North Wales Police applicant phones 999 to see if he was successful
27 August 2021, 15:06
North Wales Police have revealed they received a "ridiculous" emergency 999 call from an applicant to join the force who wanted to know whether he had been successful.
The caller was one of a stream of "ridiculous" 999 calls dealt with by the North Wales Police control room.
Chief Inspector Mark Williams said that there was "no excuse" for the applicant's actions.
He added that the applicant was "clearly not cut out for the job".
The force also reported calls from a woman who had got her sofa stuck while trying to move it and another woman who called 999 for a lift home.
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They also revealed that a caller had asked police to come and remove a spider from her home.
The force is appealing for members of the public not to use 999 to report non-emergency matters.
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On average, the control room gets around 1,100 contacts from the public a day, including phone calls, web chats and emails.
The region has recently been given £5.8 million to buy a new control room system.
Control room manager Paul Shea said: "Unfortunately, we still get too many silly calls like the one from the lady who got the couch stuck in the hall.
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"Another call that sticks in the memory was the one from the lady with the spider on the bed. She was scared and wanted a police officer to come to move the spider.
"They're just not policing matters and it takes valuable resources from people who are in real trouble.
"The flip side of that is that there are other people who should have phoned 999 who called the non-emergency line 101 instead because they didn't want to bother us.
"I would like to stress that people should always ring 999 if they are suffering a proper emergency."
