The "life" of a Police Communications Operator

And again...I'm complaining!!

2007-05-05T01:03:00.000Z

Right, as promised here I am again...I dont know what has happened to my dear friend comms operator, must be busy, ill send a reminder his way to update asap! We Miss You! lol

I'll tell you something, what a laugh you can get answering calls to the police. An elderly gentleman calls "Im sorry to bother you but I didnt know what to do, there is a loose pony", "ok sir, dont't worry, where is this pony?" "In my kitchen"!!! lol. I loved that man!

If anyone can inform me of the law that 8 year old children playing footbal in the local park is an offence ... please... I must have missed a large part of my training on that one!! Police are not going to arrest kids for that, if they wern't in the park playing a very popular game they would probably be causing damage to your fence or house and drinking in the street bus stop. Oh and and a word of advice...don't ask police to move 16year old teenagers that are drinking in the woods on the outskirts of the village, because, when we do, you will complain even more that they are on the streets causing a nuisance and complain that we have not done anything about it!!! Think before you dial, if we move them, where are they going to move to?, I can guarentee they wont stay in the house - doh!!

So I agree with my collegues at work and think that the emergency number should be changed
to one that is 20 digits long ... so its not so easy to remember and call when you are pissed!

If you want to be laughed at in the communications dept then do the following :-

1) Ring back several times on the 999 line when you have been told repeatedly that it is not an emergency you are reporting and could you please call back on the non emergency number to keep the line free for genuine emergencies, we take great pleasure in cutting you off after the second or third call if you refuse to listen to the advice given!! lol

2) Think that the fact you have recieved a text message on your mobile phone saying "u r ugly" is a priority to the police...yeah!! We have a right giggle to that one, with lots of piss taking!

3) Dont start the conversation by shouting "I want police now" in a demanding tone...think about it, what did your mummy tell you 'I want, never gets', would you like to be spoken to like that? No one is going to break their back to help you really, are they? Then when the sequel comes in that you had been assaulted we think "serves you right, rude person"and smirk.

If you call 999 all your details are given automatically by BT, you then say I want to remain anonymous...now dont get me wrong, I don't have a problem with this, but why not ring Crimestoppers (advertised as anonymous and freephone) where you wont even be asked for your details in the first place and then wont get upset about being asked!!

What really gets my goat (where did that saying come from?) is when you refuse to give your name only having witnessed an incident that had nothing to do with you, you dont know who is involved and are in no danger of those persons involved in finding out you have called (because if anyone does disclose your details your in for a fat sum of money in compensation under that data protection act). Police only ask for details for their own records that could possibly be very useful one day if you're in trouble and need help yourself...at least then we know who you are and can hopefully get to you much quicker!

So to finish...we all applied for a job with the police to help the community and stop crime...listen to the advice you are given and remember we will help you if you let us help you!

Night of a Call Handler!

2007-02-14T22:17:00.000Z

Can I ask a simple question?
Why is it that people seem to think the police have the ability to stop dogs fighting in the street when their owners dont seem to be able to? Dogs can't be arrested.

Or what about a blue light taxi service? A boy had rang his foster carer to say he wasnt coming home so she would ring the police and waste everybody's time in giving all the details for a missing person report only to have the boy call on 999 to tell us where he is so the police will take him the 6 miles home from his friends house so he didnt have to pay for a taxi!

Missing Persons - "I want to report our Amy missing", "How old is she?", "18", "When did you last see her?", "Dunno, er she went out about 10 minutes ago" - suitable advice given!!

"I want to report John missing, but I think I know where he might be" ????

One gentleman called me and became, lets say, "F**king Horrible" when I could not immediatley find a telephone number for a person in Cambodia that had sent him an email asking him for charity as their whole family had been kidnapped - you know the ones - anyway, he wanted me to call the sender and tell them to stop sending emails!! Why would they listen to me? How could I stop them? At the very least I cant speak the language...

