Call Taker
The Contact Management Centre
Responding to your calls 24 hours a day.
Our call takers are often the first point of contact for members of the public when dealing with the police. Dealing with callers in a professional and courteous manner is a clear priority for the Contact Management Department.
Call taking is split into two main parts - emergency (999) and non-emergency (222 2222) call taking.
On a yearly basis the call takers can expect to receive approximately 16,000 emergency calls and 750,000 non-emergency calls.
Of these calls approximately 385,000 become incidents requiring a police response with 32,500 requiring an immediate (or emergency) response.
The Contact Management Department links closely with the Crime Input Bureau where non-attendant crimes are handled.
With an average of 1400 calls per day, the Contact Management Centre is by no means a dull place to work.
We're based at Force Headquarters in Enderby. It's a very comfortable atmosphere in which to work, equipped with up-to-date telephone and computer hardware and air-conditioning.
I'm on a late today, which means working the shift between 13.00-22.00. The early shifts run from 06.00-15.00, while the nights cover 22.00-07.00. We rotate from one shift pattern to another over the weeks, although there is a certain amount of flexibility to help fit our lives in with our work and vice versa.
Covering the whole of Leicestershire, our job is to take all initial 999 and non-urgent calls. Working to a deployment policy, it's then our responsibility to grade the calls.
There's no knowing what to expect with each call that comes. The variety is as great as the uncertainty. One moment we might be dealing with a victim of a serious public disorder, and the next talking to a resident who has simply lost their house keys (by no means something that requires a 999 call, but it happens, and we realize that it can be a distressing experience).
The thing to note is that we are trained to deal with all type of calls, and all are taken seriously. We will prioritise and then pass the call on to the relevant department where necessary. No one is ignored.
Prank calls? They happen. And occasionally people phone up for the wrong reasons - again, we are trained on what advice to offer, and give out correct numbers.
People are often calling the police for the first time, or need to report a particularly distressing event, or both. There can be a lot of emotions flowing down the phone line. Being the first port of call, this is something to be aware of, and we have to use our common sense and initiative to calm the caller, ask the right questions, get the required information and collate it quickly.
But no one is expected to take on calls from the first day of the job! There's an initial training period of six weeks, and then after that another period of tutoring for about five weeks, or until the call taker is ready. There's constant support and development along the way, and room for learning a number of different skills.
There's also room for promotion, and naturally we get all the normal benefits as all Police Staff.