Trial underway for new in-house Alice Springs police station call centre
A new cop call centre in Alice Springs is being trialled, with one policeman saying it’s equating to some ‘fast responses’ in the Red Centre capital. Find out more.
Red Centre locals will now be able to speak to a triple-0 call taker based in Alice Springs for the next sixth months, as part of a trial underway in the cop shop.
The trial – which is part of a CLP government election commitment – began on the first of October and is running for the next sixth months.
It is part of the $6.6m upgrade to the NT Police’s Joint Emergency Communications Centre, with the Alice Springs police now having four dedicated call takers as part of the trial.
On Thursday, NT Police superintendent Ian Kennon said two of the call takers speak local Aboriginal languages, but was unable to elaborate on which languages they were exactly.
The call takers in Alice Springs will work from 8-4, as police “want to make sure that we are getting the settings right,” Mr Kennon said.
“After that initial trial period, we will seek to obviously assess how effective it’s been and seek to extend that.”
In terms of wait times being cut down on triple-0 calls made in Alice, Mr Kennon said “that’s something that will be evaluated over the court of trial”.
“But we’ve already seen some fast responses from here, from the local knowledge, being able to take the call quicker and with the assistance of the Aboriginal language speaker, being able to get those critical details a lot faster and get those members dispatched to those incidents,” he said.
CLP Braitling MLA Josh Burgoyne was inside in the centre on Thursday, where he said the government delivered on an election commitment with the Alice-based call centre.
“We heard loud and clear from the community before the last election that when they called the police in their most trying of times, they wanted to speak to someone local who could understand where they were and how best to respond,” he said.
