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In this episode we are joined by Tom, from the force’s Demand Hub, who discusses what it is like to be the first person to speak to someone in an emergency and in need of police support.
Tom talks about the types of emergency calls the force receives and the role he plays in protecting people from harm and ensuring they have the help they need.
Speaker 1
[Music] Welcome to Cambs Cops, Our Stories: the podcast series that delves into the Unseen World of policing. In this episode we're joined by Tom Wilby from the force's demand hub, who discusses what it's like to be the first person to speak to someone in an emergency who needs police support. Tom talks about the types of emergency calls the force receives and the role he plays in protecting people from harm and ensuring they have the help they need. [Music]
Speaker 2
So welcome Tom, can you introduce yourself a little bit?
Speaker 3
Uh yeah my name is Tom, I'm a call Handler within the demand hub. I've been doing the job four years, got some challenges as I'm sure we'll go through and discuss today but yeah it's a really good job, very busy environment if that's what people are looking to do so yeah.
Speaker 2
So you've obviously been doing it for four years now but going right back to the very start can you remember your first call and can you remember how you were feeling when you took that first call?
Speaker 3
My first switchboard call was horrible because I was not even saying Cambridgeshire police so I was probably still thinking I was in my old workplace which you always have to stop yourself. I guess like the amount of information um sort of um I've started doing switchboard training with new starters inductees and the amount of knowledge that obviously over four years I have inside my head of a policing environment is so much greater than it was when I started. When you start you're just so focused on ticking all the boxes making sure everything is correct and you're saying everything right, over time you can sort of pre-empt what people are going to be reporting. Obviously a lot of calls are very similar and we can start probing the caller, asking them questions and fully risk assessing what we need to do.
Speaker 2
So now do you ever find yourself at a loss of what to say, what to do or are you kind of trained in every sort of avenue that the call might go down?
Speaker 3
Yeah I mean we're not trained in everything but the training we do receive is essentially we're professional risk assessors, that's our job, something I'll chat about a bit later I'm sure is Thrive so threat, harm, risk assessment - that's a core part of our job and as I said as a new person on a switchboard for the first time they are going to be applying that but they might not necessarily fully understand what it means. When you're experienced and once you've done your what we call white line training which is 999 and 101 non-emergency training, once you've done that training which last I think about 10 to 12 weeks so it's very like intense crash course into policing on the phone essentially, um once you've done that 10 weeks that's spent you know looking at the system, understanding the systems we use, but also applying our crime knowledge, our risk assessment probing questions things that we do all the time in life anyway, but just trying to put it into one sort of area which is the policing, the crime aspect and safeguarding risk assessments that type thing. So we're assessing what's the threat, you know someone's got a knife, that's the threat, what's the what's the harm of this, they're going to get stabbed, so you know physical injury and what's the risk of this, the likelihood it's going to happen, is that person stood next to you or is there are they behind a locked door? So it's just understanding that risk and having them questions. Um obviously it's call control but you've that doesn't come overnight that happens with experience. Um got to be assertive enough and robust enough to push back at people, sometimes it might sound from an outside perspective perhaps that you're shouting at people but you're not you're just try to you know, they're in their moment of panic when someone calls 999 it's generally not to say what time the shops open, it can be sadly, but in general this person's in a panic they’re in crisis and they want someone there to support them on the phone and help them so you've got to be that person that's just there to support them and assess what is been reported and then get the best help that's possible. If it's not for us we can have that conversation. Also a member of the public will call us and they just assume that we're doing everything they think for all intents and purposes they think we're a police officer, we're not police officers, most of us aren't, we will put that information on the system and as we're putting that information on the system if we've identified that it's something we need to go to, now an immediate upstairs switch uh dispatchers straight away are getting hold of officers, we need to go to this, so as we're typing they're loading that information. It's not just a one person mechanism it's a whole process but as soon as we've rationaled that we need to go we're sending that, yeah dispatch are picking that up, they're allocating officers, you've got inspectors looking at that incident, you've got duty sergeants looking at that incident, supervisors are looking at an the incident, there's so many people involved in each process for the hundreds of jobs that we go through within a day to support that risk assessment - they're not making that for us, it's you know it's our rationale, it's our understanding of the risk etc and they’re doing numerous checks to support our decision making but we're not alone. There's yeah lots of support there.
