To ask why you've phoned the police?

[oneskip]

It's given as advice on here all the time but who has ever dialled 999 and was it for something major?

I've called for football fans fighting and letting off flares at cars, so genuine emergency.

When we got broken into.
When I saw a girl no older than 4 with a black eye screaming in her front garden, whilst adults were arguing inside the house.

Both times they were out to us within 10 minutes.

Once for the police. A group of teenagers on a bus were shouting racist abuse at the driver, trying to take people’s phone and threatening people with a knife.

Twice for an ambulance. Once a parent fell and had a head injury and once for a little girl having a seizure in the street.

1. when my waters broke and I started haemorrhaging in pregnancy
2. when a group of people set up a sound system outside my window at 3am and started blasting music so loud my windows were shaking

I rang 999 when my late DH was having a psychotic episode due to overdosing on Parkinson's drugs. He'd got the huff with me and DD and said he was going out. I could track him on Find Friends, he went into Town, the City and West End. A bit later I checked and he was at Heathrow airport! My niece, who is an ex copper, said ring 999 and they were amazing. They went and found him and talked to him, persuaded him not to get on a flight to Johannesburg and we went and picked him up. Not long after, he spent 8 weeks in a psychiatric unit where they adjusted his medication. He removed me from Find Friends though

Yes to a woman running around the local park screaming while holding a very bemused looking baby (old enough to sit up). It seemed to be a domestic but then it became clear the man she was shouting at didn't have a clue who she was or what he'd done to anger her. At one point she literally just picked up the baby and screamed as she sprinted across the park... but then just sat on a bench like nothing was wrong. The police came straight out but I don't think they caught up to her as she had run off shortly before they arrived.

We also once saw a woman sitting on the edge of a bridge over a main road and called that in too. They said they were already on their way.

Unfortunately, I have had to call a few times. Once an intruder smashed the glass in my front door in the middle of the night but thankfully were put off when my dog started barking. The police came shortly after with police dogs to look for the person but they didn't find them.

Another time in a different house there was a ruckus in the street and out of my window I saw multiple men with machetes and baseball bats. Armed police came and caught a few of them.

I called when my brother went manic after taking drugs and was aggressive and cutting himself. This was very upsetting, especially as my family are very mild and do not take any drugs. I didn't know he was doing this.

Each time, the police have been fantastic. I'm reassured that when I need them they come quickly. In my case they always came within 5/10 minutes.

999
• on a bus in London that came to a very sudden stop and an elderly man broke some bones (ambulance)
• on a bus when a fight broke out (police)
• when a bin at Euston was on fire (fire service)
• when a man collapsed in the street (ambulance)
• "" - (police) a couple of those. One was aggressive drunk man refusing to alight, other was set off in error and the bus drove off so I had to ring the police back and explain - they were fine about it.
• getting help for a rough sleeper who was possibly asleep but from their position seemed to have lost consciousness quite suddenly (ambulance)

101
• business intruder alarms going off (telephoned a few times over the years)
• someone waving a weapon around, though by themselves in a field
• reporting antisocial behaviour by a man to me outside a shop, gave a statement in-person, but the CCTV didn't have any film in so that was that.

61016 (British Transport Police)
• texts about antisocial behaviour on trains, e.g. someone trying to ride a bike at speed on a train platform close to the edge, someone else holding court and haranguing passengers argumentatively, though not threateningly (he was just really annoying and drunk).

Twitter DM
• letting a local force know that an aggressive beggar was back on the streets after his court case, gave a statement, he went back to court but I wasn't needed.

US Police (Kentucky, phone, email) and London Police (phone, email and in person)
• Young man living in Kentucky keeps tweeting me inappropriate comments, photos and videos of himself that I could really do without. Grateful for the Atlantic Ocean keeping him far away!

Jo "speed dial" Brodie ;)

Police, we were driving through north London and saw what seemed to be a running skirmish. They were already on the way.

Fire three times, including the time when the house next door (attached, vacant) was burning down. The other two fires looked serious, but were some distance away, and away from buildings, so I was unsure about calling, but the call handlers were very reassuring.

For some reason the YouTube vid in my previous post has wiped out the phrase which is "this bus is under attack, please dial 999".

Jo

I called 999 after seeing someone sat on the edge of a bridge over a very busy duel carriageway.

Never anything in the new afterwards so assume it was an ok ending.

Yes numerous times.

Mostly for people mostly walking on or sometimes cycling on the motorway in the middle of the night (well 4.30am!)

Seems an occupational habit when your child is a swimmer and you're out very early every day!

