Editorial: Idiotic triple-0 calls are nothing to laugh at

Complaints about a burning chicken or cold chips are enough to make most of us laugh out loud, but must leave police and emergency call operators tearing their hair out - especially whenever they cop criticism for their response times to genuine emergencies.

A few “moronic” time wasters are to be expected, but one a day is too many.

Trivial complaints have included a woman demanding police arrest a barista over a bad latte.

An elderly woman asked 000 to send a “strong policeman” to help her open a stubborn milk carton because she was “desperate for a cup of Tetley’s”.

A man asked police to check his letterbox while he was in Bali.

That’s a task for a friendly neighbour, maybe, not the WA Police.

These calls take up valuable time — about 10 minutes a day, says customer service operator Shannen Palmer.

She blames a modern-day lack of problem solving skills.

“In an age where technology and the internet is so accessible it’s interesting that we still get so many calls on triple zero when people lock themselves out of there house for example, if they just googled it they would be told to call a locksmith,” she said.

WA Police customer service manager Paul Perry blames an age of entitlement, and says many callers are old enough - and educated enough — to know better.

“The amount of calls we get about fast food is absolutely incredible, it happens all the time, people call saying my chips are cold, or I made them redo my chips, but now my nuggets have gone cold or I didn’t want anchovies on my pizza,” he said.

“We live in this increasing age of entitlement, an age of drama and the anti hero... we think bad behaviour should be rewarded, we’re seeing that today socially.”

A trend towards social media and away from real-life contact is also resulting in pockets of our community being socially isolated, and the lack of an informal neighbourhood watch these days might be partly to blame.

But it’s no excuse for tying up police resources.

Even the 150 to 200 pocket dials they get each day can’t be ignored, in case it’s a domestic violence victim who can dial but can’t talk.

“They realize they’re ringing triple zero, and they panic and hang up,” Mr Perry said.

“Sometimes we have to send officers in a car to your home and knock on the door to find that you were laying on the couch and you pocket dialled. We desperately need people to stay on the line and just say, hey it was an accident.”

Better to be safe than sorry, but police worry they might miss genuine pleas for help, while their lines are tied up by a lost burger or late Uber.

Prank calls can result in fines or even jail of up to 12 months. Police would rather the public use their common sense and save 000 for the real emergencies.

They put their lives on the line for us, surely we can do this for them.