Call for service

A call for service (CFS, also known as a job, hitch, incident, callout, call-out, or simply a call) is an incident that emergency services or public safety organizations (such as police, fire departments, and emergency medical services) are assigned to resolve, handle, or assist with.

[1] The term "call" originates from the telephone calls made by the public to emergency telephone numbers to report the incident to dispatchers and request an emergency service response.

[4] The call types issued by dispatchers can often be vague due to predefined types issued by their agency or jurisdiction's legal code, such as "Alarm" and "Unknown Trouble".

[5] As it pertains to police work, when the call for service is broadcast over the radio, it is assigned to an officer who patrols the specific sector or beat within which the call for service originates.

Once assigned, the officer must respond and issue some type of finality back to the dispatcher indicating the action taken in order to essentially "finish" that particular call and prepare the patrol shift for the next call.