of our time is taken up by complaints - that is, members of the public complaining that the police did something wrong.

Having come to the police later in life, after working in business, I understand how important complaints are.  I know the tired old statistic that happy customers don't tell anyone they were happy, and that unhappy customers tell 10 people they were unhappy.  I happen to believe that statistic.

It's especially important that the police understand that statistic because we depend on public confidence.  Policing is all smoke and mirrors: there are not enough police officers to make the public do what we want them to do, it's all down to trust.  If everyone decided to break the law on the same day, we'd be buggered.

Like everything else in policing though, you approach something with the high intentions that I've outlined above and come against the blank grey wall of petty criminality.  I especially like it when criminals' mums call in.

Like I said, complaints are important: so an Inspector deals with them.  An Inspector even deals with them when Johnny Criminal's mum phones in to say, "I didn't like the way PC Smith spoke to Little Johnny when he arrested him!"

The Inspector then has to review the Control Room record, the Custody record, PC Smith's Pocket Note Book, speak to everyone and see if the complaint is justified.

Everyone involved in the arrest knows that Johnny Criminal is an appalling little scrote who would burgle his own Gran if only she hadn't moved to Spain to get away from him.  Express that opinion out loud though, and you're fucked.

I just wish the Police as a body had the balls to give calltakers (or Sergeants, at a push, but not Inspectors) the power to say, "But Mrs Criminal, your son *is* an appalling little scrote, and while I'm sorry PC Smith used bad language, upon reading the log I can see that the officer concerned was quite right to put him in leg restraints before he killed his girlfriend and I am therefore treating your complaint with the contempt it deserves."

The calltakers should have the power to send appropriate complaints to Inspectors to be dealt with by an appropriate senior officer, and tell the rest of the compensation-chasing time-wasters to piss off back to the black hole they came from.

Gone

It was weeks ago now, but I still sometimes hear those gasping breaths in my ear.

Quiet moments, low moments when I'm on my own not doing very much, I still replay the sound of a man dying in my head. We all heard it through our earpieces - those desperate struggles for air while the officer on scene kept hitting his transmit button by accident while giving CPR.

He was a bad man, no loss to society, and if he'd led a law abiding life he'd probably still be alive. The kind of person I spend my working life fighting against, the kind of person prison's too good for.

But he died on my watch, and I don't like that. I mourn him.

I also worry for my colleague who tried and failed to save him - a man I've never met, but communicate with via phone and radio all day, every day. I know how hard he tried to save this criminal's life, and I have no way to ask him how he feels about it.

This is a seriously weird job.