West Midlands Police Tweetathon helps reduce number of non-emergency calls

West Midlands Police has said that the 24-hour Tweetathon held by it at the beginning of the month – publishing details of the kinds of uncesessarry calls they received on 999 daily that led to delayed responses to actual emergences – has been a success. Calls to 999 have fallen by about 500 per day to 1,300. Calls to the non-emergency number 101 have doubled to about 4,500/day.

According to Ch Insp Sally Holmes “It will be interesting to see how the figures remain a few months down the line, but for now the tweetathon proved a huge success.”

The kinds of calls that were tweeted included one by a woman who called 999 for help after forgetting the password to her laptop.