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Contacting the Police

At a recent meeting of CDDCC, Constable Graham Wilson described the background to the various ways of contacting the police by telephone.

He first introduced himself by saying that he had served some 20 years in the police.  This consisted of 13 years in Kincardineshire and around 6 in plain-clothes work in Aberdeen City prior to his recent move to Banchory.

He described the modern trend of policing, which was a move towards intelligence-led policing and away from local beat patrolling.  This meant that resources could be targeted, but also meant a reduction in day-to-day personal contact with the public.  This made the police more dependent upon receiving relevant telephone reports.

A call centre had been set up for the whole of the Grampian Police area. This was staffed by civilians, but still located in the North-East. It used the telephone number 0845 600 5 700.  Incoming calls were categorised for action as follows:-

  • Category 1 – emergency response required
  • Category 2 – response required, although non-emergency
  • Category 3 – non-emergency, follow-up action required
  • Category 4 – non-emergency, follow-up action required

Most car crashes and domestic altercations fell into categories 1 and 2.

Depending on the balance of resources and workload, categories 3 and 4 might not be actioned for several days.

In addition to this call centre, there were also the regional “Crimestoppers” telephone number 0800 555 111 and the emergency number 999.  Less-urgent calls on 999 could, at the operator’s discretion, be dealt with via the call centre.  Equally, category 1 calls could be actioned via the 999 process.

It was noted that some people had been discouraged from reporting vandalism etc. to the 0845 600 5 700 call centre by their insistence on knowing the name and address of the person making the report. Const. Wilson said that, in such circumstances, people should say that they wished to make an anonymous report and that they had been told by him that reports were essential to the proper working of intelligence-led policing.