Nuisance and hoax calls – not what 999 is for

DRUNKEN requests for bus times and lifts homes were among the nuisance 999 calls received by South Yorkshire Police on New Year’s Eve.

On 31 December, the busiest night of the year, the force was inundated with such calls, including people making false reports of crime. One caller rang from Doncaster bus station to ask call handlers if they could help him get back to Pontefract as there were no more buses running.

Another rang, with the noise of a loud house party in the background, claiming he was Frank Gallagher from the television series Shameless.

One woman, described as “hysterical”, rang 999 after a taxi driver asked her to pay her fare up front and another called to say he had lost his house keys.

A number of false reports also took up valuable police resources. An 18-year-old man rang 999 claiming that a car had knocked him over and driven off at speed. Police graded the call as an “immediate response”, the highest level of priority, but found the teenager with no injuries. He had apparently made the story up.

The total number of calls made to South Yorkshire Police over the New Year period was up by nearly eight per cent from 2012. Between 6am on 31 December 2013 and 6am on 1 January 2014 there were 1,849 calls made to the force, compared to 1,710 calls over the equivalent period the previous year.

On an average day the force would expect to receive between 1,100 and 1,200 calls.

“Overall, it was a busy start to the New Year, with all South Yorkshire Police personnel striving to maintain a high level of service to the public,” said Tracy Potter, head of force communications. “What we could have done without were the nuisance and hoax calls made by people who obviously had nothing better to do on New Year’s Eve than waste police time and, potentially, prevent us from getting to a serious incident as quickly.”