Identification of persons based on verbal descriptions
is one of the key skills of police work. This includes
identifying suspects, but also locating missing persons,
identifying a person needing help in a public assist call, or
finding and helping a person who is threatening suicide.
Correct identification can lead to reduced loss of life,
reunions of missing persons with their loved ones, and
apprehension of suspects, while incorrect identification
can have terrible unintended consequences for both
officers and civilians.
Traffic incidents (collisions and crashes) are among the
most common call types handled by Emergency
Communication Centers (ECCs). They are also among the
most complex call types because they represent such
a range of possible situations. These can range from
“fender benders” with no injuries and little or no property
damage—in which case a single law enforcement officer
might be an appropriate response—to mass-casualty
events involving trains, buses, or other large, multipassenger vehicles.
Identification of persons based on verbal descriptions is one of the key skills of police work. Gathering as much description information as possible immediately following the event—for example, at the point of emergency police dispatch—could substantially improve the accuracy of suspect descriptions, the ability to locate missing persons quickly, and other key outcomes of effective police work. The primary objective of this study was to determine what amount and type of persons description information is collected by...
Traffic incidents (collisions and crashes) are among the most common call types handled by Emergency Communication Centers (ECCs). They are also among the most complex call types because they represent such a range of possible situations. ECCs that handle calls in multiple disciplines (medical, fire, and law enforcement) may have multiple protocols available for handling traffic incidents because the Medical Priority Dispatch System, Police Priority Dispatch System, and Fire Priority Dispatch System each contains its own traffic and transportation incident protocol...
Providing information about possible weapons on scene is an essential objective of police dispatching and clearly valuable to officer safety. However, up to now, no information has been available about how often callers report weapons as "involved or mentioned" in an incident, what types of weapons are most commonly reported, or which incident types most commonly have reported weapons associated with them. The primary objective of this study is to determine which types of weapons are reported most often and on which Police Priority Dispatch System (PPDS®)...
Time-to-dispatch in a 911 center continues to be a topic of much discussion in public safety. This study represents a first attempt to classify a subset of time-todispatch, call prioritization time, the time required to gather critical information prior to dispatching the call. The study characterizes call prioritization time in two Police dispatching agencies by determining overall median call prioritization time for all Chief Complaints (CCs) in the agencies studied, then by determining specific call prioritization times for the top five most commonly-used CCs...
The reality of police dispatching is that there is nothing routine. Police calls change frequently simply due to the type of business. A perceived cold call of "breaking and entering" into a property can quickly turn into an in-progress "robbery" when it is discovered that a suspect is on the scene and has a weapon. A report of an "assault" can quickly turn into an "active assailant (shooter)" situation, one of the most dangerous and complex types of incidents. The constantly-changing police world is just never routine. Because of the constantly-changing nature of policing and police...
911 centers receive a wide variety of calls for police-related incidents. Using the Police Priority Dispatch System (PPDS®), a 911 Emergency Police Dispatcher (EPD) categorizes each incident with a specific Chief Complaint (CC) and prioritizes the case using a systematic alpha-numeric coding matrix. The wide variation in CC types and specific codes assigned can profoundly affect staffing and resource deployment decisions made by law enforcement agencies. However, the frequency of specific call types and priority levels in the PPDS has not been studied formally to date. The objective of...
