{"id":649644,"date":"2026-05-04T19:50:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T19:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/649644\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T19:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T19:50:16","slug":"wa-police-reveal-details-of-absurd-triple-zero-calls-and-issue-warning-over-abuse-of-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/649644\/","title":{"rendered":"WA Police reveal details of absurd Triple Zero calls and issue warning over abuse of service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Triple Zero (000) call centres are seeing an increase in “absurd” calls, ranging from lost television remote controls to ducks crossing the road.<\/p>\n

Acting Superintendent Graeme Barry said of the 400,000 Triple Zero calls made every year in Western Australia, at least one a day was frivolous.<\/p>\n

One caller asked if police could attend their property to take their chicken out of the oven.<\/p>\n

“They were away on a holiday, and they had that moment of realisation where they thought they left it in there, and wanted police to go to their house and bash through the door,” Superintendent Barry told 102.5 ABC Perth.<\/p>\n

\"Triple<\/p>\n

Authorities say at least one Triple Zero call per day is frivolous. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

“At the end of it, they said police could eat the chicken.<\/p>\n

“We had a lady who called because she was desperate to have a cup of tea, and she couldn’t get her carton of milk open.”‘It’s an offence’<\/p>\n

Other callers rang Triple Zero because they had locked themselves out of their house, or forgotten the password to their phone.<\/p>\n

“These sort of stories, on the face of it, do sound very funny and sort of ridiculous,” Superintendent Barry said.<\/p>\n

“But there’s a very, very important message behind this: when people do ring our Triple Zero line for these sorts of calls, for people who really need assistance in an emergency situation \u2014 they’re actually putting those lives at risk.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Authorities say there are considerable penalties for misusing the Triple Zero service.\u00a0 (ABC News: Rhiannon Shine)<\/p>\n

“It’s an offence to abuse the Triple Zero service. It carries a three-year penalty and up to a $70,000 fine.<\/p>\n

“You should only be using Triple Zero when it’s an emergency situation. Like when someone is seriously injured, or is in need of urgent medical help, if your life or property is being threatened, or if you’ve witnessed a serious crime.<\/p>\n

“Not because your chips have turned up cold from a retailer.”Hanging up not possible<\/p>\n

Superintendent Barry explained that strict procedures meant operators could not just hang up immediately on every frivolous caller.<\/p>\n

He said some callers also took a while to get to the point, however ludicrous the point may be, which added to an already clogged call line.<\/p>\n

“We’ll average on a normal day between 3,000 and 3,500 calls a day. In the peak of summer, we can average over 4,000 calls a day,” he said.<\/p>\n

Some callers that should have used the non-urgent WA police line on 131 444 rang Triple Zero to “jump the queue”, the superintendent said.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Triple Zero call takers are not permitted to hang up straight away when confronted with a frivolous call.\u00a0 (Supplied: Queensland Ambulance Service)<\/p>\n

When asked if dementia could explain some of the calls, Superintendent Barry said while mental impairment was one of the factors operators were aware of, they could never make an assumption.<\/p>\n

“Our call-takers are trained for people with dementia and we do have good processes in place, as do the other agencies we deal with,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But every time someone rings Triple Zero, we treat it as an emergency until we determine otherwise.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Triple Zero (000) call centres are seeing an increase in “absurd” calls, ranging from lost television remote controls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[72756,64,63,28045,123798,314215,44,17174,17173,86,241102,314214,314220,16154,314216,191699,314213,45,314219,314217,314218],"class_list":["post-649644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-72756","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-call-centre","tag-emergency-calls","tag-karens","tag-news","tag-news-perth","tag-news-wa","tag-perth-news","tag-police-call","tag-prank-calls","tag-silly-police-emergency-calls","tag-triple-zero","tag-triple-zero-abuse","tag-triple-zero-calls","tag-triple-zero-challenge","tag-wa-news","tag-worst-000-calls","tag-worst-emergency-calls","tag-worst-triple-zero-calls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}