On 24 April 2012 13:48, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
In terms of wasting time I believe that the biggest problem they face is people calling 000 for things which MIGHT require a police response but don't require an urgent response. That means you don't call 000 if someone is having a noisy party, to report something that happened yesterday, or because you think that someone's clothing doesn't look decent.
Having a noisy party is a bad example here. I seem to remember articles saying you most definitely should call 000 for noise complaints. It might seem like a minor thing to you, but the noise could be as a result of the party starting to get out of control, requiring urgent police assistance. The police dispatcher can mark it as low priority - however this is a decision that the dispatcher needs to make. Not you. It could be that your information combined with other information they already have increases the response from code 3 (no lights/siren) to code 1 (lights and siren). The other examples are good. Reporting something that has already happened never requires emergency assistance, and the police can't really do anything about someone's clothing (unless there are other factors like the person is drunk and looks like they might be a danger to themselves or other people). Also never lie or deliberately mislead the operator. Nothing more annoying then having to repeatedly send out emergency vehicles only to find it is because the fast food restaurant has sold out on a particular product - have seen a number of examples of this sort of thing recently in the MX. These people are very likely to (or already have) face prosecution for wasting police time. -- Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>