The voices of communications officers: an ethnography of a police control room

The Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) has repeatedly concluded that call handlers fail to record sufficient information on police incident logs and that dispatch staff alter call handler’s incident coding (IOPC, 2022). In the most serious circumstances this has contributed to the death of the victims of crime. Her Majesties Inspectorate of Constabulary police effectiveness report 2017, suggested that police call handlers and dispatchers manage away demand where resources are limited (HMIC, 2017). However, no applied research exists that describes either police incident log coding and interpretation or the factors that communications officers consider influence the coding and interpretation of incident logs. This thesis explores incident log coding and interpretation using a mixed methods design drawing on call handler’s initial incident log coding and transformations made to their coding by dispatch operators, and 48 hours of situated think aloud interviews conducted with call handlers and dispatchers as they coded and interpreted incident logs within a police control room Quantitative findings demonstrate that dispatch operators do alter call handler’s initial incident log coding. That where transformations occur, these are more likely to suggest police officers should attend incidents less swiftly or not at all. Qualitative analysis of interviews reveals control room culture, call handlers desire to maintain positive relationships with dispatch operators the construction of genre and a desire to meet quantitative performance targets influenced these actions. The thesis concludes that cultural factors influenced call handlers and dispatchers’ coding and interpretation of police incident logs rather than the objective assessment of threat, harm and risk based upon available evidence alone.