'So who do I call?' Peel police share 'inappropriate' 911 call to highlight misuse of emergency line

The chief of Peel police is looking to change the channel on the way its emergency line is used after someone called 911 to report that their TV was on the fritz.

“When every second counts, our 911 operators should be responding to critical incidents only,” Chief Nishan Duraiappah said in post to X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.

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Duraiappah’s comments were accompanied by an audio recording of the call.

In it, the caller can be heard telling the 911 dispatcher that their television is “going crazy.”

“I can’t get any channels or nothing,” the caller is heard saying.

The dispatcher, who sounds understandably perplexed by the call, asks the caller if they have a life-threatening emergency.

The caller apologizes after realizing they’ve mistakenly used the emergency line to report their TV troubles, but seems genuinely confused as to which number they should have called.

“So who do I call?” they are heard saying.

According to Duraiappah, and as previously reported by CTV News Toronto, over 40 per cent of the calls to 911 in Peel Region are inappropriate or a misuse of the emergency line.

On top of that, in August, Peel police said there had been a 27 per cent increase in 911 calls since 2022, which marked what the service called the “most significant increase in call volumes to date.”

• Here are some of the most unnecessary 911 calls in Canada in 2022

At that time, police said their communications centre receives about 1,800 calls each day and about 720 are “non-legitimate,” or accidental.

For non-emergencies in Peel Region, Duraiappah said callers should dial 905-453-3311.

In Toronto, the non-emergency line is 416-808-2222.