Communications To The Police

The primary input to the command and control system, and the most frequent initiator of the apprehension process, is a call from a citizen, usually a victim of a crime or a witness tone. In the case of street crimes, however, it is often difficult for the victim or a witness to call the police promptly. A number of things can be done to improve existing street communications equipment to make it easier to reach the police.

The victim of a robber careful enough to steal his last dime cannot now use the public telephone. Public telephones can be easily adapted so that the operator can reached without using money, as was demonstrated in a recent test in Hartford, Conn., and as is now possible with equipment used by some small telephone systems. The Bell Telephone System is now planning to extend this capability widely.

Most major cities have a network of police callboxes that are usually inconspicuous and locked, in many cases about as numerous as street telephones. Washington, D.C., has, as noted, 920 such boxes, or about 1 every quarter mile. These are not now available to the public. During World War II, however, they were painted red, white, and blue, and made available to the public in case of air raids and other emergencies. Adapting callboxes to permanent public use would, at little cost, double the number of available locations from which citizens could notify the police of observe street crimes or auto accidents.

The false-alarm rate for such callboxes would probably be less than from a mechanical alarm, since a potential prankster would have to reveal his voice. While experience with a police callbox may not turn out to be fully comparable, one metropolitan fire department estimates the false alarm rate for calls received over the telephone to be less than 3 percent, far less than the 50 percent false-alarm rate for an automatic or mechanically actuated alarm.

Simply adapting a callbox system for public use is not sufficient to obtain maximum benefits. Each public callbox must be well marked and lighted; they must be easy to operate; and the availability of the system must be widely publicized. Apparently these necessary steps have not be taken by the majority of U.S. cities today.

A survey revealed that in five cities an average of only about two alarms were sent from each callbox in a year. Informal surveys have indicated that less than 10 percent of the population is aware of the presence and methods of use of the public alarm system. Merely providing such an additional communication link to the police without publicizing the benefits which an aware public can derive is leaving the task half completed.

Police callboxes should be designated "public emergency callboxes," should be better marked and lighted, and should be left unlocked. Since the foot-patrol supervision function, for which most callboxes were originally intended, is rapidly becoming unnecessary through more widespread use of radios, the public alarm function is probably the major reason for maintaining such systems at all.

When trying to call the police from an ordinary telephone, a person is faced with a bewildering array of police jurisdictions and associated telephone numbers. In the Los Angeles area alone, there are 50 different telephone numbers that reach police departments within Los Angeles County. It should be possible to use a single telephone number to reach the appropriate police department (or some other emergency center) directly. Great Britain has such a universal emergency number, "999."

Wherever practical a single number should be established, at least within a metropolitan area and preferably over the entire United States, comparable to the telephone company's long-distance information number. This is difficult but feasible with existing telephone switching centers; it appears more practical with the new electronic switching system being installed by the telephone companies, and should be incorporated. In the interim, the telephone companies should print on each telephone number disc the number of the police department serving that telephone's location.

Once the caller reached the police, he may be delayed because all the complaint clerks are busy.

The delay time can be reduced by adding complaint clerks, and an appropriate number can be calculated, as was illustrated in the example in chapter 2. On the basis of analyses the following general conclusions can be drawn:

Large police department should have at least two telephone numbers--one for emergency calls and the other for administrative calls--with the ability to transfer calls from one line to the other.

Telephone traffic studies should be performed so that the rate of calls can be estimated as a function of the day of the week and the time of day. An appropriate number of telephone clerks can then be assigned at all times.

Similar studies could be conducted to determine the optimum number of dispatchers as a function of the call rate, the number of cars on patrol, and the radio conversation times.

[remainder of Task Force recommendations]

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