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.

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.