This kind of program started just recently here, with 119 being for emergencies, and 7119 for advice on non-emergencies or whether your case qualifies as an emergency. No idea how well it’s working out.
Incidentally, the number always touted as the one for “emergencies” only connects to fire and ambulance services. Police have a separate number, 110. To me, this just reinforces my semi-serious belief that if there’s ever an emergency and you help, whatever you do, don’t call the police!
I was a 911 dispatcher for 3 years for a neighboring town. The range of calls I got were from a dog shitting on someone else’s lawn to a woman trapped in her burning house and all types of calls in between.
With the town being a summer tourist attraction, we would always be over whelmed by number of people vs the number of officers on shift. The calls that would annoy us the most were the 911 hang ups from the number of hotel/motels in the town. We would always call back to see what was going on and while 99 percent of them were people trying to call 411, we still had to send an officer out to verify.
There was that one time where a family came over from a different country and had hand held CBs. They programed the town’s fire frequency in their radios and proceeded to talk to one other in a foreign language for 3 hours. It took that long for beach patrol to track them down and to get someone that could translate.
Well, if she got so freaked out even before the police showed up, I’d think that the shock of them actually coming would probably scare her off of ever calling 911 again. (I know if I’d done that, that, plus my parents’ reaction, would have put me off ever calling 911.)
Other problems:
Even now, the main police number for many forces takes you to a single call centre rather than the closest police station. Which may and may not be appropriate, depending on the circumstances. But the idea of a local bobbie sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring is going to remain fiction, or history, I’m not sure which.
Interesting thread TWB, I looked at applying for a similar job as an ambulance controller, but I thought it might be a tad stressful (yeah, I’m that sort of a slob)
Have mobile phones increased the number of false calls? We locked the keypad on my Dad’s phone for him when he told us he wasn’t sure how and he ended up accidentally phoning 999/112 using the keypad shortcut. He tried taking it out on us to no avail. My daughter did the same, she loves messing with mobiles and I was surprised when she started talking to someone despite the keypad being locked.
I’m not defending the Police force here, because frankly in this area it’s pretty shoddy because we’re massively and dangerously understaffed (or rather we have plenty of staff, but they’re all inside filling in the mountains of paperwork that the government add to every day… anyway that’s a whole other rant).
That said, because you asked a question, they don’t go out to burglar alarms because they go off all of the time. If we went out to every single one, there would be no time to do anything else. If anything suspicious has been seen or heard, like the sound of breaking glass, torches, suspicious people hanging around, then we will check. If not, we wont- we have to send our officers to what we know really are crimes that need our help. Yeah I know that’s not what you want to hear when next door’s alarm is ringing, but we have to make a decision, and that’s the way it goes. As far as I know, this is a national policy in England.
I don’t know how it works in your area- I figure you’re not English because you said ‘unarmed’ and even our cops are unarmed.
The King Of Soup your comment about calling ambulances for people who don’t want them reminded me of a sergeant I work with (for the record, with nearly thirty years service), who has twice called an ambulance for staff members who have ‘felt a bit sick’
BrknButterfly until a few years ago, we used a different type of radio that people could listen into without very much trouble. These people were very clever. They would learn the officers names and numbers, and use them to shout up over the radio. They would reply to calls and say they were going to jobs, and they would ask for vehicle checks on cars.
One officer was doing a drug raid on a house when someone shouts up over the radio for a vehicle check. The officer shouts back ‘Don’t give out any details- that’s my car.’ God only knows what would have happened if he hadn’t been paying attention and the criminal had got his address.
In an act which was frankly genius, a criminal gang used the radios to learn when the staff changeovers were, and which staff covered which area. They then carried out two bank robberies, at the exact same time, on banks with the same name at the opposite side of town during the shift change. Needless to say this caused all kinds of confusion because officers never knew which bank they were talking about, and when members of the public phoned in after witnessing it, a lot of the wrong descriptions got put on the wrong incident. They got away with massive amounts of money. But damn, they had style.
Bit more ranting to follow this morning.
Yes, mobile phones have increased the call volume vastly. I’m told that in the first few years they became popular (I was still in school at the time) they were receiving thousands of accidental calls a day because people sat on them or turned them on in their bag. Thankfully we now have a system in place where BT weed out the majority of the silent calls and just pass through those who have someone on the line, or sounds of disturbance, or have called three times without speech.
That said, our call volume is still much higher than it was because mobiles are so convenient. In the old days, if someone mildly annoyed you by cutting you up in traffic, or littering (yes, people dial 999 for littering) or swearing in the street, you had to wait until you got home or find a phone box to call the police. This gave to time to forget, or calm down and decide not to bother. Now you can have the police on the line instantly.
A fascinating thread - thanks, Why Bird.
I thought that these days they also have the Coast Guards on the menu? Or is that only for coastal districts such as mine (Humberside)?
Secondly, out of curiosity, who does the 999 operator work for? The phone company, I’m presuming?
Just a teensy question:
You don’t by any chance live in/around the Wythenshawe area of Manchester do you?
