Provincial Police in the Peterborough area are dealing with an extreme spike in accidental 911 calls this month.
The Peterborough County Detachment has responded to more than 150 unintentional 911 calls in the first two weeks of July alone, prompting a reminder to everyone that these calls take away time and resources from real emergencies.
The calls can happen through “pocket dials”, phones left in backpacks or purses, or even kids playing with cell phones and police say there are some precautions you can take to avoid the unintentional calls.
They suggest using keypad locks on your phone’s home screen, turning off the 911 auto-dial feature and refraining from programming your phone to speed dial 911.
Police say if you do accidentally dial the emergency hot line, you should stay on the line and let the operator know the call was an accident, so they can move on to the next call and not have to figure out if there’s an actual emergency or not.
