Police Career Microscope: Police Communications Officer.

Welcome to case 1 of the Police Career Microscope series. Here we'll look at the duties of the police communications officer.

Firstly, we need to bring up the fact that not all police communications officers are police officers. Some are sworn police, and some are "civilians" who are trained to varying to degrees to perform the role. To find out whether your local law enforcement agency or department carries sworn or not sworn members, call your local recruiting section.

Secondly, communications centers across the world vary. The communication center I worked in for 4 years is broken up into two sections- one section contains all sworn personnel, who answer emergency telephone calls, and dispatch police over the radio to taskings. And the other section contains civilian, non sworn personnel who answer non-life threatening police related phone calls.

As a communications officer you may be involved in the following activities:

• Taking emergency telephone calls (911 in the USA or 000 in Australia & the U.K.)
  • People who need emergency police attendence call this line, and are often hysterical and difficult to deal with
  • Communications officers must gather all the details police on the street need as quickly as possible.
  • This involves:
    • Getting information on offender descriptions, directions of travel, any witnesses on scene, whether anyone has been injured, whether weapons were involved, and so on.
  • Involves making determinations about what other agencies are required, such as fire or ambulance.
  • May involve close cooperation & team work with dispatchers who actually relay details of the job to police on the street.

• Dispatching police over police radio
  • Communications officers must voice over job details to police on the street.
  • Must coordinate and prioritise incidents based on the information made available to them by emergency telephone operators, and based on the disposition and availability of police units.
  • Give out APB's (all patrols bulletins), detailing vehicles to keep a look out for, or wanted or missing persons.
  • Clarify incidents which have sloppy input by the emergency call takers
  • Make requests of telephone operators to gather information, or make other emergency services available
  • Do history checks, firearms checks, stolen vehicle checks, missing persons checks and more to assist police on the street.
  • Coordinate high risk incidents such as high speed pursuits, fire arms incidents and any other incident which requires detailed reporting to ensure patrol safety and offender apprehension.

Some of the most challenging aspects of dispatching and emergency call taking are the stresses placed on the operator. On busy nights its common to be seated for 2 hours + at a very high stress level, dealing with emergency after emergency, or trying your best to coordinate and maintain the locations of your police. Police on the street may give you lip, they may ask "stupid questions" or place other police at risk by over using the radio and it's up to you to control the channel. If you're unable to position yourself as the person in control of communication on the channel, things will get very ugly on a busy friday or saturday night.

Sometimes emergency call operators can be involved in highly emotional situations which can overwhelm them. You may be the first person someone speaks to about their husband or wife killing themselves, or the first person to hear someone getting visciously assaulted or worse on the other end of a phone. Since you're unable to reach down the phone and render assistance, it can be very difficult to deal with emotionally. You must put aside your concerns and do your job- get all the information possible and then relay it to police on the street.

Communication centres, like all areas of police work suffer from periods of complete boredom. During boring times you're "chained to the desk", you can't just decide you're going to go for a walk, or start telephoning criminals to have something to do. Often you'll spend a lot of time just talking to fellow police... which, depending on the culture at your communications centre, could be a good or bad thing.

A day in the life of a communications operator.
Remember, this is just the format that I used when during my policing career. Your agency will likely organize things differently.

7am: Sign on to the phones or dispatching booth. Get a hand over speech from the previous operator about what incidents, if any are currently running.

7am through 8am: You'll likely spend quiet days simply logging patrols onto your system, unless your patrols have mobile data terminals which they can use to log themselves on. If its a Monday morning, expect to be dispatching police continually to break & enters. If its any other day of the week, you may say little to nothing for hours on end.

8am through 9am: Spend an hour on the emergency telephone. Answer a call from someone asking what the time is (believe it). Answer 3 calls from people who don't have emergencies, but tell you that it is an emergency to them. You explain that coming home to find your house broken into last night is not an emergency, or you take their enquiry anyway, given you might be having a slow day.

9am-10am: Another hour in dispatch. You might have a high speed pursuit call, which leaves you physically and mentally drained after maintaining detailed records at high speed in order to track the position of police and keep them safe. High speeds generally last anywhere from a few seconds to half an hour, depending on your local police policy, and the skill of the offending driver, or lack thereof.

10am-11am: Another hour on the phones, you're likely to still not take an emergency call, but may take many more "mistaken emergencies" like couples trying to use police to settle disputes over money, people who think their neighbor is growing drugs, or people who think that the police are there as a taxi service.

11am-12pm: Another hour in the dispatch booth might have you dispatching police to sightings of suspicious looking vehicles, flashers, or yet more break ins. Generally the aforementioned high speed pursuit will happen for you once in 10 shifts if you're lucky.

12pm-12:30: Eat.

2pm-3pm: You leave the communication center area and take time out for continuing education. Generally policy updates, or procedure updates are included when management identifies a particular area in which performance is lacking. Many aspects of dispatching and call taking are covered with exhaustive policy and procedure describing exactly how the call taker is to take action. For example for a shark sighting on a beach you may be required to ask how large the shark is, which direction it was heading (believe it or not), how many people are in the water, how far off shore it is, what species it is, and then you're required to notify the coast guard, and any other agency which covers the coast.

3pm-4pm: You might get inundated in the dispatching booth with the commonly experienced monsoon of incidents which apparently comes from nowhere. After an hour of constant high speed talking, listening intently and typing at a ferocious pace, you're exhausted.

After a day of this you might feel satisfied that you've spent the day helping fellow police out, satisfied that you've given a helping hand to members of the community when they needed it the most, and you may feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of policy and procedure you need to follow to stay out of trouble with your sergeants and other bosses. You might also feel completely bored if after 4 day shifts in a row you've had almost nothing to do each and every day, or, on the flip side, 4 evening or night shifts in a row over the weekend might leave you feeling completely exhausted and in need of a weeks holiday.

Communications operators generally perform varied roles under both high pressure conditons and extreme boredom, and deal with everything from life threatening situations to nuisance callers who have nothing better to do than harass you. You may also enjoy the environment, in that you are in a room with a bunch of other police and you can have a lot of fun with that, when you have the time.

You'll also enjoy the fact that there's zero paperwork, and you'll love that you can be engaged in highly exciting incidents like high speed chases and armed hold ups without the mind numbing boredom of the follow up investigations and paperwork that comes with it. In communications you might experience exciting incident after exciting incident for hours on end while a patrol car gets 1 arrest and is out of action for half the shift. You also avoid the personal injury and offender contact that police on the street get- but at the same time it's not quite the same being on the radio for a footchase as it is for the copper doing the running.

Any questions about working in a police communications center? It's best to call your local police for exact details, but I'll happily answer via my contact page.