Police plan to filter non-urgent emergency calls

Iraena Asher

Police are planning to introduce a national non-emergency call service, which they say will reduce pressure on an overloaded 111 system and improve response times.

The project will be tested in Auckland and Bay of Plenty in November.

It was outlined in front of Police Minister Annette King at the northern communications centre in Auckland last night.

Under the system, non-emergency calls will be diverted to dedicated operators in Auckland, who will log the details and forward them to the appropriate officers.

The system has been developed to reduce pressure on the 111 system, which has been criticised for the time it has taken for some calls to be answered and the way certain calls have been handled.

Criticism began in 2004 when police sent a taxi to Piha to pick up Aucklander Iraena Asher, who had called 111 in a distressed state. Ms Asher has still not been found.

Another high-profile case involved Maggie Bentley, whose husband Peter was beaten by intruders while she was on the phone to a 111 operator from their rural home near Te Puke.

Mrs Bentley said police prevented her from hanging up and calling a neighbour and the operator incorrectly said police had arrived at the address when they had not.

At the time, police said communications centres handled about 1.7 million calls a year but only a third were genuine emergencies.

Ms King said yesterday that when a dog ran on to the Northern Motorway near Auckland last year, police received 700 calls in half an hour.

That sort of pressure had prompted the Government to put $3.5 million into the non-emergency number project.

"The easier it is to contact police, the safer it will be in our communities and neighbourhoods," she said.

During the trial, victims of burglary, car theft and other non-urgent crime who call their local police station will be directed to a new team of 46 operators. People who call 111 about matters not regarded as urgent will also be diverted there.

Project manager Superintendent Steve Christian said if the trial was successful a 24-hour service handling all the country's non-emergency calls and using a dedicated non-emergency number could be operating by 2008.