Force Control Room

Two years ago I had to call Northamptonshire Police in terms of an incident that happened and the call handler who answered that call was extremely helpful, empathetic and really nice. So I wanted to be that person for someone else.

I was looking generally for jobs within the police and it's just one that sort of called out to me at the beginning when I was looking. Yeah, I love it.
Being in the British Army has structure, I just wanted to make a difference to people. Saw the advert, applied, and here I am.

Well, we're the first point of contact for people with the police essentially. It's the force control room, that starts the whole process of policing I would say.
We take calls, so 999, 101 calls, and then we also have our online reporting platform, we have our live chat.

Call handlers downstairs and dispatchers, they don't see the end result of these incidents so they're dealing with the raw emotion, they're dealing with that level of vulnerability and having to support people and then walking away and going onto the next call and sometimes that is really really difficult.

The calls that I'm most proud of are the ones where someone whose, people who don't trust the police they still call asking for help. I end those calls and they say 'thank you, I appreciate everything you've done for me and I wish everyone else was like that', it gives me that sort of confidence boost and makes me feel like I've re-established that confidence in the police.

I think it was quite clear to me that it was the job for me. I love a chat so it's quite natural for me to have a chat on a call. But yeah I love helping people, you get really job satisfaction from what you're doing here and feeling like I'm helping people everyday, it just makes me love it even more.

There's lots of incidents that stick in my mind. An elderly female called in, didn't want to waste our time, she'd been laid in the garden for 24 hours. She'd managed to crawl her way up a nearly 100ft garden into the house to get to a phone and she called and all she could say is 'I don't want to waste your time'. I arranged an ambulance and police to go and it just sticks with me because that's what we do and that's what we're here for.

Obviously we manage expectations but I think that's the most challenging part of the whole role, just what the public think you can do. I think the FCR has the best group of people because we are that first point of contact so it's lovely working here.

This is where we identify the vulnerability, we ensure that we complete the risk assessments and we give the confidence and satisfaction to members of the public that we're going to get the level of service right to deal with their incident.

We know that we can make a difference and help keep Northamptonshire's residents safe.