Of the almost 40,000 calls to triple-0 received by ACT police in 2024, 36 per cent were related to non-emergency situations.
Police say that included a call from a teenager whose parents had switched off the Wi-fi and a man who wanted police to arrest a stray cat on his street.
Police are urging members of the public to call their non-emergency line 131 444 if an immediate police presence is not required.
I read the article, but I think they need to be very careful with how they word their warnings. Obviously things like not having internet or a pizza being late are not 000 worthy, and definitely not an emergency. But if all everybody ever hears is “make absolutely certain it’s an emergency before calling 000”, eventually that will most likely lead to people being unsure whether or not to call 000
The last thing you want is somebody with chest pains being too scared to call for help because they’re worried that it could just be something minor and benign
Another problem is that people’s definition of an “emergency” varies quite widely. Sure, everybody can probably agree a gnarly car crash is an emergency, or witnessing a stabbing is an emergency, but what about things that are more on the line? There are also different kinds of emergencies, and they all need different responses. I’d consider a burst pipe in my bathroom to be an emergency, but obviously a plumber emergency not a police emergency. But if that pipe was outside and rapidly flooding the road, I’d also consider that an emergency and most likely call 000
And when it comes to things like animal control, there isn’t one centralised number to call, or one place to look. I’m not defending calling 000 over a “menacing” cat, but I think the complexity involved in figuring out who to call contributes to people just calling whoever they can. And animals are also a unique case, because there are some situations where I’d definitely call 000. If an animal managed to escape from a zoo and was causing chaos, that could very well be an emergency. That’s yet another layer of complexity that requires active thought. I don’t think the sort of person who thinks cats are menacing and calls the police on them is capable of such high level thought
I think that is another reason why articles like this always choose examples that everyone will agree are frivolous (along with the obvious answer of these being the attention grabbing ones). Mentioning something closer to an actual emergency could well do as you say and put off someone with a problem that sounds similar but is actually important.
Publicising the non-emergency number more would be a good idea I think, it’s around but is not something that will come to most people’s minds without looking it up. I’ve never had to call it so I’m not sure how well staffed it is but making sure people ringing the non-emergency line can get answered by a real person in reasonable time to discover what their problem is would be important (even if it’s a triage like situation where you get put back on hold for low priority things).
