Police hope to stop ‘wacky’ 999 calls about slugs and takeaways
POLICE ARE planning a publicity campaign to try to cut inappropriate calls to its 999 and 101 telephone services because of the scale of “frankly wacky” inquiries which are slowing response times to genuine emergencies.
South Yorkshire Chief Constable Stephen Watson has revealed one recent 999 caller wanted to speak to police to report “the discovery of an unusual slug in her garden”, while calls from people reporting incidents such as takeaway meal deliveries not arriving are also commonplace.
“Some of these stories are so frankly wacky people think they are somehow apocryphal,” he said.
“Someone dialled 999 to report the discovery of an unusual slug in her garden. This is not an argument to say all our calls are of that character.
“What we are pointing to is that the system is becoming cluttered with call like this, which doesn’t help. If we can take that out we have a better chance of dealing with the core.”
The force is now devising a communications policy to try to highlight to the public that they need to use the system appropriately.
A new computerised call handling system is being installed at the force’s Atlas Court centre, but has been delayed due to technical problems.
However, with the force now taking an average of more than 1,300 101 calls and dealing with 660 people on the 999 system every day, it would ultimately need more staff to dealing with a continued rise in demand, which would mean diverting police resources from elsewhere.
One complication for the force is dealing with the overlap of issues which people assume are policing concern when they might be better dealt with by other authorities, such as littering and fly tipping.
It is hoped in future that some pressure will be taken off the central call centre for actual police incidents, by encouraging direct contact between residents and the recently introduced neighbourhood teams.