THE States police are asking parents to check that children are not playing with old mobile phones – after being bombarded with more than 3,000 emergency calls from the same device in the past month.
Even without a SIM card or phone credit, 999 calls can still be made if a phone is switched on and has battery power.
In a statement issued yesterday, the States police said: ‘The operators who answer local 999 calls have in the last month been dealing with a single device repeatedly calling 999.
‘We don’t believe these are emergency calls; [it is] more likely to be a toddler or a child using an old mobile phone to play with.’
The force added: ‘We don’t want to sound accusatory as no one is in any trouble here. We would just like people to check if they have given an old phone to a child to play with, that they aren’t dialling 999 on it.’
The calls started on 6 May, generally beginning at around 7am and lasting until noon, with further calls being received again between 3pm to 9pm.
‘The calls so far total over 3,000, and, as you can imagine, that is a lot of extra work and time taken up answering calls that could be delaying actual emergency calls being answered.
‘We would never block a device from calling 999, but we do need to try to stop this happening,’ the police said.
The authorities confirmed that a Samsung phone was being used to make the calls, but that there was no SIM card or phone number associated with the device.
