How To Make An Emergency Call

One of the things I do for a living is taking emergency calls for the police. As such, I have a bit of an insight into the workings of emergency services, and also how people tend to use them. Most people seem to get the hang of it, but there are some people that don't. So, I thought I'd do this as a kind of a rant.

First: Tell Us Where You Are.
This is important, generally the most important piece of information you can give us. Even if you don't get the chance to tell us what's happening, even if you can't give us a name, if we can find you, we can help you.
At the very least, try to give us a street and a suburb. However, don't count on talking to someone in the same locality as you - I've taken calls from Cairns, Townsville and Toowoomba, and I can tell you right now, I don't know jack about the geography there. And if you're in West End in Brisbane, talking to someone in Cairns, they might assume you're talking about West End, Cairns. Ideally, give your street number, street name, suburb name, and more general locality, and we're cooking with gas.
Some of you may wonder why this is necessary, given that we've got technology that's supposed to tell us where you are. Well, there are a few reasons. The most basic is that it's not perfect. If you're calling on a mobile, the most it can give us is the billing address. And that's when it works - sometimes, we get the number but not the address, sometimes we don't even get that.

Second: Just The Facts.
I'm sorry, but it's more important to me to find out whether or not the person that hit you is nearby and whether they're likely to hit you or anyone else again than to find out the whole sordid history of how his girlfriend threw herself at you or whatever. In a car accident, I don't care whose fault it was - that's for the insurance companies to decide. I just need to know if anyone's hurt, how badly the cars are damaged, if any third party's property got damaged as well, and if there's a traffic hazard. (That is, after finding out where you are - see above.) Stick to the concrete facts, and we'll do just fine. (Your opinion on whether someone's drunk or drug-affected is a fact, and often relevant. Your opinion on whether police are doing their job is not.)
A subset of this is to try and keep your cool. I know this isn't always easy, especially if you're having to call an emergency line, but we won't be able to find out what to do if all you can do is scream down the line. (Especially if you scream over the code the Telstra operator provides so we can find out where you are - see above.) For some reason, women seem the worst at this in general - it seems too many women are conditioned to turn into screaming ninnies at the first sign of danger. This is odd, given the majority of nurses are female, and they routinely do things that would probably make me vomit - and I'm not particularly squeamish. Men don't seem to fall into hysterics as easily, but they fall prey to the endemic disease called Fucking Stupid a bit more often.

Third: You Are Not A Beautiful And Unique Snowflake.
There are only so many police out there. This is a sad fact. As a result, police have to prioritise the calls they receive. If your house is broken into, that's a terrible thing - it also isn't going to get much worse before police can attend. If you report a break-in on a weekend night, you can expect to wait several hours for police to turn up - and that's if you're lucky. Police are not ignoring you, they're busy - a favourite sport among certain sectors of the population seems to be "Get Drunk And Bash The Ex". By all means, call and find out how things are going - but getting angry will not help you, and may well even hinder you, depending on how vindictive the comms centre personnel that shift are.

This was all inspired by a call I received today. It mainly consisted of someone screaming "They're fucking mistreating me," "Help me," and other fragments like that. He appeared to be talking to someone else, rather than me, so I ended up yelling down the line in a vain attempt to get his attention focused on helping himself. He'd screamed all over the Telstra operator, so even on listening to the recording I couldn't work out the number. He'd repeatedly not answered me when I asked him where he was. He finally gave his name, then hung up.

If you make a call like this, you will receive no help. Not through spite, but through the sheer lack of information. What we knew was someone, probably in Queensland, was in trouble. That's *all*. Mobile? Landline? No idea.

It later came out that the person in question was calling on a mobile from Toowoomba. To be precise, from the back of a paddy-wagon in Toowoomba. Sometimes, it's nice to have someone's stupidity pre-emptively punished.