"Can I report my wallet being stolen?", "Yes Sir, certainly, where has it been stolen from?", "Im not telling you because then you will know who has done it"- Give me strength!!

There are funny ones like a man who had been the victim of a crime in which he was slowly walking home with a broken leg when he had ONE of his crutches stolen - officers were going round in circles trying to catch that offender.

Or how about the 999 call because someone had found a hair in their takeaway curry!!!

May I refer to my good friend, Commsoperator's remark about ringing the police for a fire... I, myself, have also taken a similar call in which I asked "have you informed the Fire Brigade?" to which the caller replied "No I didn't want to bother them". OK then... Thanks!

I promise you all of the above have been actual conversations I have had with the public as a Police Call Handler... ill keep you updated on the next Fruit Loops that I have to answer the phone to.

It's been a while!

2007-02-14T18:51:00.000Z

Well... it has been a very very long time since i have posted anything on here... a lot has happened in 6 months or so... we are now onto the 3rd shit pattern... from which I have been moved onto a different shift and have had the pleasure of meeting some nice new people. Christmas has come and gone... I can say that working Christmas day had to be the most boring day ever... I dispatched a total of 6 jobs... 4 of which were the same thing! (Kids on their new off road bikes... turns out by the time cops got there... they had broke them!) Theres been a few murders in the same town, been praised quite a lot for my work recently too which is always nice... I don't expect constant praise but to get appreciated is a nice thing. I'm not back to work for a week or 2. But was playing golf today with a couple of lads... needless to say I came last.
Anyway! The new shift... we have some cracking people, my supervision are mostly great, although one of them is about as much use as a water proof tea bag... he's been there longer than me... and comes over and asks for my advice on jobs... wheres the sense in that? We also have some crazy woman who looks like a witch... shes really fucking loud and annoying... and not to mention the fact she is usless... and a liability! Plus we have have the usual work horses and the lazy fuckers... but that seems to be part of the job, the management must love to employ ugly lazy bastards... who double up as being useless! Fan-fucking-tastic! Anyway... I'll have further to report once i get back next week!

Who's ya daddy!?!?!?

2006-06-17T01:10:00.000Z

Just a short one... A short while back on an afternoon I took a call from a 20-something female who claimed she had been raped a year ago... great... why did I have to answer this one! Anyway... I take all the details, she basically claims she was raped by one of her neighbours, she ended up becoming pregnant with his kid and due to her being so emotional blah blah blah its taken her a year to report it, and she had just told her partner who had urged her to contact the police to repot it... which seems legitimate... then I hear some shit head bloke mouthing off in the background... and a few bells start ringing... Anyway, one of the local officers goes round to take first contact details... Heres the best bit... turns out the bloke shouting in the backgound was her partner... he had thought it was his kid... they had a paternity test carried out and turns out the kid isn't his which is where the rape comes into it...
Sequel from the cop: Miss X stated that she had in actual fact been having an affair with her neighbour Mr Y. Miss X became pregnant with his child. She has not told her partner, Mr Z, who thought he was the father until he took a paternity test. Miss X then claimed she had been raped by her neighbour and her partner has told her to contact the police. Upon police arrival she told her partner the truth. This is NOT a rape, no offences disclosed. No further police action required.
Had i been on for the back backshift i'm sure there would have been a call to a domestic at that same address!
Please note: Rapes are horrible and nasty acts carried out by pure fuck wits, and this post is not meant to offend.

LAZY BASTARD!

