Wow.
Following up from frivolous calls after Melbourne’s earth tremor a couple of weeks ago, and just in time for yesterday afternoon’s tremor, Victoria Police put out a press release that reveals how many clueless people there are, who dial the Triple Zero emergency number for stupid reasons.
- January 2009 – Caller telephones 000 to advise operator that someone had stolen their watch three months prior.
- January 2009 – Caller advises operator that a solution for catching offenders is that police should design a Spiderman-type weapon that ejects a sticky net that covers the offender and renders them incapacitated. The caller later stated that they were not looking for fame or fortune for this idea.
- January 2009 – Caller rings to ask what time her dentist appointment was because she forgot.
- March 2009 – Caller advised operator that someone had stolen a marijuana plant form their backyard.
- April 2009 – Caller telephones 000 and states son has been missing for one minute.
There’s just no getting around it. Some people are idiots.
(And now I have the Spiderman cartoon theme music going around in my brain.)
12 replies on “Clueless”
Pretty clever if they already know what calls they will get in April 2009.
“One serial caller was last year sentenced to four months’ jail for making more than 3600 calls to triple zero (000) over a two-and-a-half year period.”
What the hell, thats four calls a day!
“April ’09”? Can they predict the future?
Some people just shouldn’t have access to emergency services.
It would clean up the gene pool quickly….
People from the future are impatient.
Great. Now I will also be singing Spiderman all day (randomly interspersed with Spiderpig…)
The US Defence Department *has* investigated sticky goop as a crowd-control measure, but it had a few problems – now they are exploring super-slippery stuff so rioters will fall down.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/06/opinion/garver/main503136.shtml
;-)
Wonder if it would be deterrent if emergency services have caller ID? The callers would probably go to a public phone to make these crank calls, which is even sadder.
(I wondered why the crockery was rattling yesterday afternoon…miss one night of news and you’re out of the loop.)
Hmm, yes, April 2009. Maybe the Vic Police have a Police Box.
Donna, they do get caller ID. This page mentions it is matched to name/address as well, at least for land lines. I read somewhere that in fact they use caller ID even if your phone number is silent, so it’s not like they can’t track most people down.
But then, I suspect some of these people aren’t thinking they’re doing anything wrong…
Are they idiots, or funny buggers? If you wanted to make up a fake call, could you thinkup anything better than these?
How is tying up a phone service dedicated to taking calls about life-threatening emergencies the remotest bit funny?
You think those are bad: Someone in Florida (I think) dialled 911 – because the drive-thru operator told them at the window, rather than at the order point, that they were out of lemonade (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oryNraxLvbE).