Thing is my brother's girlfriend is a dispatch officer and I've talked to her about this..

I understand it very clearly and the motivation behind it which is that a number for non ermergencies frees up the emergency line and prevents t**ts like toilet paper person from preventing serious emergency calls to be taken.

But that's the point. I kept asking her, so what is an emergency then ? And have the police issued guidelines as to what is and what isn't ?

Basically the flaw is that you allow the caller to set the perceived priority. Not only can that then mean some t**t can STILL do the above, and in less extreme cases but it can also go the other way. Somebody might be the sort of person who doesn't want to cause too much trouble so calls 101 for a raging house fire or something !

I'd say what would have been far more sensible would have been to add a two-line filter on the 999 number. Trained operators with guidelines as to what should be considered urgent and not could take the call, hear the short version, then filter it through to the correct priority. Might take slightly longer but I think overall it would be more efficient and while mistakes would still be made, it would minimise them.

Now you're asking the public to choose the priority.

Posted By: Steve in Holland, Dec 29, 19:17:05