 Central Communications Command hit the headlines in 2006, when Peter Smyth, a spokesman for the Police Federation condemned the Contact Handling System by describing it as "at best unreliable, and that's if it works at all".He added that "Metcall will have taken 900 officers off the beat by the end of next year, and meanwhile, an ever-growing army of community support officers who walk around like gaggles of lost shoppers have been recruited to take the places of these experienced officers in the streets".The local press in London, particularly the Evening Standard, were initially very critical of Metcall, often citing concerns about the perceived increase in the time taken to answer telephone calls and to deploy police officers to incidents.