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Thank you

Posted by Miri Barak on May 02, 2003

In Reply to: And that was a triple! posted by Shae on May 02, 2003

: : : Again from "crime scene investigation"

: : : 1. one policeman asks another to take notes for him because he is going to be sick and she tells him:

: : : "I got it, go get some fresh air. I heard it on the scanner. A quadruple. Figured you'd might need a hand.

: : : my question: what does she means by qudruple, is it the voice intensified four times, on the scanner?

: : : 2. the chief tells his policewoman "Call dispatch, you tell my entire graveyard shift that I want them here ASAP, no exceptions."

: : : I wanted to know the meaning of "call dispatch". does it mean to announce immediatly, maybe on the scanner?

: : : Thank you very much beforehand!

: : 1) Quadruple. Having read your previous question regarding CSI, where you inform how on the show, a father, mother and two brothers are all found murdered, "a quadruple" just has to be an abbreviation for "a quadruple murder", or the murder of four individuals. This construction is quite common in English - one regularly comes across "double murder", "multiple murder" or of course "mass murder" both in speech and text.

: : 2) Call dispatch. The noun dispatch (or despatch, which is an occasional variant) is here short for "dispatch room", and in this sense means the local police force's radio operators back at police headquarters - the officer wants them to contact all his "graveyard shift" (or all those on duty in the early hours of the morning) by radio. I'm unsure why this meaning of "dispatch" came about, but it's probably because one of the primary duties of the dispatch room is dispatching or sending out police in squad cars to various locations in response to incoming requests or instructions. Alternatively, it may stem from "dispatch"
: : meaning an important message.

: : Anyway, that's what it means.

Thank you all three, you are so helpful.
and Indeed it doesn't seem a very nice episode.

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