Stupid Questions?
We received a call this morning to a car fire. Mobilised one fire engine. Message received from said fire engine. Fire is arson. Inform Police. No requirement for Police to attend. Owner of vehicle is at 888 High Street, Police to liaise.
Now I think this is pretty self explanatory. Passed details to Police. Police controller then rang back.
'Can you tell us if you need us?'
'We have come away from the incident now but the owner of the vehicle lives at 888 High Street, fire is arson. We have passed this to your main control about 10 mins ago.'
'So is it suspicious?'
'Yes, the fire is arson.'
'Do you need us to attend?'
Banging head on table, checking headset, hello, are you listening to me??
To be fair, it was the very early hours of the morning. And my patience had been drained gradually away throughout the night by rude people, malicious people and people who seemed to be doing their own thing and telling me answers to questions I hadn't asked!
I have been very drained recently. I came home off nights the other morning and answered the phone to my electricity company - Fire Service. It was very confusing, especially as I had no idea that I had done it either!! Oh how I laughed all the way to bed!
5 comments:
What are you moaning about??
You only have to speak to our control room every now and again. We have to put up with this all day every day.
(PS to all police controllers - I'm joking OK?)
I think the problem is just the way we say things.
If fire say "can we have your attendance" Fire Normally mean now.
But Police control use "attendance" to mean at any given time, What the police con op should of said was "Do you want the police to come now or can we visit the IP at a later time, cause we havn't got anyone"
It doesn't help that some police force's have a call centre and then a control room. AMB and FIRE calls should come through to the control room not the call centre (like Notts and Derby)
Stan.... Your now becoming my Sh*te job car.. Every domestic, Every fruad job is coming your way!!
Sounds like our coppers over here in the USA. Thick...thick...thick.
I hope you're going to blog some more - you post some entertaining tongue-in-cheek stuff - but noticed you haven't posted in a while - hope everything is ok!
I have two relatives, one is a control op and the other is a firefighter, and the stories I get range from amazing to gobsmackingly shocking to being ashamed of being the same species as some of the scrotes they deal with.
I was about to say, but others have already said it...
Being a police controller, I'd have taken that to mean "do you want us to attend NOW?" as in, can it wait until tomorrow, or do you have a good reason for us to attend immediately, like 4 firemen sitting on the arsonist, for example. :)
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