14 DAY TRIAL // Today, our weird news section continues on its righteous mission to let you know all about the latest news regarding unusual complaints made by people calling emergency services.
Last month, we heard about a man who called 911 in America to ask where he could buy some marijuana, and previously, a woman had called emergency services twice to complain about her pizza delivery.
Now, we learn about another case of misuse of the emergency numbers, as police in England released a recording of a woman who dialed 999 to request help in a row over the number of sprinkles on an ice cream.
A West Midlands 999 dispatcher was left baffled when an unnamed woman called to complain that her ice cream did not have enough chocolate sprinkles. According to the Birmingham Mail, the angry woman contacted the emergency service while she was arguing with the owner of an ice cream van over the lack of topping on her dessert.
“It doesn’t seem like much of an emergency but it is a little bit because I’ve ordered an ice cream and he’s put bits on one side and none of the other,” she told the operator. “He’s refusing to give me my money back and saying that I’ve got to take it like that.”
During the minute-long call, which was recorded yesterday, the 999 operator patiently tells the woman that her request was not an emergency and she needed to contact trading standards officials or the Citizens Advice Bureau, not the police, if she wanted to complain about a product.
After the incident, West Midlands Police Chief Superintendent Jim Andronov urged the public not to misuse the 999 system, saying “If someone is trying to get through to report a genuine life or death emergency, then a minute is a very long time to wait. I cannot stress enough that the 999 number is for emergencies only.”
He said that West Midlands Police receive over 1500 calls every day to the emergency number and they have to deal with each one accordingly. And given that each call often takes minutes to deal with, operators lose valuable time if people contact the service for absurd requests like this one.
“We do not want to discourage people from contacting the police, so for any other reason call 101,” he added.
Police figures show that almost half of the 700,000 calls received annually by the force’s emergency number are not police matters or are non-emergency calls.
