Criticism of emergency call centres 'bang on' says former employee

An independent review of the police communications centres was "bang on" with the assessment of life inside the emergency "boiler rooms", a former worker says.
She said the panel acknowledged the technology was excellent, "which only leaves people".

"To me it's simple. The absenteeism, the stress and all the rest is related to lack of staff," said the former non-sworn employee, who did not want to be identified.

She said staff were invited to police debriefings on major incidents, but their workload prevented them leaving their desks.

"A lot of stuff they're talking about implementing is already there. There's already performance strategies, they just don't get a chance to implement them."

The centres were being treated as a call-centre rather than a command centre, she said.

"A lot of us felt the police run on 'yes people', and if you wanted to change anything or show something wasn't performing to its best ability, well you've got a lot of management who don't care about that. They're just there to do groundhog day."

Segregation took place between call-takers and dispatchers, although it was more obvious in some shifts than others.

The former employee said there was also tension between "comms" staff and police on the street, who did not "buy in" to the communications system.

"There's always been a bit of that culture thing where the comms people have been non-sworn, so you have a lot with attitudes of, 'I'm a police officer and won't be told what to do by a non-sworn'.

"But you also have cops on the street who are absolutely stretched to the limit and [this] adds to the problem."

It was well known officers made themselves unavailable for jobs.

"The business of units not showing themselves available is not because they want to be sitting around eating doughnuts all day.

"They have probably got inquiry files backing up because they keep getting called out to jobs."