OMG this thread has made me LOL. Thanks Why Bird.
Sorry, I don’t know how to quote yet but the OP said it would be something if armed police arrived ten minutes after an incident was called in. &, with hindsight, I wouldn’t be the best judge of time while following a young rascal with a gun on camera.
I just reminded myself of an incident. A ne’er-do-well came to a gate and buzzed the intercom, asking to be let into a tower block. I called the flat and there was no answer so I refused him entry. He wouldn’t leave the car park so I informed him that he was trespassing and if he didn’t leave I would call the police. I called the non-emergency number and they said they would send a patrol car if they could spare one. He was waiting outside the door on the off-chance of tailgating into the building. Every five minutes or so I warned him over the intercom that the police had been called. It wasn’t a busy night so a patrol car arrived in an hour or so. I eavesdropped as he told the police he needed entry to the block and he wasn’t leaving until he got in, and he pays their wages (!) so they should tell me to let him in. They listened patiently, took his name & … it turned out there was a warrant out on the moron and he was arrested on the spot.
I’d think that if someone “cut me up”, I’d be more than mildly annoyed – assuming I hadn’t yet lost consciousness from bleeding! :eek:
(From the context, I assume you mean what my USA colleagues and I would refer to as “cutting somebody off” – which also sounds more sinister than it really is, if you’re unfamiliar with the idiom!)
Hey, it doesn’t just happen on Cops!
Wonderful. I think everyone is happy when this happens. It’s also great when the person who has a warrant against them calls the police themselves. They always seem so surprised when they get arrested.
Since a few people have mentioned stories about their kids calling 911/999…
**
‘Playing on the phone’**
This is what British Telecom call phonecalls where it is obviously a baby or young children messing with the phone, or older teenagers making what is clearly a hoax call. They go something like this:
P: Police emergency
Baby: [Gurgling noises]
P: Can you get Mummy or Daddy for me?
B: [more gurgling]
P: Is Mummy there?
And so on. When the phone is finally put down we can call Mummy back:
P: Hi , it’s the police here. We just received a 999 call from this number, is everything alright there?
Mummy: Oh I am so sorry! I just took the phone off my baby, I didn’t know she’d pressed anything. It won’t happen again.
And all is well in the world. However sometimes it goes more like this:
M: Yes it was my three year old.
P: Could you keep her away from the phone please?
M: I can’t do that- it’s her own mobile.
Your three year old has a cell phone!? Who could she possibly need to call?
Or:
Suspicious woman: Who is this?
P: It’s the police. We just received…
SW: Who are you really?
P: I’m calling from the police control room. Your child just phoned 999.
SW: How do I know it’s really the police?
P: Well you could call the non-emergency number and ask them to check if they had a 999 call from your phone. But I just want to ask you to keep the baby away from the line please.
SW: Why are you calling?
Now I admit I’m not a very funny person, and I’m not well versed in practical jokes but… wouldn’t that be pretty lame? To phone someone up and say ‘please keep the baby off the phone?’ If I was going to pretend to be the police, I’d come up with something a bit better than that.
(from a woman who has let her child dial 999 no less than twelve times in six months)
Woman: Yes?
P: Your child has been playing with the phone again. She’s called 999. Please put the phone out of her reach.
W: She’s two years old! It’s very hard to keep track!
P: Can’t you just put it on a high shelf, or watch her?
W: She’s two! It’s hard to watch a baby every minute. You try looking after a two year old.
I wonder if that will be her defense at the coroner’s court when the baby dies from drinking bleach.
Older kids call the police too, and usually at least try to get the police to come out. Often, they are too wussy to actually make a false call so we get calls like this ‘hithere’sadeadbodybehindmyschool’ and the phone slams down.
A selection of calls from children:
I don’t want to give the kids a bad press though, because some of them do extremely well. I’m always impressed when I get a child on the line in a genuine emergency because often they are much more calm and together than the adults. They are also more likely to listen to what I am asking them. So in support of the children:
'Scuse me, there’s, um… something in my eye. :: sniff ::
I’m about to go back on shift (hooray) so here’s the last little piece of my rant.
Wot it is, right…
Any call that begins with this is trouble. It is almost never a worthwhile conversation, and is usually followed up with ‘it’s not an emergency but….’
There are too many priceless calls to give you all of them so just a quick run down of the best:
I live in Luton. 'Nuff said, really. And cops have truncheons. I lived in Manchester for a while, in the Withington / Wythenshaw area. I had a major accident (I was cut out of my car) on the Wilmslow Road in 1999, and I cannot fault the speed with which everyone arrived!
Have you seen this story? It describes several incidents in which people complied with bizarrely creepy requests simply because the victims were convinced that police officers were on the other end of the line.
*In court papers, McDonald’s also has blamed Ogborn for what happened to her — saying that her injuries, “if any,” were caused by her failure to realize the caller wasn’t a real police officer.
Questioning Ogborn during a deposition, Patterson suggested that although she had no clothes, she could have walked out of the office, but stayed voluntarily to clear her name. *
Appalling.