There is a moment – familiar to every emergency call handler, on every shift, in every country on earth – when the phone rings and the world holds its breath. The operator picks up. What comes through the line in the next three seconds will determine what happens next. A child not breathing. A man with a gun at the door. Smoke filling a kitchen. A car overturned on a curve in the dark.

In Jamaica, that moment happens thousands of times a day.

The Police Emergency Communication Centre (PECC) receives an estimated 5,000 to 9,000 calls every single day on its 119 emergency line. Somewhere in that queue is a cardiac arrest, a domestic violence situation spiralling beyond return, a road accident where the next five minutes are the difference between life and paralysis.