Manual Incident Cards

On April 17th the following message was posted by Kevin Willett at Public Safety Training Consultants, who operates the 911 CARES program:

For America's large comm centers, most dispatchers can't remember when everything was done manually...you know, with pen on paper. But it was just within the past 10 years that computer-aided dispatch became a common tool in comm centers. Back about 1970 the Berkeley (Calif.) police department upgraded its old high-band VHF radio system to a 460 MHz system (still used today), and installed a new comm center inside its 1939, WPA-built Hall of Justice. The comm center featured curtains on the walls to reduce noise, two radio dispatch consoles (1 police, 1 fire) with back-lighted maps of the city, and four calltaker positions located directly behind them. Running between the positions was a motor-driven conveyor belt (constantly running!) that carried IBM cards from the calltakers to the radio dispatchers. This system was used up until 1991, when the department moved to another new comm center and cranked up CAD.

There were several different types of cards (all precisely 7-3/8" by 3-1/4", the size of a U.S. dollar bill of ~1900) used in the original center:

  • salmon (orange) -- "stat" card, used by radio dispatcher to log miscellaneous unit movements
  • white (actually off-white) -- incident card for police cases generated by the calltakers or officers in the field
  • blue -- fire incident
  • yellow (slightly orange-yellow) - alarms

Each card featured spaces for a mechanical timestamp for key times: received, dispatched, arrived, in-service. They also contained spaces for information specific to their type, i.e. the alarm card would have spaces for the alarm company name and operator ID, the business name, area of activation, etc. The cards were filled out, sent up on the conveyor belt (two belts: one colored red for "hot" incidents and the other for routine incidents). The cards were used by the radio dispatcher to send field units, and then shoved into slots in the console corresponding to the unit ID. When a card was in the slot, it changed the color of the unit ID on the lighted map to red. When the card was removed, the unit ID light was green.

When they were introduced, the cards were actually punched and tablulated for statistics. However, by 1986 or so, a records management system made the punching and tabulation unnecessary, but the cards were still stored and retained for reference.

The status lighting system was actually more complex than that...check our separate page that explains the old Motorola status consoles.

Here are three of the surviving cards--police incident, stat and fire incident . The first two are unchanged from their 1970s design. The fire card has undergone several revisions to track more times and the addition of EMS unit activity. [more on IBM cards and also this index of info]

These cards are still used for manual operation in the event CAD goes down, etc. They were originally designed to be printed on card-stock, authentic IBM-type cards with rounded corners. Now they're printed on card stock the same size as IBM cards, but with right-angle corners.

Stat Card

This card was timestamped--received and cleared--and the radio dispatcher put a check mark next to the type of activity the officer handled. The "Received:" box in the lower right corner was for the dispatcher's ID number.

Police Incident Card - front

The fields are:

  • R.R. Use -- Report Review, the unit that analyzed the cards
  • P - Platoon that handled the incident
  • B - beat of the incident location
  • C - Census tract of the incident location
  • Officer - handling officer
  • Cover - Unit of the assisting officer(s)
  • Case No. - the year and sequential number
  • Received/Broadcast/Arrived/Cleared - the timestamped times
  • Victim, Date/Time Occurred, Address (of the victim or reporting person), location of occurrence, Phone, Now At, Reported By - These are self-explanatory
  • Complaint-Details - Where the calltaker entered all the details.
  • REC'D - The badge number of the calltaker

Police Incident Card - reverse

  • Additional Details - other information that didn't fit on the front
  • Description of Suspects - the standard information
  • ID Tech Notf'd - the time the Identification Technician was notified if needed
  • DD Notf'd - the time that the Detective Division was notified if needed
  • JB Notf'd - the time that the Juvenile Bureau was notified if needed
  • Auto Color, Year, Make, Model - description of any involved vehicle

Fire Incident Card

The original fire incident card mirrored the police incident card, and had spaces for the mechanical timestamp. This later revision included many more spaces that were all hand-entered. Notice that most of the date, time and unit ID fields have "combs" or little tick marks to help the dispatcher enter the information correctly. The complexity of this card came party from the need to gather information for the state's fire incident reports, and the National Fire Incident Reports System (NFIRS), which requires lots of specific data. If you think this is complex, check the reverse side! Most of the fields are self-explanatory, but....

  • Supp (8-9) - used to designate "sub-incidents" at the same location, in the format 01, 02, etc.
  • Alarm Source - UCPD is the University of California Police, PFAS is private fire alarm system
  • Alarm level - the highest level (1-3 in Berkeley)
  • District - the two-digit fire response district of the incident location
  • Census - census tract of the incident location
  • Hospital - the code of the hospital that any patient was transported to
  • Life Support Designation - circle A or B
  • Type # - a code indicating the type of medical incident; given by the paramedic unit after the incident
  • Shift - letter A, B, C indicating which fire shift handling the incident
  • Dispatcher - the two spaces are for the calltaker and radio dispatcher

Fire Incident Card - reverse

On the back side of the fire incident card, the top row of large boxes are used to record the times of the first or single unit responding (the timestamp could be used). The rows below that are used to record the times of additional units that responded to the incident.

The lower half of the card is to record information about responding medical units, and their unique times: dispatched, rolling, left for hospital and at hospital.

For an incident that involved a fire response (3 engines, truck, ambulance, assistant chief, this card could have six separate units and the associated times. Naturally, a 2nd or 3rd alarm would pretty much overwhelm this card!