Children giggling on the line or pocket conversations with people who don’t even realize they are calling 911. It happens regularly in the central control room of the emergency services in Driebergen. Sometimes people deliberately call the emergency number dozens of times, without even a valid reason. This is punishable and, according to the police, also dangerous.
Anyone who needs 112 will be contacted first by an operator from the national control room. There you will be asked two questions: which emergency service do you need and in which municipality?
People who call from their pocket are often filtered out at that location. “In the national control room they also have a kind of blacklist of numbers to which they have to be alert because these are often pest callers,” says operator Roy van der Vegt.
Van der Vegt has been working for the police in the East Brabant control room for 22 years. A place where hundreds to a thousand phone calls come in every day.
But how do you pick out the people who call with the wrong intentions? According to Van der Vegt, most 112 callers provide information, such as the location from which the call is made. “If someone says, I am in Eindhoven and I see that he is in Den Bosch, then I will of course ask further. I also do that when I have the feeling that things don’t fit together. Or when I realize that people are making something worse than it is, in the hope that we will come anyway.”
“Other people who really need help are put on hold.”
Calling the control room anonymously is almost impossible, even if you as a caller have protected your number, the control room can see what your number is. “That’s for safety. If the connection is lost, we can always call you back.”
In September, a man from Cuijk called the emergency room more than forty times in three days. Emergency services eventually arrived, but they concluded that there was nothing wrong with the man. He was given a community service order of forty hours on Monday. What does it do to a operator if such a person calls dozens of times in a short period of time, without there being an emergency?
“Those are the real pest callers, that’s what we call them. That certainly has an impact. The control room is a hectic place, you are dealing with multiple reports at the same time. Other people who really need help are put on hold while they keep you busy. It’s very frustrating.”
“Everyone has a mobile phone to make calls these days.”
According to him, not recording anymore is not an option. “You must continue to act professionally, because something may have changed in the situation that means that someone needs help. But if someone calls us dozens of times unnecessarily in fifteen minutes, in the worst case scenario it could cost lives.”
Often those so-called pest callers are confused or desperate. These are people who no longer see a solution to their problem, says Van der Vegt. “Then the police have to solve it and they call 112. Or they are frustrated when something is not solved. If someone has been experiencing noise pollution for nights in a row and is not helped, 911 may be called every time. Even though they know they shouldn’t be with us for that.”
He does not want to talk about an increase in the number of confused callers. According to him, there have always been confused people. “But nowadays the police are much more accessible, everyone has a mobile phone to call. That wasn’t the case before.”
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