KINGSTON, Jamaica – The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is again appealing to Jamaicans to desist from making prank phone calls to emergency numbers, especially around the festive season.

Head of the JCF Corporate Communications Unit, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Stephanie Lindsay, told a recent JIS ‘Think Tank’ that prank calls will prevent individuals in need of assistance from connecting.

“One-one-nine is an emergency line, so when you call 119 you are expected to get through immediately. We have a very robust system which is very efficient and effective in responding to the needs of persons, but it’s technology; it has its capacity, and what we find around this time, persons are making hundreds and thousands of prank calls. What those prank calls are doing, they are preventing you from getting assistance,” SSP Lindsay said.

She explained that when individuals call the country’s emergency line, the phone will ring even when at maximum capacity, and urged parents to discuss the serious repercussions of making prank calls to 119 with their children.

“So, if it can hold, for example, 100 calls at a time, if you have 50 prank calls and 100 emergencies, only 50 of those persons are getting assistance, and remember, people are calling 119 for everything. So, speak to your children about not playing with 119, and for the adults that are doing it, those minutes that you’re holding up the circuit is the difference between life and death for another family. It’s the difference between the police getting to a family in crisis to save lives,” she said.

Meanwhile, Lindsay further outlined that criminals also use prank calls to their advantage to stretch the resources of the police.

“They will call and give wrong information to the police that something is happening at a particular place. We see it quite often when we have ongoing conflicts, especially gang conflicts in some areas, and we have a strong police/military presence. The criminal network will try to do things to distract the police or to pull resources from one area, so as to allow them the opportunity,” she said.

Earlier this year, an inter-ministerial body, headed by the Ministry of Science, Energy, Telecommunications and Transport, began working on measures to address the issue of prank calls to emergency service providers.

– JIS