What will our new non-emergency police number be? Photo / Supplied
What will our new non-emergency police number be? Photo / Supplied
Police will today announce a new non-emergency number in a bid to free up its overwhelmed 111 system, but what will that number be?
Police brass are keeping tight-lipped so the Herald has taken an educated guess ahead of the announcement.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush and Minister of Police Stuart Nash are announcing the new non-emergency number, more than 60 years after going live with the current emergency number, at Te Papa Museum this morning.
As well as 111, motorists can use *555 to alert police to poor driving, but there is currently no other number people can call for non-emergency events.
When questioned what the new number might be, the Herald was told police wouldn't be commenting until Friday's much-anticipated unveiling.
However, in an unscientific investigation, the Herald called all triple digit numbers and found a 000 number was automatically diverted to 111. (The only other one that worked was Spark's 777 mobile phone helpdesk).
What does that mean? Who knows. Police declined to confirm if 000 was going to be the new number.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush is set to announce the new number. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Emergency numbers differ around the world. In the UK it's 999 and in the US it's 911.
The numbers were set up independently by countries to suit their individual purposes - sometimes relating to which numbers had the shortest dial distance on old rotary dial phones.
And though there have been calls for these numbers to be standardised across the globe since world travel became much cheaper and easier for people, changing them to a standardised format is no easy task.
The service had slumped from hitting 84 per cent of calls in that time in 2017 to 79 per cent, its annual report for the year 2017/18 revealed.
The police target is higher than 90 per cent.
At the hearing, Bush said they were working on creating other avenues including a non-emergency call centre and online reporting.
At the time, he said an announcement would be made early this year about the new call centre which was planned for the Kapiti Coast.
The slow response times appeared to have affected customer satisfaction where only 69 per cent of people were satisfied with the speed of police response.
Police aimed to reach 83 per cent or higher.
However, it was reaching its target for answering non-emergency calls within 30 seconds, hitting 71 per cent, 1 per cent higher than its target of 70 per cent.
