Mobile phones 'add to rise in trivial 999 calls'
Monday, 3 January 2000
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Unintentional 999 calls are putting increasing pressure on the emergency services. The number of people mistakenly ringing the number has surged as the ownership of mobile phones increases, police warned yesterday.
Unintentional 999 calls are putting increasing pressure on the emergency services. The number of people mistakenly ringing the number has surged as the ownership of mobile phones increases, police warned yesterday.
About two million 999 calls a year are received by police in London and this number is rising annually at a rate of 6 per cent. Some 80,000 unintentional calls are made by mobile phone users.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, said that the number of calls was increasing by a "huge amount", partly because of a record year for sales of mobile phones. "They all add to the pressure on 999 calls. So we have got a Met that's beginning to be run a bit ragged around its resources," Sir Paul said.
More than one million mobile phones were sold in the run-up to Christmas and another three million are expected to be bought this year, according to the Federation of Communication Services. It said there would be 23 million subscribers in the UK by the end of 2000.
Some forces, including South Yorkshire, have introduced measures to reduce the number of trivial 999 calls.
They are now transferring any non-emergency calls to a recorded message that advises callers to ring the central switchboard number.
A spokesman said the force was receiving an increasing number of "inappropriate, time-wasting" calls.
One man, for example, rang 999 to say two squirrels were fighting in his back garden, while a couple who had handcuffed themselves together "for a joke" rang to inform police they had lost the key.
A woman who was having a problem with her knitting dialled 999, as did another woman driving on the M1, who wanted to know the time.
A man rang South Yorkshire Police to request they deal with the birds singing on his roof because he could not get any sleep.
The Thames Valley force said it had been contacted about ghost stories, Elvis sightings and requests for taxis.
Sir Paul, who is due to retire at the end of this month, has pledged to use his final weeks in charge to try to reverse the decline in numbers at the Met.
In the seven years that he has headed the country's biggest force, it has been reduced from more than 28,000 personnel to 26,200.
