It’s an emergency call: "my wife's left me two salmon sandwiches"

A UK police force that got sick of people phoning the emergency services with trivial problems is making an example of the timewasters by posting recordings of their requests on YouTube. Their message: don't phone 999 if you're hungry, drunk, or filling out a questionnaire.

The 999 station in Avon and Somerset (southwest England) receives over 500 non-emergency calls each month, and complains of increased numbers in summer time, when children are not at school. They've launched two online campaigns against both intentional and unintentional timewasters. The prior face the risk of being identified by the public, possibly leading to their arrest. The latter simply face humiliation, when their request is posted online to exemplify its stupidity.

Contributors

Clare Giordm...

"I want to know what year the internet first came out"

This video has already had 76,220 hits since it was released on 18 July 08.

"My wife's left me two salmon sandwiches"

To listen to more recordings, go the constabulary's YouTube page.

"A lot of [people] just don’t realise what’s inappropriate"

Clare Giordmaine works for the communication department at Avon and Somerset Police. She's in charge of putting the recordings online.

It's a case of educating people. A lot of them just don't realise what's inappropriate, and they only know the number 999. Obviously there is an entertaining aspect to the recordings, but I hope they will be found quite shocking too. Although these calls are all genuine they are not emergencies and could prevent a real emergency call being answered.

We did have the BBC play examples on TV, to show people what kind of calls we get. But with the internet we're also focusing on identifying hoax callers. We've never asked the public to help do this before. We're going to update it every four weeks with a new caller. Hopefully we'll see a reduction, as it does seem to be a growing problem.

By using YouTube I wanted to target a younger audience - this is the time of year when inappropriate calls hit their peak, because it's the school holidays. We need to get the message across that you can get six months in prison and a £5,000 [€6,340] fine for making a hoax call."

Clare Giordm...