Every year or so, Avon and Somerset police ‘live tweet’ everything that comes in to the control room for one evening shift.
While it’s not every single call, the #ASPLive provides a fascinating insight into the kind of calls the police receive on a busy Saturday evening - with everything from the deadly serious to the mundane, with the bizarre and ridiculous thrown in.
Last night was a typically busy night for the police - from West Somerset to South Gloucestershire. A road traffic collision earlier in the day in the Brendon Hills west of Taunton proved to be fatal, and then there was a six-year-old boy hit by a motorcycle being ridden in St Jude’s in inner city Bristol.
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The motorbike rider and their pillion passenger failed to stop at the scene, so a major police operation began, which involved the police helicopter circling around the area east of Cabot Circus, and up the Portway as the search for the biker continued.
But while that incident attracted resources and attention, people still continued to dial 999 and 101 from across the patch. The police set their own rules for their ‘tweetathon’, and include the minimum of details for each call.
So we don’t know where the first one of the 6pm shift was referring to, when a man dialled 999 asking for police assistance as ‘teenagers harassing customers in supermarket car park’ - it could have been anywhere across the force's patch from Yeovil to Yate.
But while that was an incident ongoing, other calls did not need to be 999 ones, from a call to say that ‘carers have left the taps running’, to a person reporting that they were receiving threatening anonymous phone calls. It was at 6.39pm that the first call reporting the serious collision on Wade Street, near Cabot Circus, was made, and more RTCs were reported throughout the evening.
The party got started early at one location, somewhere in Avon and Somerset - at 7.38pm someone called 999 to report ‘underage drinking at a house party and in the street outside’. The 999 calls went from the serious to the bizarre - someone called 999 at 11.19pm to report that they had found themselves locked inside Weston train station, while just after midnight, someone rang 999 to report that nine youths were ‘climbing lamp posts and exposing themselves to traffic’.
The tweet added that the police did attend and gave ‘words of advice’ to the offenders before moving them on. As the night went on, things became increasingly violent, worrying, strange or alcohol-related.
Just after 11pm, someone rang 999 to report the ‘theft of a bottle of spirits from behind the bar at a Bristol pub’. And around ten minutes later, another call came in reporting that someone’s ‘ex-partner has broken into the home with a knife’. Within a quarter of an hour, a man was detained.
At midnight, police were sent to reports that two men had assaulted the door staff at a nightclub, and several calls were made to both 101 and 999 after midnight to report various cases of loud music and loud parties ongoing that people wanted the police to deal with. They were all told to call their local council.
By 1am, things were getting messy on the last Saturday of January - a lot of people’s first night out after payday. “999: Caller has been assaulted in a pub - hair has been ripped out,” reported the police, adding that officers have been dispatched to the scene of that incident.
But perhaps the most tragic were the calls involving children or families where alcohol was involved. At 1.23am, someone called 999 to report that their sister was ‘heavily intoxicated and has become physically abusive’. “Whilst on the line, the accused flees the property. A description was taken by call handler, while police are en route”.
At 8pm, an eight-year-old child called 999 to report an ongoing domestic incident between his parents. “He claims that his 13-year-old brother has left the house and has said he isn’t coming back. Caller confirms that his father has been drinking heavily,” the police added.
“Police en route - the call handler stays on the line and keeps talking (to) the child for reassurance,” and then, ten minutes later, the last tweet on the incident - “Police are in attendance”.
The police’s head of command and control is Becky Tipper. “Last month we received 76,614 calls into the control room with 26,407 of these being 999 calls. Compared to December 2021 this is an increase of 2193 emergency 999 calls in December alone.
“We wanted to give members of the public an insight into the work that officers and staff manage in a typical day.
“I hope our Tweetathon gave an awareness of the variety of calls we receive on both our emergency and non-emergency lines and hope this encouraged you to make the right choices when contacting us or one of our partner agencies,” she added.
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