The standard of the Central Engagement, Coordination and Alarm (CECAL) regularly experiences peaks, especially on the 25th of the month when salaries have been paid and alcohol disinhibits.
Geneva police gendarmes work at their desks in the Engagement, Coordination and Alarm Center (CECAL). (KEYSTONE / Salvatore Di Nolfi)
KEYSTONE
The Geneva police deal with emergencies 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It relies on the Commitment, Coordination and Alarm Center (CECAL) which responds to 117 and to a wide variety of requests. Report behind the scenes of the interventions.
“Emergency police, hello!” From the firecracker that explodes in a classroom to the rejected man who contacts 117 to harm his ex-lover, including the violent son, Christophe “jumps from rooster to donkey”, in his own words. This 48-year-old policeman has eleven years at CECAL, where around thirty officers work.
They are five in post at the end of the summer week. In front of them, a screen displays a map of the canton of Geneva and two others, covered with files, are used to enter requisitions into the recruitment assistance system. A fourth screen gives access to a directory of contacts and a fifth, below, to the police radio system. CCTV images scroll across the far wall.
“Share the feeling”
In shock, a teacher calls for a firecracker that exploded in a classroom where she was. “Are there any injured?” Christophe asks immediately. Her confident tone allows you to get to the point and calm the interlocutor, called “applicant” in police jargon. Even if the two young people probably involved have fled by bike, the officer contacts a patrol by radio.
“The information is more reliable when we talk to each other, it’s important to share the feelings of the caller,” he explains. On a screen, the number of the patrol changes from light pink, a sign that a requisition has been assigned to it, to fuchsia, once it is on its way. The blue indicates that the police are there and the red, that they are unavailable.
Field experience
“I want to tell you something, but I want to remain anonymous,” a young man said on the phone. Confusedly, he says he witnessed a drug transaction and would like the police to arrest the seller to protect the buyer, “a friend”. Christophe advises him to obtain the name of the trafficker, but he will not send a patrol.
“It’s better to have experience in the field to react appropriately,” notes Alexandre Brahier, spokesperson. You have to know how to keep your cool and give as much information as possible to the patrols. ” With the cell phone, people are calling more than ever before. A car accident can give rise to several calls. Attentive to the radio communications echoing in the room, the employees identify an event already known.
That day, a concert in the courtyard of a school generates complaints for noise, a problem that is sharply increasing in this year of Covid-19. With 5,100 requisitions between April and early August, the increase is around 75% compared to the same period in 2018 and 2019, according to Mr. Brahier. Noise generates an overload of work for CECAL on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m.
A trace in the file
An automatic message prompts you to dial “1” if the call is not urgent, but the operators of 117 still have to sort it out. “Some believe that the broken window in their car is an emergency, but if they haven’t witnessed the facts, a patrol will not be able to stop the culprit immediately. They can very well go to a police station for a report, ”notes Christophe.
Since an audit of the Court of Auditors in 2016, public security agents are in charge, day and night, of non-urgent calls, which represent half of the cases. This does not prevent the CECAL standard from exploding, especially on the 25th of the month when salaries have been paid and alcohol disinhibits. The police must manage the requests so as not to overload the patrols.
“The priority goes to physical integrity, burglaries in progress, traffic accidents with injuries or even conflicts. But we take every call seriously, people shouldn’t hesitate to dial 117, says Brahier. Even if there is no immediate intervention, as with a recurring nuisance problem, a trace will remain in our files. ”
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