2006-06-14T16:59:00.000Z

First off! Apologies in the delay in posting, AOL has finally reconnected me!
Well... here we are... I was working the early shift this morning... in the snake pit... yes... call handling! As it goes some people due to their circumstances work day shifts only... which is fine... I dont have a problem with it... but we are contacted to have a half hour bait, but normal shift workers get an hour... why? because its pointless having a bait on a nightshift, so we are allowed an hour on the day shifts. Well... why is it these lazy fuckers get an hour when they don't do the nights? Oh it doesnt stop there... theres one who only does Monday - Friday 8-4's... now this takes the piss... usually when you come on duty... you do it between half past and quater to. SHE! does it 1 or 2 minutes to the hour! But she will still finish at 3.30 or 3.45 at the very latest... oh yeah... and she benefits from the whole 1 hour bait time! Today was good though... one of the lasses on the shift is on maternity leave... she came in today and it was nice to see her and baby... but the SHE! I mentioned before... she used this to her advantage... she ran over and was standing talking for a good half an hour while the resr of us... bearing in mind we are already understaffed... took the fucking calls! Now she doesnt work the late shifts and nightshifts for family problems... but when there is a late shift or night shift over time... for double time going... shes straight in there!
At the end of the shift this afternoon I totalled up the amount of calls she logged... and how many my colleage and I logged... by myself I logged more than double her!
LAZY FUCKING BASTARD!

Sub-human Scum!

2006-05-24T00:55:00.000Z

Here we go again... i'm in the snake pit! It has been a pretty quiet night tonight to be honest, other than some arse pissing around on the 999. BUT! There's this one chap! He rang up... on the normal number, giving it rock all! "You have ruined my life!" blah blah, "i'm going to go to sleep and never wake up, and its your fault!". He sounded either drunk or had taken an overdose. It took a while to get details, but he eventually gave his name. I managed to get a quick search from him, and his name turned out only 1 result on the custody system... spot on... so I had his date of birth and carried out a PNC on him, I have all his details.... EXCELLENT!. While i'm doing this he's still rabbiting on about some shit. He tells me that he has just got out of prison recently. Turns out he did 8 years for kidnap and is out on police bail for rape... charming fellow!

So I send officers round to his last known address... parents have no idea where he is... he's still on the phone... turns out he's at the other end of the UK near the sea. He gives us the town he is near... so we have to start making enq's with that force... what a carry on!
Now this has been going on for some time now... if he has taken an overdose he will be well on his way! How much time and effort has been put into this scum bag. An utter waste of space and time.
Well... all details have been passed to the other force to see if they can carry out a search of the area.
At the end of the day... this horrbile creature has quite some previous... the kidnap and rape are only brief highlights! Theres loads of other shit. Why is he wasting my time? What does he want? Why does he keep ringing? He's looking for attention, if he was going to top himself he would just do it... why bother telling us he is going to do it... because he is an attention seeking scum bag! Trying to make himself sound hard done by... he should try being one of his many victims!
Anyway, we finally got word back that this bloke had been traced, he had fixed up a hosepipe to his exhaust and was trying to poison himself, but looks like he had been failing miserbaly as he had been doing this for some time!
To sum up, hes pissed us around, wasted our time, and been taken to hospital... lets see if he gets sectioned!

Lovely AOL!... and Specials.

2006-05-22T23:42:00.000Z

Sorry it's been a while since I last posted, it appears AOL have cancelled my account, they advised I rang them up and asked to cancel it... now last time I remember I never made such a call! So they say we are sorry, and it will take 2 weeks to reconnect the broadband. So i am having to do this from work. Anyway...
I have not mentioned this in the past, but i'm also a Special Constable. I have just finished my training and will be carrying out my first shift on Sunday.
When i'm dispatching it's great having Specials on duty as an extra resource. When my officers are run ragged with usual crap jobs and you get enthusiastic Specials shouting up to go to others jobs it's a massive weight lifted of their shoulders.
There is one specifically who is always there to help out, always shouts up for jobs, he is first class.
Now, i have spoken to a few full time Officers about their opinion of Specials. There clearly are two type of Officer out there, one who think specials are great and much help, and others, that think they are a pain in the arse and nothing but a hinderance.
The first type:
These appear to be Officers who genuinely appreciate the help and efforts specials put in, the time they take out of their personal life to help their local community, whethers its on a Friday night dealing with fights, or part of the Beat Team chasing kids around all day. These are usually nice Police Officers, friendly and prepared to help anyone... members of the public and other officers (specials and full time)
The second type:
These, from what it seems have a problem with Specials, they have either had a run in with one, or been in a position where their Special colleague has... let them down to a degree, and since that one thing, they think "all Specials are shite"
The reason I joined was something to do between now/then to joining as a full time officer. In my interview I made it clear that thats what I was doing, and they were fine with it. Other do genuinely want to make a difference to their community... yet there are others... that want "THE POWER"
On my course there were some very strange people from all walks of life, some tall, some fat, some short, some old, some young, some weak, some plain lacking in common sense, and well... looking at them I thought... why?
We all have our reasons, whether they are just applying now, just finished training, or been in 41 years in some cases.
The question is... COULD YOU?
P.S. I found the picture from Google of a Special in South Yorks... I had to laugh at where his strap was...

