Hoaxes and Other Abuses of the 999 Service
This weekend, I took absolutely no genuine calls whatsoever:
- I got told to “suck my c**k” repeatedly by a man I had made irate by not letting him speak to his uncle, who is in “the hospital in Whitechapel”. This was not an enticing offer.
- On Friday night, we kept getting calls from Streatham (makes a change from Romford) from a man who claimed to have been stabbed. We had an ambulance roaming the streets trying to find him with no success. The man kept calling back and giving different locations and sounding generally confused/confusing. We wondered if he might be an escapee from the local psychiatric hospital (one of the locations he gave was in the same road) and spent a good while on the phone to them trying to ascertain if they had lost a patient. He’d called from a phone that wasn’t automatically tracked on the mapping, so we had to get the exchange to trace his location, and when they did, confirming he was indeed in Streatham and narrowing his location down to a few streets, we sent the police around to look since the ambulance had got fed up and gone back to the station. The police turned up, and the man jumped out of a bush brandishing a knife trying to stab them! So they promptly gassed him. They told us that they thought he was trying to lure an ambulance out there and stab the crew, so it looks like one of our crews had a very lucky escape.
- On Saturday night, a man in East Ham called to say his wife had just fallen down the stairs and promptly given birth to their sixth baby. We dispatched a nee naw and a midwife. When the nee naw arrived a large number of Foreign People, but absolutely no sign of any newborn babies, came to the door laughing hysterically because they think it is really funny to call out ambulances for babies that don’t exist. The ambulance people said some bad words and then rang me to cancel the midwife. Midwives, unlike ambulance crews, are not really used to hoax calls and this one hit the roof (at times, I felt a bit as if she was holding me personally responsible for the lack of baby). The police were called at her request, and the naughty people all got arrested. So that will teach them. How stupid do you have to be to make a hoax call and give your real address?!
- On Sunday night I received a call from a man with a squeaky voice in a phone box in Central London who refused to tell me anything other than “I have chest pain” and “I can’t answer any questions because I’M ABOUT TO LOSE MY LUGGAGE”. At the same time, the police rang someone else telling them that a man with a squeaky voice had just been chucked out of one of the local A+E departments for abusing the staff and that we should not send any ambulances to phone boxes in the proximity especially if the caller mentioned luggage at any point. He had also been investigated and his chest pain, if he really did have any, was not indicative of anything serious. So we didn’t send a nee naw. About an hour later (which was about 4am, the time of night when no-one calls and everyone is sitting around chatting), the man rang back (from the same phone box) effing and blinding and accusing the ambulance crew (the one that we didn’t send) of stealing his luggage. As soon as one person got hung up on, he would ring back and speak to someone else. After he had been round the room twice, we called the police. By the time he’d been round four times, the police turned up and carted him away to a cell next to the foreign people without the baby.
on October 31st, 2005 at 11:56 am
Dear god, it truly beggars belief - especially the people without a baby. What the hell?
Still loving every second of this blog Mark, do keep it coming!
on October 31st, 2005 at 11:57 am
I would have loved to be at the foreign people’s house to see the smirks wiped off their faces when they all got nicked!
on October 31st, 2005 at 1:35 pm
That was quite a night. The foreign baby free people & luggage man deserved each other, I think. Perhaps Luggage Man had kidnapped their baby? I’m beginning to believe escaped mental patients are much more common than I previously believed.
on October 31st, 2005 at 1:53 pm
‘How stupid do you have to be to make a hoax call and give your real address?!’ - I’m guessing very…although…
on October 31st, 2005 at 2:45 pm
“I’m beginning to believe escaped mental patients are much more common than I previously believed.”
As a mental health nurse, I can assure you that not all people with MH problems are under the care of services.
on October 31st, 2005 at 5:18 pm
Clive- There is signifigantly less of a safety net for mental health patients here in the US. Many of the clients at the homeless shelter where I volunteer are in need of mental health services, but there are very few places for them to go. It both angers me & breaks my heart. We are failing our most needy citizens.
on October 31st, 2005 at 9:32 pm
OH so funny to call out an ambulance for a good laugh when it might be needed to save someone’s life. Because there are so many ambulances that it doesn’t matter if one gets sent, bells and whistles going (which isn’t dangerous at all, ya know), to a non-event! Hahahhaha!
Phew. That’s got that out of my system!
I hope they’re not having much of a laugh now!
on October 31st, 2005 at 11:54 pm
Reminds me of the hoax call I got sent on earlier this month. I’ve linked to my blog about it. If you click my name, it’ll take you there.
Glad to hear that some of these bloody idiots have got their just rewards!
on October 31st, 2005 at 11:56 pm
Sorry - typed the link wrong. Try on this one.
on November 1st, 2005 at 2:55 am
That can’t be true! Can people really be that stupid? Why are they insistent on wasting time and resources that could be used to help another? Drives me crazy. I hope their night in the cell taught them a lesson or two.
I also have a question, you mentioned having contact with the police, just how well co-ordinated are the ambulance, fire and police service? Just I can think of times when ambulance crews need police support and vice versa…
on November 2nd, 2005 at 2:10 pm
Yes they can, Same stuff happens in Scotland, only difference is the accent.
on November 3rd, 2005 at 3:34 pm
That idiot with the luggage must have moved. He usually phones from outside ealing br station. I have whiled away many an hour on the west desk listening to him rant about his luggage. And the fact that he is about to die any moment. I actually stayed on line with him for about 45 minutes once, just to see if he would die. Needless to say I was disappointed!
on November 10th, 2005 at 3:07 am
Hi Mark,
I read this one after “Legless”! Now it may be just the way you write up these incidents, but in the past I have assumed that you have provided an accurate description of events. That’s why I spend some of my precious time commenting on your intelligent blog, as some-one who has had plenty of experience of the other-side of these events, that you are only a distant (but valuable) participant to.
Any stabbing is a crime and a felony and although it is the job of the Paramedic to attend and aid the victims, they also deserve the protection of the Police. The assailant might still be on or close to the scene! Your report says that the police were sent after the ambulance crew had been to the call and spent additional time “roaming” the streets in an attempt to find him. Thank God they didn’t! This incident illustrates in no uncertain terms why Paramedics request “Police to scene” and hope that the recourses of the law are there before they arrive! All too often when there is are no police available due to other commitments, Control still demands that the assigned ambulance crews attend without delay. It is in these situations that many Paramedics go “where angels fear to tread”, and some pay a heavy price. Heroes one and all!
Live long and prosper.
on November 10th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
I only became involved with this one after the ambulance crew had been and gone, so I can only talk from general experience. If the caller says they have been stabbed but the person who did it has gone, we leave it up to the crew as to whether they enter the scene before the police get there. Often they meet up with the police and the two enter together. If the assailant is on scene, they wait until the police tell them they can enter. I’ve never heard of control insisting that the crew enter without the police, and any member of control who does that is in fact Breaking The Rules, and you should report them!
I know we always call the police the second we get a call about a stabbing or whatever, so I’m guessing what happened here was that there was a long wait for the police and they decided to go looking for the patient. I agree, they definitely shouldn’t do that, and this is exactly why.
As for all my entries, there are gaps in the story because all I have to go on about the crews’ actions are what’s written on the call log. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to ring them up and ask for a few more details on what happened for the sake of my blog. So please forgive me if sometimes some of the details are missing!
on May 2nd, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Rahul
London Kenny Johnny
on November 12th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
Oh god people these days! What is the point in disrupting and trying to hurt the people who may well just have to save their lives one day? !?!