National Police Force

[cntryboy0531]

People always revert back to what they're used to doing, especially under stress. You can't really expect someone to do things one way 99% of the time and then do it a different way 1% of the time. We have officers who get excited occasionally and start talking in Spanish over the radio--because that's what they're used to speaking most of the time. The few times we've been on mutual aid frequencies for major incidents, people are always talking in code. This requires the dispatchers to constantly remind people switching to the frequency to use plain language.

I've been involved in quite a few large scale mutual aid situations, plus working Gasparilla (that was unique) on the mutual aid channel, and my personal two cents is that you do revert to what you are trained to do under stress, throwing out 10 codes while screaming bloody murder for help probably isn't going to effect response times. Too busy getting to them to worry about whether they mean ambulance or tow truck.

Most of the time during mutual aid stuff, even during large unruly crowds where us and the local PD's are on the same frequency, the switch to plain talk is usually pretty problem free.

But, that's just my opinion, take it for what it's worth. :D