Freaky Friday!

2006-05-13T17:27:00.000Z

Well, here I am, first nightshift back, tonight I was in the snake pit (call handling), there were 6 of us on at first, 2 of which only work day shifts, and finished at midnight, so after that we were left with 4, which for a Friday nightshift is a bit short and we felt it... oh, but I forgot to mention, one of course went sick not long into the shift... leaving 3 of us! It wasn't too bad at first we were keeping on top of it, but then came kicking out time! 0130hrs-0230hrs, it went silly! 999 calls were ringing left right and center, most of them usual tripe.
"I hear my son has been locked up, and i'm worried about him" My standard reply, "You have rang 999, which is for life or death to see if your son is in custody, i can assure you the officers will treat him very well! In addition do not use 999 for enquiries, if you want to speak to custody you will have to ring on the non emergency number! Thanks for your call!"
What possess people to ring 999 for trivial matters like making enquiries? Another excuse is they don't have cridit on their phone! Well thats not my problem!
Getting back to last night, this is just another kick in the bollocks. There are certain people who work hard, certain people who make an effort, and there are certain people who take the piss, sit and chat to others when the phone is ringing, get up and leave to go and have a private chat leaving only a 2 call handlers, yet these piss takers, do they ever get bollocked? do they ever get told to get their finger out? WHO ARE THE MUGS HERE?! I can guarentee that if i was to piss ball around I would be the first one to be humiliated in front of everyone! Like I said, who are the mugs?!

Early days... DISPATCHING!

2006-05-10T23:10:00.000Z

As I crawled out of my pit at 5am, rubbing my eyes, I knew it was gonna be one of those days. I had checked the duties the shift before and seen I was dispatching to one of the busier areas as usual, GREAT!
So I get into work and we do the hand over, he tells me there is a missing from home that is ongoing, and also the nightshift carried out an arrest warrant, but ended up finding a house full of cannabis, which was ongoing in the morning.
Anyway, there were 5 jobs sitting on my list, MFH, the warrant and other usual rubbish. I checked the deferred list... right... now i have 19 jobs on my list, and its not even 7am.
The Sgt rings me up with todays duties, i had 2 panda's on and a tutor unit. One of the panda had ongoing enquiries, so i was down to one... turns out they were over the other side of the county doing something else which they didnt tell me about. So, I had to get my tutor unit to deal with all of these jobs as best I could. To be fair, they did excellent, and couldn't of asked more her.
My gripe is going back to this deferred list... there had been a job put out 4 days prior about a hit and run accident and no one had attended, there was a line on that a certain officer was aware... but after that nothing, and for some reason one of the other dispatchers had just deferred it until he was next on duty 4 days later... so I shout him up trying to get a sequel... this is when he tells me he never got around to it that day, and had told the dispatcher to pass it over to the next shift. The point i'm making is, why are people so lazy that he couldnt be even bothered to ring this lady and ask her if anyone has been around to see her, instead he deferred it for 4 days! This is shocking, we found out who had done it and I told my supervision, and I hope he gets bollocked for it!
Anyway, we are getting through the jobs as best we can and I look up and my bait is in 10 minutes, excellent! My list is down to 16. My bait relief comes and lets me get away. So off i go to the gym with my mate for an hour. I get back to take over... and... whats this shit?! MY list has rocketed to 22! Well never mind! it's not long until I go home. So crack on and get a few more jobs done. Then my only available unit goes for their bait... so I have no one, all of my pandas are either tied up or state 4. I manage to get one of them available again for my last hour adn get 2 more jobs done, end up handing over 20 jobs to the back shift. Which isn't bad considering I only had one panda for 90% of the shift!
My point is here... lazy bastards! How do they get away with it?! I work my bollocks off, and these arses come along, do nothing and get away with it, but if I even take 10 minutes to take a break I get bollocked!

