Radio Ham

I have just become aware of this site written by a police Inspector, and it reminds me of an incident a few weeks ago.

We received a call from a woman who stated that her ex had made threats that he was going to go around to her house and blow the premises up. Her ex had previous for firearms offences, and the female was taking this threat seriously.

We got the ball rolling, officers were sent to the address, the Inspector and CID were informed, and then we alerted our supervision to the ongoing incident. I usually wait a little while before I inform my supervision as all they usually do is to then write on the log "please inform outside supervision and CID", ie. exactly what we are doing anyway.

Anyway, on this occasion the Inspector for the division himself attended the address and tried to sort the problem. Meanwhile, as predicted, the duty officer (ie. the Inspector who covers us in comms) typed on the log the usual cut and pasted "inform supervision and CID" regardless of the fact that we had already done so. However, this time, rather than insist we inform the outside Inspector, he wanted us to inform the Superintendant.

Why I do not know. I have never before been asked to inform a Superintendant about such an incident, and I can only assume that we were asked to inform him because the Inspector himself was allocated to the job. In the mind of the duty officer we must just have to inform someone senior whatever the circumstances.

Anyway. the point is that not only am I not used to informing the Superintendant but when asked I realised that I don't know how to. I checked our computerised phone book and realised that we don't even have the Superintendants phone number to hand. I couldn't inform anyone above Inspectors rank what was actually happening in the world even if I wanted to.

Above Inspector are the ranks of Chief Inspector, Superintendant, Chief Superintendant, Assistant Chief Constable, Deputy Chief Constable and Chief Constable. You have to wonder what do they do all day, when they are apparently so totally insulated from day to day policing.