'Remarkable' response to 2m emergency calls

Dubai police report fast response times to 999 calls in 2011.

DUBAI // Police dealt with more than two million 999 calls last year, statistics released yesterday showed.

The force has a response target of three rings - about 10 seconds - and last year officers at the operations centre met that goal for 99.7 per cent of the 2,044,154 calls received, officials said.

The figures were presented at a meeting this week to evaluate the performance of the operations room during the fourth quarter.

Maj Gen Khamis Al Mazeina, the deputy head of Dubai Police, commended the work of the department.

"The results achieved are remarkable and are in line with the force's strategic plan of 2010-2015," he said.

About 70 officers are on duty around the clock to handle and respond to calls.

The force aims to deploy a patrol to an accident scene within 15 minutes in an emergency and 30 minutes for non-emergencies.

Police planners have divided Dubai into zones of several square kilometres each, and police patrols are stationed so they can reach any point in a zone within seven minutes.

In the fourth quarter of last year, police were able to deploy patrols within 15 minutes in 93 per cent of all emergency situations, an improvement of one percentage point over the same period in 2010, according to Dubai Police statistics.

Col Omar Al Shamsi, the head of the control and command centre, had earlier described the operations room as the "spine" of the police force.

The centre monitors live streams from cameras in malls, as well as those installed at strategic points across the city. It is also connected to all police resources - including ambulance services, the rescue department, criminal investigation units, riot police and police air response teams.

The operations room uses software designed to facilitate communications between the centre's different sections.

The centre's central video screen measures 4 metres by 14 metres and can be subdivided to show up to 40 different feeds at a time.