A lot can happen in 8 minutes! 

What can you do in 8 minutes? Make breakfast, add to your face book stories, take a photo of your breakfast and post it on facebook, jog two kilometres or make a complete goose of yourself with a social faux paus that will haunt you for the rest of your days!

But why 8 minutes you ask why not 2, or 10 or 15. Well 8 minutes is the time some Australian Police Forces use as their litmus test for satisfactory attendance at an urgent call for help. So that means the time it takes from when Police first hear the radio operator broadcast a call for an urgent job to the time Police actually arrive at the scene, the time deemed acceptable is 8 minutes. 8 minutes isn’t very long but, time is relative isn’t it? Try sprinting for 8 minutes that’s a long time. Better still try to hold your breath for 8 minutes that’s a very long time. 

But wait there’s more. The thing is, this magic number is calculated from the time the Police in your area are told that you need immediate help. This doesn’t include the time that it takes for you to call 000, ask for the Police, get put through to a police operator who then types the details of the emergency into a computer program and sends it to the police radio operator. The radio operator then has to see the job, read it and broadcast the job, a process that  routinely takes 2 to 4 minutes. That means a satisfactory time to answer a call for urgent assistance is now more like 10 to 12 minutes.  

Now think about 10 to 12 minutes waiting for help while someone is on top of you beating you.  12 minutes whilst your kids are hiding from an intruder in your house, 10 minutes of negotiating with a loved one trying to hurt themselves, or trying to stop your former partner from kicking down your front door.  Even 8 minutes in these circumstances is a very very very long time.

Now some may argue that it is unlikely that Police would take that long to get to you. But think about this, some metropolitan Police Commands from one side to the other are 30 kilometres or more in distance. Add traffic and constantly weaving through intersections and trying to follow a GPS, it is fairly easy to exceed 8 minutes. Consider also that many Police Commands only have three or four police cars at any point in time allocated to responding to calls for assistance. Consider how many calls police get and how much paper work they have to do. Now you can see that the 8 minutes time frame is going to blow out pretty easily. 

Now this isn’t a dig at our troops in blue. They work hard, they do an often-thankless job but there just isn’t enough to go around it seems at times. Hence the question is how can you prepare yourself, your family and your house to last 8 minutes. If you aren’t certain you know the answers to this then you need learn how to protect yourself for 8 minutes or maybe 12.  IF you need security advice our Security Consultants and Advisors, all former Police Detectives can help you remain safe and secure at home and work.