When an emergency happens requiring the assistance of police, emergencies had to be conveyed via phone calls or text messages in order to alert and gain police assistance. In both methods, critical information such as personal particulars, real-time location and current situation at hand have to be relayed accurately before any assistance is to be deployed.
This, however, proved to be a big challenge to both parties of caller and police, as there could be multiple communication barriers during the reporting. Being in an already tense and disconcerting situation, the victim has the tendency to be incoherent; be it language barrier or time limitation in a highly distressing situation. In addition to this communication issue with the general public, minorities such as the deaf and mute have an almost impossible task when it comes to emergency reporting via this same method.
Another main challenge is providing the real time location in order for the police response team to reach the scene in the shortest time possible. As crime could happen anywhere, including places where one is not familiar with, poses a challenge for the victim to inform the police of one’s exact location. This is even harder if the victim is moving in a vehicle where real time location has to be informed.
Thirdly, if the victim is in a location that is out of network coverage area or if the line drops, the victim would need to recall and initiate the entire reporting process again when communication network becomes available.
Fourthly, with the general centralized call center that handles to receive emergencies call and then pass to the relevant police command center upon knowing the location of victim, takes up valuable time as information has to be relayed from one layer to another.
Fifthly, due to the lack of real-time identification of victim and criminal, the emergency response team deployed would have difficulty in locating the persons involved, especially in crowded areas. Additionally, it is also a challenge to provide the on-going at the scene verbally over the phone or by text.
Hence, the above explains the challenges of reporting a crime that requires immediate attention of police response. These challenges demonstrate the difficulty in alerting the police with critical information and thus resulting in police response team arriving to the scene untimely and unprepared. These problems, when overcome, support in reducing crime and gains public confidence of the police force.
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