It could be one of your kids playing with the phone. Or it could be you accidentally pocket-dialling 9-1-1. Timmins Police are noticing an increase in 9-1-1 hang ups.
Staying on the line will let the person answering the call determine that it was an error.
Otherwise, an officer has to be dispatched. Determining the location is easy with a landline, and communications coordinator Marc Depatie says it’s getting easier for a cell phone.
“The technology does allow for us to determine within sometimes metres, sometimes hundreds of metres as to where you are,” he says. “So this requires the officer to locate a needle in a haystack sort of thing on occasion unnecessarily.
“But where people simply hang up, that leads us to believe that you’re in jeopardy and we’re going to respond as though you are in some sort of significant danger.”
That situation takes the responding officer out of the mix in case of a genuine emergency.
And in the instances when someone thinks they’re being funny by repeatedly calling 9-1-1… that caller could end up facing criminal mischief charges.
Non-emergency calls to Timmins Police should always be made to 705-264-1201.
