He noted 911 calls are treated "very seriously" and misdials can take attention away from real emergencies. "We understand that there are legitimate 911 calls that happen, but these 911 lines into our communications centre cannot be tied up with accidental calls when people are reporting potentially life-and-death situations that require a police response," said Leon. These require dispatchers to determine if they are accidental or require some sort of follow-up, which could mean officers attending a scene or a return call to determine what happened. To provide a snapshot of what calltakers handle on a regular basis, on one recent day they had 58 calls to 911. "Although we regularly remind the public, our non-emergency number 70 is also available and connects to our communications unit and should be used for non-emergency calls for service," Leon added. The remainder of the calls, around 43 per cent, were actual calls for service that included robbery, assault, domestic incidents, motor vehicle collisions, break and enters, thefts, etc., Leon said, where police were required and investigations were carried out. This number was 52 per cent in 2018. "In these cases, addresses were checked to confirm that everything was OK," Leon said. "If there was, for example, unknown trouble, a police response would take place and would be deemed a priority until determined otherwise." By comparison, that number was only 9,325 in 2018, or 37 per cent. Of all the calls, Leon said close to 14,450 of them - or 53 per cent - required a police response. "For those new to the phones, this can lead to unsuspecting calls to 911." "As an example, some of the newer iPhone models will dial 911 by pressing two buttons on either side of the phone at the same time," Leon said. Part of that can be attributed to new features on some cellphones. That's also an jump of about two per cent over 2018 stats, when 2,755 bogus calls were mistakenly placed to 911 calltakers in Barrie, accounting for about 11 per cent of the total calls fielded.Ĭity police saw an increase of 752 accidental 911 calls in 20, which is, on average, just over two a day. "These would be pocket dials, children playing with phones or pre-programmed 911 that were dialed accidentally or in error." "We had 3,507 accidental 911 calls," Barrie police communications co-ordinator Peter Leon told BarrieToday. In 2019, from January to the end of October, Barrie police fielded 27,506 911 calls, which is an increase of almost 2,500 from the year before, according to police statistics.Īnd about 13 per cent of those were placed accidentally. The first three calls to 911 in Barrie this year were misdials.Īnd it's a problem that continues to grow.
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