Speaker 2
So you talk about speaking to people who are quite often in a state of distress, obviously calling the police they need help, do you ever find that it's a challenge to get the information that you need from them, and how do you how do you tackle that?
Speaker 3
Absolutely, so sometimes you just can't get in that information, you know if someone's in such a panic that they can't elaborate on what's happening then you've got to sort of listen use your active listening skills, active listening but listening to background noise. What can I hear going on? I tend to find that a few one liners on an incident sending that to dispatch they're aware that something's going on that we need to be aware of but at this point they can't really send officers because we don't know what's going on by listening to the background noise. If the caller has stopped engaging with us but we can hear background noise, we can hear shouting, we can hear things moving around, whilst you can't see physical you know you can't hear physical violence, you can hear people moving around and there could be a tussle and going on where they aren't able to speak anymore, the line's still open so and it's just a rationale that on the incident. You know I would say for instance no longer engaging with me, however this what I can hear in the background that's giving someone upstairs the input us to think we need to be going to this you know there's still a risk here and the risk is high so yeah I think it's sort of like reading through, understanding the environment that person's in, you know even sometimes if it's say something on the road, you can hear road noise, I can hear sounds like it might be in a car, you know that sort of thing, you can pick up them sounds in the background which might indicate the environment they're in yeah. And that's supporting our risk assessment.
Speaker 2
Yeah so with those distressing calls, do you ever find that you go home and you kind of it's difficult to tune out from them, is it difficult to switch off and stop thinking about it?
Speaker 3
Honestly for me no. I think it's really important that we switch off from it in that moment. I would say you have to like park your emotions yeah once we take that 999 call, no matter the situation even if it's something you've experienced in your own life, which happens we're all human, you just have to literally switch off from that, you have to park your emotions, you can deal with them at another time, in this moment we got to be fully focused on that caller and that's what we have to do, that is what has to happen because there's bits of information there that we don't want to miss. It could be a crucial piece of information, my main uh sort of like assessment when I'm going to call someone if it's you know domestic in progress, violence in progresses, is for that person to get themselves out of that situation, you know we're instructing you to get out of that situation, lock yourself in a room, get in your, car drive away, get out the property, anything, put physical barrier between yourself and the thing that's causing you harm - doesn't mean anything changes, it just means we can now have a conversation where you're not in that immediate risk anymore. Yeah um I know some humans we’re adrenaline filled and we're drawn to the danger but from a policing point of view we want you out of that danger and then we can come and assist you if you remain in that danger - that makes everyone's job harder and also puts you at tremendous risk of actually something more detrimental happening but yeah, it's just about kind of building the rapport in 999 calls, but also for the caller and the call handler to instruct that person. When you're panicking, you're not listening to people in general, you're panicking, you're focusing on your panic but someone just telling you get out of there, move yeah you know yeah you can do the basics if they try to give you like war and peace then you're just going to probably put the phone down it's too much information it's just got to be succinct and just the basics. Lock the door, you know really it sounds like simple things but as I said in that moment of sheer panic for people it's just overload. When I leave work, I don't watch the news, I don't really know what's going on in local media and anything like that I just completely switch off from it. I think it's really important.
Speaker 2
So another call that came through was the mother of a 12-year-old girl who had gone missing from home and the mother was understandably quite distressed, how did you handle that call, there must have been a lot of things going through your mind that you needed to
Speaker 3
Yeah to be honest with you, she I mean she could have been more distressed. She was quite on it actually, a lot of people will call up for people missing um and they've done no checks, they've not checked like local vicinity uh not checked hospitals I remember that one quite well she had already sort of checked in with friends, where she thought her daughter might be and she was on her way to be looking in them locations for us. That was quite a high grading because she was 12, it was the afternoon but she' been gone missing significant amount of time, she left home so from that with missing people the information that we need from the caller is quite a lot so when people report their friends missing we need to know quite a lot of detail. It's absolutely fine if you want to report your friend missing if you've got a lot of detail great if you haven't it's probably best if a family member calls, there's no right or wrong but we really need someone to be able to describe that person, what they're wearing, if they don't know what they're wearing habitually, what do they wear, do they wear joggers, do they wear jeans, yeah because we're going to have officers going out looking straight away for people that match. They're also going to be checking doors too, they'll be going to go to people's properties, have you seen this person, and especially when they're of quite significantly low age, this person's quite a young child so we really need a lot of information in relation to that but it's also pushing back to the caller as well - what other checks have they done? What the other thing with missing people is we need to ascertain is what was their mood like straight away. She was saying her daughter had mental health issues um she's been previously suicidal that's a terrifying thing to think of in any case but as a 12-year-old child going through that that's like you're know who so again that's that more impetus of what we need to do and how quickly we need to go. And I looked on the previous history for that so we've got lots of systems that we use um to go through previous history previous incidents and interactions with the police and she was known to us, so again that drives the dispatchers on to think this needs some more time and care for us to go and assist and deal with it.
