Avon and Somerset Police have recently taken the rather bold step of placing time-wasting 999 calls onto YouTube. The calls, which involve people asking for help with questionnaires or trying to find their glasses, waste the valuable time of operators who could be dealing with real emergencies.
Here in the UK 999 is the designated emergency number, although in other countries it’s 911 or 112 etc etc. Calling this number should only be done in the event of a real emergency – a fire, robbery, attack or bad accident. However, with more local police stations going to part-time hours and some forces using 0845 numbers for non-emergencies it’s obviously a little confusing for some residents. This police force have decided to put their calls onto this YouTube page. There’s loads of time-wasting calls and I’m surprised how pleasant the operators are in the circumstances. If it was me I’d get their number, name and address and plaster it all over the Police website under a banner marked “Stupid ruddy idiots that call 999 for a Taxi or sore feet. Feel free to go round their house and throw sponges at them. MOB RULE! MOB RULE!!!”.
……hmm…. perhaps that’s why they won’t take me on as a police officer… :)
A selection of videos can be found below, although you can get the whole lot here.
Links – avonandsomerset.police.uk – Videos
This one is amazing………….