Police Chief frustrated by heavy volume of non emergency 9-1-1 calls

With the calls for service increasing the North Bay Police Chief knows that finding operation efficiencies is vital. 

However, Scott Tod says they are spending way too much time on 9-1-1 calls. 

He says that close to 80 per cent of 9-1-1 calls do not require any response. 

"Not just the police but Fire, EMS, no one at all," explained Tod after Tuesday's Police Board Meeting outside Police Headquarters.  

"It is a 9-1-1 hang-up, it's an inadvertent pocket dial, it is calling for information on road or weather conditions, or asking if a road is open in our city that is under construction and they will call 9-1-1 for that information.  

"I believe the number was around 450 calls for service; out of the 530 of them were calls that did not require any type of emergency response at all and were largely a waste of time for our resources to be able to apply to answer to that call. It is very expensive to manage all these 9-1-1 calls that do not require an emergency service to attend." 

Tod says this is not a problem unique to the North Bay area. 

"I think every single police service or 9-1-1 provider in the province would tell you the exact same story continuously that it is a problem that we have."

He believes one way to perhaps curb the wasted calls is by fining people through their phone bill. 

"There have been a number of proposals put forward to have people actually charged on their phone bills for 9-1-1 calls that do not require an emergency service but it has only been a proposal that has been discussed," he said.