A day in the life of... Police Communications Centres
Ever since the external review of the Police Communication Centres in 2005, Police have committed themselves to making their communication systems more effective and efficient.
A recent trip to the Central Communications Centre in Wellington demonstrated that Police have made positive steps in maintaining this commitment. As Police communicator Penny answers a 111 call a distressed caller tells her: “Could you hurry, my Dad has lost it, he’s become violent.” Penny calmly asks the young man to “stay with her” while she gathers more information.
As Penny works a series of maps, other relevant programmes flash up on to her two computer screens, allowing her to quickly locate the caller’s area. She immediately confirms the location with the caller and sends the initial details through to the dispatcher so a patrol car can start heading to the ‘Priority 1’ incident.
Safety issue
As the call continues, Penny manages to calm the young caller so she can obtain further details. She asks if there are any weapons present. She knows it is vital to get as much relevant information as possible to ensure the job is given the appropriate level of response and so attending staff are kept safe.
This is just one of the nearly 700,000 emergency 111 calls that the Police Communication Centres deal with each year. Communications Centre staff endeavour to answer 90% of these calls within 10 seconds. Last year, they met and exceeded this target in 96% of cases. In 2008, they received 953,170 general calls, which include calls to *555 and the Crime Reporting Line.
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The Palmerston North dispatcher works on allocating units to jobs out of the Wellington Communications Centre. |
Where are they?
In total, around 1.7 million calls are spread amongst three Police Communication Centres - Northern Communications in Auckland, Central Communications in Wellington and Southern Communications in Christchurch. Auckland is the biggest centre and during the 2008 calendar year fielded 870,000 general and 111 calls. Wellington took 386,000, while Christchurch received the remaining 384,000. All three centres have complete business continuity plans and back-up capability, which means if one of them goes down, the other two centres can compensate by picking up the overload.
Five hundred and thirty-one staff work across the three centres with roles consisting of communicators, dispatchers, section managers, team leaders, shift commanders, workforce analysts and administrative support.
Police communicators deal with calls about burglaries, family violence, disputes, fights and disorder, vehicle crashes, armed robberies, search and rescue operations, homicides, dangerous driving, missing children, civil disputes and thefts, to name just some of the events they respond to Communicators find out what’s happening and where, make the initial assessment of the priority of the job, enter the details into the computer system and send the information through to the dispatchers who are responsible for getting Police units to attend the incident. The dispatcher’s primary role is to help co-ordinate the Police response to an emergency.
