If you are in a life threatening situation or emergency dial triple zero (000) and ask for police.
If you are witnessing a or wish to report a crime please contact ACT Policing on 131 444.
If you have information about illegal activity or suspected perpetrators relating to crime anywhere in Australia, you can help by providing information to Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or via the ACT Crime Stoppers website.
On this page:
Firstly, our dispatchers really want to ensure that the safety of the public is maintained and that we can respond to your call as soon as possible. So, if you have a life threatening emergency, you need to ring triple zero (000) and ask for "Police ACT". You need to stay on the line until our dispatchers pick up your call.
When our dispatchers answer your call we need to ask you some questions. Generally we would ask you the following, so keep these in mind if you are reporting an emergency:
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Where are you? We need to know if you’re at a house, let us know the full address including house or unit number, street and suburb. If you’re in the street, attempt to tell us any street names nearby or major landmarks. You would be surprised; our dispatchers are pretty good at identifying places from landmarks nearby.
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What is going on? Our dispatchers pride themselves on providing quick responses to emergency phone calls. As such, we need as much information as we can to make a decision on how we respond to you. Please tell us exactly what is going on so we can respond appropriately.
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Is anyone injured? If your emergency involves violence or injuries of any kind, our dispatchers are able to notify ACT Ambulance immediately to attend with police. Please let us know what gender the injured person is, roughly how old they are and what specific injuries they are suffering so we can get help to you straight away.
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Are there any offenders? Quite often ACT Policing Operations dispatchers receive emergency calls involving other parties such as offenders. It is absolutely vital that we receive as much information as possible to give attending police so they help you. If you can, please provide us with a description of any other parties. The information we like to receive is information such as gender of the other party, if you know their name, what they look like (hair, facial features) and what they are wearing.
If needed, a dispatcher will ask you more questions. Don’t worry, it may seem like we are asking a lot. However in reality, the dispatcher has already arranged for police to attend within seconds of your call though it still may take some time for police to attend dependant on where they are.
The ACT Policing Operations staff take reports from the public that are not emergencies such as reports of thefts, property damages, stolen motor cars or motorbikes and lost property amongst other things. We do this via 131 444.
We will still ask you questions, however these are a little bit more in depth and it would help for you to have this information before calling.
Things our operations staff like to know include:
- serial numbers of property that has been stolen or lost (mobile IMEI numbers etc)
- how much the property is worth
- the circumstances surrounding the incident (where were you at the time, how did it occur)
- full registration details if you report involves a motor vehicle in anyway (your vehicle has been broken into or you have seen a suspicious vehicle)
This information allows our staff to make a decision as to whether police need to attend to you or if we take a crime report over the phone.
If we take a report over the phone, we will issue you with a report number. This report number can be used for further correspondence only if it relates to the original report. It can also be used for insurance purposes.
Report a crime online will commence in the not too distant future. Until then, our staff at ACT Policing Operations will continue to work 24/7 in taking reports and dispatching police to incidents as required.
Please don’t hesitate to give us a call. If we cannot help you, we have other avenues of support available such as Supportlink.
We encourage all members of the public to report criminal incidents to us. All contact that the public has with our organisation is recorded and while not all reports will result in attendance by our members, those reports form part of the intelligence process that identifies issues and directs the targeting of patrols.
The coordination of efficient and effective responses to calls for assistance from members of the community is the responsibility of ACT Policing Operations.
The allocation of our resources continues to be managed in accordance with the three-level priority response model. The model ensures that our resources are deployed to the most serious incidents at any given time.
The categories for the three level response model (previously four) are:
- Priority one – life threatening or time critical situations
- Priority two – situations where the information provided indicates that the time is important but not critical
- Priority three – situations where there is no immediate danger to safety or property but police attendance is needed no later than 48 hours from the initial contact by the complainant or a time agreed with the compainant