I’ve been a police controller for 12 years. It’s not a popular role; most people don’t join the police service to sit behind a desk with a radio, a telephone and a computer, but it needs to be done.

In this era of service cuts, with fewer officers than there were, I spend increasing hours of my day ringing people back to explain why we won’t come out. Some of the reasons are good – we’ve cut out things we frankly shouldn’t have been doing in the first place – and they’re all based on risk and an assessment of whether people can sort out their own problems.

You run a home for troubled teens, for instance, and Johnny gets drunk and rings you from his mate’s house to fetch him. You have no one to go get him, so you report him missing to the police, using us as a very expensive taxi. We’ve started saying no.

You run a home alarm service for elderly infirm residents. If a resident presses their alarm button and you don’t have any staff to check on them, you ring the police, who come out without a key and have to bash the door down. Someone has to pay for the door, and we have to wait around for someone to repair it. We should say no, but we don’t. Too many agencies rely on us to pick up the slack because they don’t have enough staff.

You ring us because your violent ex-boyfriend is outside, drunk and pounding on the door. Will we come out? Absolutely. I pass that out for the nearest car, and the next nearest, as four officers to one offender will end better for all concerned. While they’re on the way, I map the address, look up the previous history on that address and what the man looks like in case he walks off and we drive past him. I pass on updates from the caller, and map read for officers who are driving too fast to see street names, following their GPS on my screen.

These are the kind of jobs I juggle, sometimes three or four at once. Our system is colour-coordinated: red for life or limb in danger; yellow for priorities, such as a house burglary, road accident or disorder in the street; blue for routine matters. On a busy shift my screen looks like the Spanish flag and there simply isn’t enough airtime on one channel for it all. Your ex is still outside screaming and banging on the door. If the door is solid UPVC, you can wait, if it’s an older wooden door, you can’t. We try to find out more. Are there kids at the address? Has he ever used weapons before? Last time this happened, how badly were you hurt?

I hate it. I have a 21-year-old daughter at university and I dread that she may have to make that call to the police herself one day. I can’t bear to think about what it must be like, to have to answer these questions when you think your life is about to end. I had a house fire two years ago, so I’ve had some insight into being on the other end of the phone.

There’s nothing unique in all this: my colleagues have all dealt with similar incidents. We’ve spoken to the tearful parents, with kids who’ve left threatening suicide notes and have a history of self harm. We’ve spoken to children: one 10-year-old rang me screaming when daddy was off his face on cocaine and throwing mummy around the house. I remember telling her to grab her little brother, lock themselves in the bathroom and stay on the phone, leaving daddy to it, as they can’t help mummy and that’s the safest thing for them.

I’m not here to invite sympathy or praise. I go home on time, and no one tries to hurt me. It certainly beats the risks of working on a building site, or walking round southern Afghanistan with a rifle and thinking about landmines every waking minute. If I know I’ve done a good job, that’s enough for me.

I’m writing this because I want you to understand that if we don’t get to you straight away, it’s not because we can’t be bothered or we think you’re unimportant. There’s a queue, and the current risk to your life judges your place in that queue. And if your call is nothing to do with us, believe me, we’ll tell you quickly.

You were burgled last month, and now there’s a suspicious man hanging around in the alleyway opposite and you want us to check him out. Perfectly reasonable, but if he’s not breaking someone’s head open, or climbing through a window, I can’t always send someone straight away. Your kid’s gone missing. We ask questions to clarify the risk, and you wait – the last five times he disappeared he was found drunk with his mates, so you’re probably a lower priority than the 14-year-old who ends up in cars or hotels with older men when she goes missing. But these decisions are not taken lightly.

The things I hear about every shift do upset me: my colleagues and I are not heartless. Sometimes, though, with the decisions we have to make, I can’t help thinking it would be easier if we were.

This series aims to give a voice to the staff behind the public services that are hit by mounting cuts and rising demand, and so often denigrated by the press, politicians and public. If you would like to write an article for the series, contact tamsin.rutter@theguardian.com

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