HOAX CALLS IRKED POLICE

Hoax calls to emergency number 999 irk police.

Police Commissioner Frank Prendergast recently told local journalists over 10,000 such calls were made in the last month.

Mr. Prendergast says this is unacceptable as it can only risk local security.

“…then in the last month we’ve had over 10,000 nuisance calls to the police emergency numbers, that it’s simply not acceptable and you can imagine we do have concerns from the community about police responsiveness, police answering phones, but you can imagine if there’re 10,000 nuisance calls coming into the Police Communications Centre, what impact would that have on police responsiveness.”

The police commissioner calls for community support to help police address this issue.

“So I’m asking the community, I’m asking everyone to do their best to stamp this practice out because it’s actually putting the community at risk, so it’s not funny it’s not a joke, it’s quite a serious issue and we need to get these numbers down to zero if we can.”