Police harassed by nuisance callers
Print Edition
Everyone is encouraged to phone the police if there is a serious problem, but that open invitation also generates a lot of unnecessary calls to police switchboards.
The Minhang Public Security Bureau said it receives more than 31,000 calls a day. Some of them aren’t police matters. Like the man who lost some money and claimed he was robbed. Like the drunk who kept calling police saying he had “important cases” to report but just wanted some attention. Like the shop owner who called more than 100 times to complain that a competitor had more customers than him.
Still, the Shanghai Security Bureau said all calls are logged, even if they come from cranks with a history of making false or frivolous reports. Many times, calls are from people suffering mental or social problems.
About 60 percent to 70 percent of calls relate to traffic issues, while noise, neighborhood disputes and domestic issues account for most of the rest. One policeman may be dispatched up to 100 times a day to handle such calls.
Habitual crank callers are warned they face serious repercussions if their behavior persists. Police can trace calls to perpetrators.
Recently, Minhang police issued a public warning that the 110 hotline is not for jokes and those who abuse it may face fines or jail.
Here are some examples of what’s vexing authorities.
Case 1: The lost dog
In Maqiao Town, police received a call from a 46-year-old woman surnamed Gu who said her young son and dog had been abducted by someone who forced them into a minivan near Qizhong Village.
The more she blathered on to police, the more her description of events changed.
The police, who became skeptical, investigated her family background. They found that Gu’s only son was 25 years old, unmarried and childless. Gu then changed her story to say it was her grandson “born out of wedlock” who had been kidnapped.
Upon intense interrogation, she eventually admitted that no child was involved and she had just lost her golden retriever. She said she fabricated the kidnap story in the hopes it would catch the attention of police, who would track down her missing dog.
Case 2: The insecure man
Minhang police received a series of urgent calls in one month, reporting incidents such as residential and warehouse fires with people trapped and incendiaries stored inside, and gang robberies involving tens of thousands of yuan.
Every time the fire brigade and SWAT teams rushed to the reported addresses, they found nothing abnormal.
A police investigation revealed that all the false emergency calls came from a man surnamed Zhang.
After being detained, Zhang confessed. He said that ever since he had come to Shanghai to work, life had dealt him a bad hand and he had grown insecure. He told police that dialing 110 gave him a feeling of importance.
Case 3: The robber who claimed he was robbed
The Xinzhen Police Station in Minhang received two calls in quick succession. The first came from a convenience store owner on Tianlin Road, saying the shop had been robbed by a man wielding a knife. The second came from a man who claimed to have been robbed on Longming Road.
The police watched the surveillance video from Longming Road and found no robbery filmed. When they questioned the man, surnamed Ni, they found his appearance matched that of the convenience store robber. The jig was up when Ni fumbled in his pocket and took out a cigarette pack of the same brand taken from the store.
Ni finally confessed that he lost the money he saved up to get married to his gambling habit. He said he had planned to rob the store to make up for the loss, but he only got a few hundred yuan and a pack of cigarettes.
He said he lied so that his girl friend would think he lost the wedding money in a robbery.
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