Man held after hoax 999 calls

ADunkeld man has been arrested after allegedly making multiple prank phone calls to emergency services. The 43-year-old was spoken to by Police Scotland in connection with six false 999 calls made from a property in the Perthshire town between Friday February 12 and the following Friday.

The arrest comes just two months after a 48-year-old man was charged with persistently making hoax phone calls to the emergency services from an address in Perth.

The man was reported to the procurator fiscal after allegedly making two hoax calls to the police on December 10.

Officers said joke calls endangered the public by using up vital resources.

“Making malicious or false calls to the emergency services is a crime which is taken very seriously by Police Scotland,” a spokesman said.

“Hoax calls not only waste valuable resources but can endanger members of the public by diverting vital services from genuine emergencies.”

In February last year, the UK’s worst phone pest was jailed for wasting £100,000 of taxpayers’ cash by repeatedly making hoax

999 calls.

Holly Coogan, 32, was jailed for 12 months after repeatedly calling East Midlands Ambulance Service over a number of days in December 2019 while drunk.

During the same month last year, two youths in Aberdeen were charged and reported to the Youth Justice Management Unit for pranking the emergency services.

A 12-year-old and a 14-year-old had made a number of fake calls to the police and ambulance services.

Last May, a 10-year-old girl made headlines after penning a heartfelt apology to police for making a “double-dare” 999 hoax call during the pandemic lockdown.

In the note, the Tayside youngster said she was “incredibly sorry” for making the hoax call on April 25. “I understand I took people away from answering real 999 calls,” she wrote.

Regarding the most recent incident, a Police Scotland spokesman said: “A 43-year-old man was arrested after allegedly making repeated false 999 calls between Friday 12 and Friday February 19 from an address in Dunkeld.”