Полиция и порядок. Артемьева О.А - 25 стр.

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What, lost the keys again?
Text 23. Information room
The ‘Information room’ is in the headquarters of the police force and is manned day and night by a team of specially trained
police officers. The Information Room receives all emergency calls from the public and directs patrol cars to the scenes of crimes,
accidents, or other incidents requiring police help. The Information Room also keeps in radio touch with the patrol boats on the
Thames and patrol helicopters. The room consists of a number of telephone booths, which are connected with the emergency-call
system of the town or city (the ‘999’ calls) and where calls from the public for police help are received.
A large table in the middle of the room is covered with a detailed map of the police district, showing all the streets and the patrol areas
of the police cars. The cars themselves are shown by coloured tokens – cubes, pyramids, or circles – which represent the type of duty
on which the cars are engaged and which are moved about on the map according to the information which comes in from the
observers. The radio operator in touch with the cars is placed so that he can see the table and at the same time get messages from the
telephone operators.
A senior police officer supervises the whole room.
When a call for help comes in, the telephone operator calls out the name of the street as soon as he gets it and then goes on to
take down details of the crime, accident, or whatever it may be. The radio operator or the supervising officer meanwhile notes which
car is nearest to the scene and instructs it to start moving in that direction. As soon as the rest of the details are known, they are passed
on to the driver and observer, but the chief aim is to get the car moving towards the spot first.
Between three hundred and four hundred calls are dealt with in London every day, on public holidays, or on other occasions
when big crowds gather, there have often been more than a thousand calls for help at Scotland Yard (headquarter of the Metropolitan
Police) in one day.
The usual time lag between a report to the information room and the arrival of a car on the spot is about four minutes. It has on
occasions been even less. In one recent case in London, a report was received in the information room at Scotland Yard to the effect
that two thieves were trying to break into a warehouse. A police car happened to be turning into the road where the warehouse lay as
the report was being made. The address was relayed immediately to the car, and the thieves were caught before the individual making
the report had finished talking. The whole incident took less than two minutes.
The system suffers from false alarms, but not as much as the other emergency-call systems such as the fire alarms. False
police alarms are also easier to trace. An annoying outbreak of false calls in Birmingham was cleared up simply by keeping
the caller talking while the call was traced. A police car was on the spot in less than a minute and the offenders, four
schoolgirls, were caught red-handed. (They later admitted that they had been making the calls from different parts of the
town and had then retired to hiding-places near by in order to enjoy the excitement of watching the cars arrive.)
Task 1. Find English equivalents of the following sentences:
- штаб квартира полицейских сил;
- принимать срочные звонки от населения;
- направлять патрульную машину на место преступления;
- поддерживать радиосвязь с патрульными лодками;
- детальная карта полицейского района;
- принимать сообщение от телефонного оператора;
- обычный временной интервал;
- ворваться на склад;
- поворачивать на дорогу;
- поймать вора;
- отслеживать телефонные звонки;
- поймать с поличным.
Task 2. Find the right answer or answers.
1. The team of specially trained police officers of the Information Room
a) receives all emergency calls from the public;
b) directs patrol cars to the scenes of crimes, accidents, or other incidents requiring police help;
c) investigates crimes;
d) keeps in radio touch with the patrol boats on the Thames and patrol helicopters.
2. In the Information room there is

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