Too many chip shop saveloys and an out-of-date packet of biscuits were among more than 22,000 time-wasting calls to the Met this year
- Call handlers identified 22,491 hoax 999 calls to Met in first 11 months of 2019
- Man calls 999 to ask for time and woman tells of mistake in her chip shop order
- Met police said the calls ‘put Londoners at risk’ who are in life or death situations
An extra sausage with a chip shop order and an out-of-date packet of biscuits were among more than 22,000 time-wasting calls to the Metropolitan Police this year.
Call handlers identified 22,491 hoax 999 calls to the Met in the first 11 months of 2019, the force said.
Overall the UK’s largest police force received 2,157,080 999 calls between January 1 and November 30 this year.
The Met have released audio of some 999 calls where the incident reported was not actually an emergency.
The first clip hears the call operator say: ‘Hello, you are through to the police.’
A man replies: ‘I want to know the time – the time.’
The call operator tells him that he has called on the emergency line for the police.
‘No, no, no, no I want to know the time,’ the man stresses before the call operator tells him the time and clears the line.
A woman tells the operator: ‘I only ordered one saveloy and chips – they’ve sent me three saveloy and chips’ (file image)
Call handlers identified 22,491 hoax 999 calls to the Met in the first 11 months of 2019, force said (file image)
One man calls 999 to ask what the time is
In another shocking call a woman tells the operator: ‘I only ordered one saveloy and chips – they’ve sent me three saveloy and chips.’
The third call hears a man dial 999 to tell the operator that ‘the biscuits were out of date’.
‘Not only did these calls waste police time and resources, they also potentially put Londoners at risk in what could be a life-or-death situation,’ the Met said in a statement.
Chief Superintendent David Jackson, who is in charge of call handling for the Met, said: ‘Although these calls can be perceived as amusing, they are actually a huge waste of the Met’s resources.
‘These hoax calls block the number from other members of the public who could be calling 999 in a real emergency, keeping people in danger waiting for longer and putting lives at risk.
A third call hears a man dial 999 to tell the operator that ‘the biscuits were out of date’ (file image)
‘If you are in a situation where you need to speak to the police, please think. The use of the 999 system is for emergencies only and we have other channels where you can speak with us.’
In the same period in 2018, call handlers took more than two million 999 calls, but 21,733 of these were unnecessary, the Met said.
The Met revealed how there were also 2,912 hoax calls to the 101 non-emergency police number in 2019.