Woman called Cambridgeshire police after eating ‘spicy’ curry and was ‘suffering the consequences’

During the call the woman shouts that her “ass is on fire” and demands to see paramedics as she fears she will be on the toilet for “three hours.”

The run up to Christmas is perhaps the busiest time of year for Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s demand hub, with a rise in drunken and disorderly incidents, domestics and even calls from the vulnerable and lonely.

During the week before Christmas last year, the constabulary received 4083 calls into its central demand hub, ranging from life threatening road traffic collisions to time wasting hoax calls.

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In November this year, there were 58 recorded hoax callers, but the actual figure is expected to be much higher. This is because the figure does not account for repeat callers who are known to ring up to 50 times in one evening.

There were also many more calls that should have been dealt with by a separate agency. One caller decided to dial 999 during the busiest period of the year to let operators know she had lost her bank card and another to let operators know this his bins hadn’t been collected.

The answers to a wide variety of questions commonly asked by callers to 101 can be found on the constabulary’s website - www.cambs.police.uk.

Superintendent Mike Branston said: “We need people to think before they call us and only dial 999 in a genuine emergency. Misuse use of our 999 service could cause delay in us answering the phone to genuine emergencies and could even lead to the arrest of the hoax caller and even a prison sentence.

“It was only a few months ago that a regular hoax caller was sentenced to six months in prison.

“We’re urging people to think carefully about whether to call 999, 101 or another organisation if the issue isn’t a policing matter.

“If people would prefer to report non-emergency situations online then this can be done on our website via a form or a live web chat function.”

To report non-emergencies online visit www.cambs.police.uk/report.