Police are making a plea for the public to use 999 responsibly after a caller wanted to know when their next train was due.
Nottinghamshire Police's control room handles thousands of 999 emergency calls each month, but has warned that nuisance calls are costing valuable time to get out to real crimes.
Superintendent Paul Burrows, from Nottinghamshire Police’s contact management department, said: "The vast majority of the public understand that 999 is only for emergency calls but, despite the work we regularly do to explain to people how to use 999 responsibly, we do still receive a high number of misplaced calls to our emergency number.
"While some of the misplaced calls we receive range from honest errors of judgement to the more unusual, there is a serious point to be made here as every misplaced call our emergency call handlers receive has the potential to delay us from responding to genuine emergencies.
"All we’re asking is that people only call 999 in genuine emergencies and remember that there are other ways to contact us for less urgent enquiries."
Police have offered this advice:
Please think before dialling and only call 999 when life is in danger, someone is seriously injured, someone is using or threatening to use violence, a crime is in progress, there is serious damage being caused to property or whenever else an immediate police response is required.
For all other non-emergency policing matters, please call 101.