Sunday night backshift...

2006-05-07T22:38:00.000Z

Well today I was working 2pm-10pm, I got into work, checked the duties and I was call handling, no problem, a rest from the hammering I got last night on dispatch. The shift started fine, in fact there were hardly any calls in the first 3 hours at all! A few of the usual rubbish, youth nuisance blah blah blah. Then at 5pm it was the start of the baits, a few went off for their dinner. Then it started, it went loopy! The calls started coming in... kids riding around on mini motorbikes, kids playing football in the street kicking the ball off the house and cars, kids drinking down the back ally, the usual shit. Anyway, I battle through until 6pm when it as my bait time, had my sarnies, and my mate cooked a pizza, so i had a couple of slices. Police Academy was on the TV so it gave us something to laugh at during bait time.
My gripe for today was a male ringing up saying that his wife had called up an hour ago about an abondoned vehicle in the street, I checked the log, and well the time of call had shown she had only called 15 minutes ago, the bloke then started to kick off that some kids had set the car on fire and his street was ruined! He was shouting down the phone why police had not attended straight away, now... I had to keep calm, after I explained to him that we had ongoing domestics, fights in the street, burglarys, and other high priorty incidents... all that translated in his head was "we do not care about you and the car, you can expect a response some time next week". What is with the public? Why do they lie to us about things and expect what is happening is the only thing in the world that matters. Yes the Police will deal with an abondoned car... but why ring the POLICE if it has been set on FIRE! Ring the f**king Fire Brigade!

Another one... a woman ringing up whinging about some crap, and to be honest I wasn't really listening to her after she used the excuse that she didn't have much credit and want me to ring her back, look woman, we do not have time to piss around ringing you back to listen to you whinge for 20 minutes! if it's important use a phone box... or find someone with a landline! Needless to say the call was terminated.
What drives the scum of this country to go round kicking and smashing peoples wing mirrors! This seems to be a growing trend, these scumbags should have their fingers cut off one by one, its pointless criminal activity... but thats another issue I will come to another time!

Welcome, and an introduction...

2006-05-07T22:14:00.000Z

First of all welcome to my blog, this is the first time I have done anything like this, so you will have to bare with me!
This is a blog about my shifts as a Police Communications Operator. For obvious reasons i'm not going to disclose my real name or which force i work for.
A little brief intro into what a communications operator does...
Call Handling:
As a call handler you are the first point of contact to the public, we take calls via the normal number, 999 system, and also from the ambulance and fire brigade requesting assistance. In addition we have contact with council wardens, who are generally carers for the elderly. We take the information supplied, type it onto the incident log, along with the callers details and pass it over to the dispatcher...
Dispatcher/Call Dispatcher:
This is where the fun starts, there are 2 dispatchers for each of the divisions, some are busier than others. Basically here you pass jobs out to the Police officers, PCSO's and Street Wardens. They attend the jobs and then come back to you with a sequel which you then update log. This can become stressful at shift changeovers and when you have loads of jobs going on at the same time, all of these i will go into in due course.