Speaker 2
Yeah so you went from that call pretty much straight away into another call where someone was calling. There was a lot of commotion happening, they were very distressed and they were saying that they'd just been assaulted. How did your demeanour change going from that call to the next?
Speaker 3
I mean in terms of that one specifically, like we've got a missing person obviously which is a big concern but the mother was very engaging with me so the person speaking to me was engaging fully, answering all my questions, then we went into the assault where it was completely the opposite. All I was really hearing is someone's been assaulted, they've been hit in the face there potentially might be a gun involved, we're not sure. It's a domestic incident going on because the suspect is the brother-in-law so there's a lots of different things going on but at the same time this person wasn't really actively engaging with me so you have to constantly try and get them to re-engage with you. If that's not happening it's just got to be one of them notes on the system say we're not getting an engagement here but at the same time we've now mentioned a gun and now dispatch and the inspector duty inspector's concerned for the officer safety. Do we need to send firearms out? Do we need to send a different type of police officer out to deal with this threat? Obviously we don't want to put officers aren't invincible, unfortunately they're not bullet proof, so we've got to ensure the safety of our colleagues and staff at the same time as ensuring the safety of the victim as well yeah so yeah. That was a challenge more challenging call but they do happen it happens quite a lot it happens quite a lot but like I said I think in the moment I probably seem quite calm and collected even though trying to get information, and after the call you just have that down time yeah even if it's 20 seconds you just need that down time to just think that was it move on.
Speaker 2
Yeah so finally, what are some things that you do as um a call handler that might surprise the public, that they might not know that you do?
Speaker 3
I think the main thing that, not surprised but, I don't think they would understand necessarily is the volume of what we do. So I would for me personally when I'm calling up the phone company or mobile phone companies I wouldn't I'd rather report online, I would rather do it via web chat if I don't have to call someone I'm happy. Maybe it's a generational thing I don't know but I would prefer not to have to call someone or spend hours on the phone getting frustrated for them to close at 5:00
p.m. and cut me off just enrages me so with a lot of the stuff that can be reported to the police it can be reported online. The period we're in now with sort of technology is amazing we've got web chat um for us that's pretty much 24/7, there's a lot of questions that can be answered on there we also have online crime reports, we have online contact forms you can do uh subject access requests so if you’ve got information you want to know about yourself, freedom of information, the same stats about the police, that's all on the website it's really quite easy to use most forms take between five and 15 minutes to fill out yeah once they've reported that online and fill it in with their email address they'll get an online reference number straight away, that'll go through to their emails, it usually goes in the junk so you do have to tell people that because they think oh I was meant to get a report number, didn't get any and it's usually in the junk but they will get that reference straight away. That is us triaging that so it's no different for you speaking on the phone, I appreciate lots of people want to speak on the phone that's absolutely fine but there are waiting times, it's not as quick as doing on online by yourself but neither method is dealt within a different way if we need to speak to you we're going to call you yeah we're going to still have that engagement. I know using technology sometimes you think oh it's just a robot - web chat is a human, we're all humans it's not a robot yeah um so all of the information we're asking you is the same, we're still call handlers when we're taking 999 calls or switchboard calls. If we're fully dedicated then we will be raising crimes, online crime reports in the downtime so there is some downtime but few and far between. There's always something to do it's the world we live in. I guess they just don't really have that switch off time until you get home so yeah really really busy environment and there'll also be questions we don't know the answer to but there'll be someone somewhere that does know the [Music] answer. Thank you for listening to Cambs Cops Our Stories, if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can find new episodes and previous series to keep up to date with the force's latest news follow us at Cambs Cops on Facebook Twitter or Instagram.
[Music]