I think it's also the preferable time people do these stupid things as they think it's safer!

Also for finding a child at 4.30am walking her dog down a main road and she couldn't remember where she lived! Her poor parents when they were contacted and came. They were mortified. The kid just kept saying "dog wanted a walk" 😂

Another time for finding a non verbal child with Sen walking around having also escaped! That poor parent too.

101 for a flasher at the end of our garden path. He ran off when I called for DH but we reported it anyway as it is on a quiet lane where a lot of women walk on their own ( with dogs and / or babies). I was surprised when they located him and out him on a ‘ programme’, even more surprised when they followed up with a call a few months later and told me that he wanted to apologise.

Before 101, terrible noise outside where we had parked our car ( residents’ parking in London) went out and the whole side of the car had been virtually torn off. The police didn’t believe us at first, they insisted it was a road traffic accident which we didn’t want to report. Fortunately a couple of chaps from the pub at the end of the road came along and said they had heard it from inside the pub! Someone else sitting outside the pub said they had seen a transit van lurching down the road.

Turned out the van had been used in an armed robbery and they were ‘making a getaway’, they didn’t get very far as one of their own wheels came off as a result of the prang.

still in London, we didn’t call the police about the disturbance late at night next door, because there was often something happening there. Just as well, as it turned out to be the police en masse raiding the house, one of them asked if they could go through our back yard to get over the wall and check out the back entrance. It was a bit quieter once the occupants were residing at Her Majesty’s.

I called them for a welfare check because my horrible elderly neighbour (caused us misery for 20 yrs) is now suffering from dementia and I could hear her screaming and shouting and things crashing around her.

When I was mugged politely by someone with a massive knife.

I called for DV and stalking more than once, and being robbed. They were not helpful really.
I would avoid doing so now, unless I saw someone being attacked and I was the only witness.

Yes, when someone at a party I was at was behaving aggressively after mixing drugs, medication and alcohol.

I called the police when I saw that huge haystacks had fallen in the road covering one side, a blind bend down a pitch black country road, could have caused a horrible accident / police were very grateful said I was public spirited !

Fighting outside the pub, neighbour got their windows smashed, woman deliberately drove into my car and then proceeded to bray on my windows and try and get into my car, several car collisions over the years not involving me but I was on the scene, multiple youths racing on unregistered dirt bikes on the streets and in the park, men stealing stone from someone's wall, neighbour got his car window put through, cars driving in erratic and extremely unsafe manners suggesting something was seriously wrong eg. Drifting across lanes on the motorway in a strange way (also had this on a local road where the driver spent more time on the wrong side of the road than the correct side). A regular customer in my old job who was drink driving, multiple shoplifting incidents when I worked in retail plus I was assaulted. Tried to call the police when my ex attacked me but he got to me before I could get to my phone.
Some have been 999, some 101, some were that long ago they were straight to the local station 😁.

The one and only time I've called is when driving onto my estate a car had failed to stop at a t junction and crashed straight into a house. When I realised it wasn't a car parked on a driveway I pulled over. Although I didn't see it, it must have happened seconds before as no-one was about. It was lucky he didn't drive straight into me.

I rang them after being punched by some random woman ( I gave her a "dirty look" apparently). Luckily I was not hurt too badly, which is just as well because I was told "someone will be with you shortly". I told them the hotel I was staying in but nobody from GMP turned up or got in contact at all.

Once when I found a three year old on her own. By the time the police came her grandad had come running up the street looking for her. He had been gardening and thought she was asleep, she woke up and went for a walk. Poor man was mortified.

The police were very kind

Recently I had to call 999 because there was a young man running down the road stark bollock naked I followed him while on the phone to the police it took 30 minutes for them to arrive. If the police had arrived faster the young man would have never made it into a park.
While I was on the phone to the police someone else was trying to get an ambulance and there was none in the area. 2 hours later they called back asking if ambulance was still needed.

Once hearing violence from a neighbour towards his wife and once when my partner at the time attacked me.

I was a bit unsure about the neighbour because I didn't know exactly what was going on, but the call handler could actually hear what was going on from her end of the phone, and the police came round after and said I'd definitely done the right thing.

Phoned police when I found 2 young children in their PJ'S in a subway when I was walking to work. Police were amazing.

Phoned police when we had an attempted burglary. It was attempted because I was in the house at the time.

Phoned police after my autistic child (was 11 at the time) was subjected to an attack by a group of 15 kids on his way home. But several people who saw it had phoned.
Police operators are great. The people officer who attended our home was shit. Kept telling DC to fight back. Tosser.