Radio Ham

I spoke to a female on the phones yesterday who was understandably upset at the police's response, or lack of it. She had phoned us over a week ago and yet was still waiting for an officer.

Unfortunately this is a far from unusual circumstance and usually I just take the same sympathetic and understanding line; I am not going to argue with someone who states the wait for the police is unacceptable when I agree with every word they say.

I found the relevant incident log and discovered it had been closed and "referred" to the neighbourhood policing unit over 10 days ago and nothing had been done with it. I apologised to the caller and provided her the number for the neighbourhood unit. She was understanding and said she would ring the number right away.

Just before she went she said "I understand you're busy with lots of other more important incidents to deal with; but it's not as if you can claim that you are out catching rapists, because we don't have any in our village".

Poor dear. Quite apart from that fact that we deal with incidents from the whole county, not just her village, in my experience rapists don't respect community values.

There has been a lot of talk about the terrorist raid by police in Forest Gate during which a man was shot. Thankfully the shot man is now recovering; however, both occupants of the house have now been released without charge as it appears the intelligence that led police to the address may have been faulty.

Without knowing the full details of the raid it is difficult to know what else the police could have done under the circumstances. Any delay in acting would surely have also been criticised; it isn't that long ago that police were criticised for not acting during a march against the Danish cartoons, for example. And while it is argued by some that police should have provided more information to the local community, I can understand that discretion is also vital when dealing with a terrorist threat.

Finally it has been mooted that the 250 officers deployed was excessive; and while I can understand that opinion, especially as that is nearly 50 times as many officers as I typically have at my disposal, had they found a chemical device I would have thought a considerable number of officers would be required to evacuate the area safely. I just wonder if the 250 officers had thought ahead and brought their own van, or if they needed to rely on response as usual when they made their arrests?

Bank Holiday. Traditionally a busy time for the police and other emergency services, especially on hot sunny days like today when the alcohol flows a little too freely. I was on an early shift, so much of my time at work is spent when others are in bed. The damage is usually done later.

All human life is here when it comes to the reasons people phone the police. Imagine the scene. Some children playing football kick the ball into your garden. They come to retrieve their ball so you give them and earful. In response they call you a "Fat Cow". Would you call the police to report this incident? Well the Fat Cow in question did.

At the other end of the scale, we received a call from a man whose daughter had been sexually assaulted earlier in the month; this had been reported and the offender had been arrested and released on police bail pending the trial. Today his daughter had received a number of threats and intimidating phone calls from the offender. Under the circumstances my colleague and I felt this was a serious enough job to warrant a priority, and decided to allocate it to the first patrol who came available.

Ten minutes later this man's bank holiday got even worse; we received a second call from the same man reporting an entirely unrelated incident where 3 of his "business associates" had attended with iron bars and were proceeding to batter his person. We managed to drag some officers off other incidents and get them to his address within about 5 minutes, by which time the offenders had gone. A number of attempts were made to locate and arrest the offenders, but without success.

Just before I finished duty we received a further call from the man; he had attended his lockup to find 2 of his vans had been stolen. By this time I imagine he was thinking things couldn't get much worse for him. Whether they did or not I can't say, as I then finished duty.

The above incidents of course took up a great deal of time and used much of our limited resources, and they are serious enough incidents to warrant such attention, but I do find it frustrating. I suspect the assault and the theft of the vans were related; the offenders, who are also the man's business associates, are well known to the police. A background check on the man himself showed that he is also known to us, with a list of many convictions for just the sort of offences for which he was now the aggrieved party. Of course the law should be blind, but it can be depressing when we have to use so many of our resources to deal with such incidents at the expense of more deserving cases. Some peoples lifestyles means that they create a lot of work for the police, sometimes as victims, but at other times as offenders.

PS. In common with many towns, a Bank Holiday festival was held in our area. To manage security a large additional police presence was in force, run by a Silver Control Room. To cover a small fair there were almost ten times as many officers available as I had at my disposal to cover a whole sub-division; and yet when they made an arrest for public order they still required our van to transport the prisoner, so depriving me of 20% of my available resources. This is unfortunately typical. Further more, because the fair itself closed at Five pm, most of the officers also finished duty then; in all likelihood leaving behind them a vast swathe of merrily drunk people to then frequent the pubs nearby and get drunker still. In other words, the extra resources who had been brought on were leaving just when they would be needed most, with the responsibility for dealing with any subsequent disorder dropping on the toes of the meagrely rescourced response officers again; I am just glad that I went home when I did, and when it was likely to all kick off. This is the type of foresight and planning I am sadly well used to, just as you soon will be.

This is going to be an attempt to write a blog about my job as a Police Dispatcher. I make no claims to being a good writer, and I don't have a great deal of time to spend doing this sort of thing, so most of my posts will be pretty much written on the hoof and liable to be error strewn, but hopefully readers, if there are any readers, will get a gist of what I do at work all day.

And what do I do? Primarily I allocate Police Officers to incidents over a radio channel (or talkgroup as they are now called since the introduction of AirWaves digital radios). At its simplist this is probably the easiest job in the world; an incident is reported to the police, it is passed to me and I find who is the nearest suitable officer to deal. I allocate the job to the officer over the radio, he or she accepts the job and I record the fact on the incident log. Once the incident has been dealt with I record the result on the incident log, close that job, and allocate the officer to a new incident. Simple.

The reality is often quite different. The area I usually cover, an urban area covering 5 medium sized towns, will often have an average of 60 outstanding incidents for allocation at any one time. Some of these can be days and weeks old as we have been unable to attend in that time. I will usually have 1 van and perhaps 4 cars to deal with these 60 jobs during a shift; in an average shift we can expect to receive a further 40-100 incidents to deal with, many of which can be Grade 1 Immediate response emergencies where there is considered an imminent threat to life and/or property, and of course these take precedence over all other incidents, including the week old reports that I will have inherited at the start of my shift. If you have ever waited days to see an officer after reporting something, then this is why.

As a result, in practice the job is far from simple; I am continually reviewing the outstanding incidents that need allocating, reading the new incidents that have just been switched to me, and assisting the officers outside who are dealing with incidents and need enquiries doing. It can call for split second decision making while trying to do five things at once and it can be stressful; but when you feel you have done a good job and handled a tricky situation well it can be very rewarding. Unfortunately, many days I leave work disheartened at the poor service I feel we have provided the public who deserve better, due largely to the sheer lack of frontline officers I have at my disposal to attend incidents. That said, I think the good outweighs the bad, and as things stand I am not looking for another job, so that must say something.

That is all I will say for now; as the days go by I will talk at more length about what my job entails. Feel free to leave any comments for me, and I will write another post soon.