Where Reality meets Customer Service

Forgive me if I can't be bothered to check the exact dates, but it's about a year since Theresa May scrapped the Policing Pledge, specifically ordered Police Forces to stop using it, and Inspector Gadget started a list of Forces that were still following it.

I'm sad to report that my Force is still on that list. Not only that, but I still see calltakers proudly writing “pledge quoted” on call logs.

Once a month, my colleagues in the Control Room have joint Propaganda Sessions (sorry, Training Days) with our colleagues from the Call Centre. The calltakers generally seem to take the propaganda on board much more than anyone else, perhaps because their role is purely taking that initial call and they are somewhat insulated from the rest of the policing world.

I should probably clarify that comment. For example... Every force has got its regular callers, people who call many times a day with the same story. Experienced calltakers have a bit of a chat with them and them let them go, but generally they're very convincing and every now and then they cause control room staff great amusement by causing an inexperienced calltaker to put a Grade One job on.

Or that old chestnut, “the caller is distressed.” The caller may well be distressed, but I'm still going to risk-assess the jobs on my queue to the best of my ability and I will never, ever dispatch your poorly-parked vehicle before someone else's concern-for-safety, no matter how distressed you are.

We work in a culture where management tell us that the customer is king, that you should always listen to what the caller is saying, and that we should always trust the calltaker's judgement. We also live in a world where the vast majority of our callers are scrotes, and where every single dispatcher, officer and in fact everyone who works in Response knows that the job you arrive at bears no resemblance to what you were told on the radio.

I can hear Ambulance staff nodding along at this point.

Anyway, at a recent propaganda session we had one of the Chief Inspectors for the call centre present, and she was stressing the importance of response targets. I can recite these in my sleep: Grade Ones to be despatched within 3 minutes, on scene within 15 minutes; Grade Twos to be despatched within 15 minutes and on scene within an hour.

One of the calltakers was brave enough to call the “one hour” promise into question, as it gives them nothing but grief. If they quote it, they get an earful along the lines of “I need someone before an hour!”

I pitched in here, pointing out that the calltakers don't have access to the bit of the dispatching software that tells them which officers are available . Saying “within an hour” is therefore a complete fabrication. Why on earth have we got into a situation where we are telling customers completely made-up arrival times, which might make them angry to the point where they give our calltakers abuse?

The fact is, if I've got someone free they'll get to you in the amount it takes to get from where they are to where you are in a diesel-powered estate car. If I haven't got anyone free, you'll have to wait until I do. If your situation is really serious, I bloody well will get someone from somewhere, but it could be anyone – an NSO, a dog unit, a firearms unit or maybe even a Control Room PC...

Cuts, death by a thousand cuts

Well, you read the news, don't you? You know what's going on. You know that the banks have royally fucked up and that you, me, the public sector worker and the mortgage payer are footing the bill while they keep getting (I don't say earning) their bonuses.

I won't go into detail here in case I say something that identifies my force, but it feels like the place is being gutted up the middle, like the next email we get from senior management will say something like, "please hand in the pennies you find underneath your desk because we need them."

It doesn't seem to have impacted front-line response policing yet, but it's a hair's breadth away.

Upon which... I'm clearly biased because of the job that I do, but I happen to think that front-line response policing is the most important thing we do and should be the last bastion against cuts.

Am I wrong? Honest opinions please.