A New Way To Annoy Your Radio Operator

I've been working at comms for about a year now. In that time, I've been a radio operator a fair bit, and there are a few things that cars do pretty regularly that annoy pretty much everyone. These include:

Not supplying enough of your callsign. Police cars in Brisbane have callsigns that basically consist of a letter followed by three numbers. So far, so good. However, out on the road the cars will often drop the letter in front of their callsign. There is one radio area in Brisbane where this is almost understandable - the South Brisbane area, where virtually all crews will have 'S' in front of their number. This is well and good. Every other radio area, though, the operator is dealing with at least two prefixes. In some channels, it's dodgy-but-workable to leave the letter off - the numbers can be distributed such that it's clear who's from where even without the letter. But this doesn't work for the Wynnum or Oxley channels, since there's duplication of numbers - but that doesn't stop 'em from dropping that letter. It can be just plain annoying to have to play radio chasey with someone just to find out who the fuck they are and what the fuck they think they're doing.

Expecting comms to be psychic. We don't know everything. We can't know everything. And we sure as hell can't know what a car's doing if that car doesn't tell us what they're doing. I've had cars ask for units to help them "at our location" - without bothering to let us know what that location is. If they're in trouble, they better stay clear long enough to tell us where they are or they're not getting any help.

Closely related is Constantly booking back on. It's nice for a car to let comms know when they're back on from doing something, to let us know that they're available if they're needed. What gets annoying is when the only thing we hear from a unit is that they're booking back on. That way, we know they were doing something - just not what, or where.

And then the catchall of Bitching and moaning. Yes, sometimes things crop up that will drag people away from their meal breaks, or what have you. We don't invent these things. If a car is the only one available, even if they're heading off for a bite to eat, when someone starts walking down the street with a gun, we can't afford to wait for them to fill their bellies. Much as we'd like to. We're not heartless up at comms, and we do feel for the crews who get unjustly flogged because of the amount of shit that's going down. If a crew bitches a lot, though, they give us a headache - and will often get the pick of the shittier jobs if comco's feeling vindictive.

However, I was amazed to discover something a crew did last night, that shitted me up the wall, that I hadn't actually encountered before. This was Never giving a straight answer. This crew was at the scene of a crime - what crime isn't important, just that it was one. The offenders were possibly still in the area. Some crews from a slightly different division offered to help. So it kind of ran like this (callsigns changed to protect the guilty)

Helper: VKR, does Blathermouth need assistance at that unspecified crime?
Me: I don't know - Blathermouth? Helper's wondering if you needed some help there.
Blathermouth: Well, we kind of turned up, and we thought we saw someone there, but they weren't there when we got in, but we think they might still be around somewhere. We're checking around at the moment.
Me: So... do you need Helper?

... that's right, they were asked a yes or no question, and they got it wrong. And it wasn't the last time they pulled it.

This may have been the first shift I've worked on both the phones and the radio where the radio has been more head-beatingly frustrating than the phones. And given that even morons can dial 000, that's saying something.