A race against time…
When something happens and people call for the police it is a common theme that they expect the police to attend to their problem immediately. Their issue can often become, in their eyes, the most important priority for everyone. Police respond to thousands of calls for service every year, however, there are times when the demand for our services exceeds our capacity to immediately attend to all jobs.
With that in mind, it is worthwhile to consider how we manage our jobs. All calls for service that we receive are prioritised according to a range of factors. Including but not limited to:
- the nature of the incident or the offence
- when it occurred
- who is involved (e.g children, elderly, offenders)
- how many people are involved
- are there any injuries.
The primary prioritisation is done on the basis of the information provided to us, from calls to Policelink or Triple Zero, or when something is reported at a police station. This raises a significant point; the better information we receive, the better we are able to assess the job and the nature of the response it warrants. In prioritising your job, we also take into account the other jobs we are aware of, that require a police response. Finally, we overlay this with professional experience. By that I mean, sometimes we have very little information, but the manner that it is received (e.g. a phone call cut short, a caller highly distressed, a child etc) may indicate an urgency beyond the actual nature of what we were told.
Some jobs may be relatively minor in nature and not needing an immediate response, we may negotiate a time later that day or the following day for police to attend. Some requests may fall outside the scope of our core duties, and it would only be in exceptional circumstances that police would attend these at all.
Based on these factors, our Communications Coordinators at our Police Communication Centres (our dispatch centres) continually reassess and re-prioritise the jobs that are waiting for crews to be assigned to them. This can mean that when we first receive a job it may be a very high priority, but the very next call may push it back to a lower place, and so on. It is a constant and demanding process, and jobs can frequently be moved to a different place in the queue.
What is important to remember, is that when you contact the police and request assistance, we realise that whatever has occurred may be the biggest thing that has happened in your life. That said, we need to prioritise our response to that request against all of the other jobs we have. This may sometimes seem unfair if you have to wait, but if it was you who has been the victim of a serious crime, you would appreciate being on the top of the list. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation with this.