Confronted by a rat in their house, a local resident decided to ring police in Nottinghamshire to ask for help in dealing with the roaming rodent.
Another member of the public was eager to get advice from police over the phone about dealing with a noisy boiler.
These were just two examples of timewasting pleas calls fielded by operators working for Nottinghamshire Police over the past few weeks.
This latest flurry of non-emergency calls to 999 has now prompted Nottinghamshire Police launch an appeal urging people across Gedling borough to use the emergency number responsibly.
In the past year, Nottinghamshire Police revealed they have received around 180,000 calls to its 999 emergency number and a further 425,000 to its non-emergency 101 number.
They say that while the majority of emergency calls are made to request police support in genuine emergencies, 999 call handlers are having to deal with a fresh wave of spurious and misplaced calls which delay them from dealing with the most urgent request for help.
In the last few weeks alone, the force has received 999 emergency calls from members of the public asking the force to:
- Give advice on dealing with a rat in their home
- Book a taxi
- Share information about train timetables
- Send-out officers to give advice on a noisy boiler
- Advise the caller when their car insurance is due to expire
- Explain why a power cut has happened
- Explain why they’d been woken up by the police helicopter
- Provide the telephone number for another police force
On a Bank Holiday weekend when Nottinghamshire Police officers, staff and volunteers will be attending a number of events on top of responding to calls from members of the public, the force is making a fresh plea for the public to think before calling 999 so it can be on-hand to respond to genuine emergencies.
Superintendent Paul Burrows, from Nottinghamshire Police’s Contact Management department, said: “The summer holidays and the August Bank Holiday weekend are typically one of the busiest times of year in our Control Room. We’re expecting a similar trend this year, which is why it’s so important that we know we’re prepared so that we can be there for when the public really do need us the most.
“While some of the misplaced emergency calls we receive range from honest errors of judgement to the more unusual, there is a serious point to be made here as every misplaced call our emergency call handlers receive has the potential to delay us from responding to genuine emergencies.
“All we’re asking is that people only call 999 in genuine emergencies and remember that there are other ways to contact us for less urgent enquiries, with the Nottinghamshire Police website offering advice on hundreds of policing and non-policing issues and the 101 non-emergency number also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
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I’d be ringing cops if I lived in Netherfield. Hi police, i’m living in dump, please get me out of here its an emergency – LMAO!