At the time a person telephones the Department to request an officer's presence, a Dispatcher will ask you for your name, your address and the telephone number where you can be immediately be contacted. If the crime is in progress or just occurred (within the last 3 or 4 minutes), taking of this information will not slow our response.

The information you have provided is electronically transferred to the primary dispatcher by our Computer Aided Dispatch (C.A.D.) system.

As the police are responding to the call for service, the initial Dispatcher will continue to ask you questions. Your responses to these questions provide the primary Dispatcher with updated information that can be relayed by radio to the responding police officers.

Some examples of questions that may be asked of you are:

• What happened?
• When did this occur?
• Where did this occur?
• Are there any injuries?
• Do the injured person(s) need an ambulance?
• Were there any weapons used or seen? If yes, fully describe them.
• Do you have any information about the person(s) responsible for this crime? If yes, describe them by race, sex, age, height, weight, color hair, color eyes, clothing (from head to foot).
• Is a vehicle involved in this crime? If yes, describe by color, year, make, model, license plate number, number of occupants.
• If you saw the person(s) responsible for this crime leave the scene, which way did they go?

Based on the type of call for service, our Dispatchers will assign the call within one of four priorities. The four priorities are defined as:

Priority 1:
These calls require an immediate emergency response.

Priority 2:
These calls require a response.

Priority 3:
These calls require a response as personnel become available.

Priority 4:
These are all other calls not included above.

All police calls for service are dispatched by our police dispatcher. In all cases when fire service and/or medical aid is requested, the dispatcher immediately contacts the appropriate Union City Fire Department station or stations for response. In some cases, you may see police officers at a medical call. When police respond to medical calls, we are interested in how the medical problem occurred since, in some instances, the victim cannot protect their own interests. Police officers also respond to fire to assist the Fire Department with rapid evacuation, and/or traffic control, and in some instances, the police have to consider the possibility of arson.