Extra cops on duty to deal with busiest day of the year
ADDITIONAL police officers were patrolling the streets of Glasgow to deal with the busiest day of the year.
Emergency services including police and ambulance staff were inundated with calls throughout the day.
In order to cope with the surge, some workers volunteered hours of their own time.
In the 72 hours leading up to the busiest day of the year, Police Scotland received more than 2400 calls with 762 being deemed to be an emergency.
The calls resulted in 506 crime reports being recorded by the service.
Officers also dealt with 66 missing person reports, 141 calls regarding vulnerable people and 97 domestic incidents.
To deal with the high number of incidents, four special constables volunteered 53 hours of their own time.
By Friday morning, the Scottish Ambulance Service was trending two per cent above their expected number of 999 calls.
Up to 24 emergency and 27 non-emergency call han- dlers are on duty to deal with calls.
Police Scotland are asking the public to help ease the pressure off their workers by only dialling 999 in real emergencies.
As previously reported by the Evening Times, a member of the public has been slammed for calling 999 to complain a Glasgow city centre shop refused to refund her for boots which didn’t fit.
The force said that a handler at their call centre in Govan had received the bizarre complaint on the line which is dedicated to emergencies only.
Police Scotland said: “One of our Service advisors in Govan has just taken a 999 call from a woman in Glasgow City Centre complaining that a shop is refusing to refund her for a pair of boots she bought which didn’t fit.”
Another woman was contacted by call handlers to advise that her lost purse has been handed in and available to collect from the station but told advisors this wasn’t good enough and requested it to be delivered to her.