Portsmouth police blighted by nuisance calls which 'hindered' patrols north of city in 'frustrating night'

Police in Copnor, Drayton, Farlington and Hilsea conducting patrols were blighted by a ‘frustrating night’ yesterday. Portsmouth police said: ‘It’s been a frustrating night tonight for our officers and staff.

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‘Sadly this has been hindered by a number of nuisance calls made by youths from telephone boxes across the north of the city. The nature of the calls has meant that we have had to respond to them, however on each occasion these have been found to be false.’

Portsmouth police added roughly 10 officers from several teams – neighbourhoods, response and patrol and the joint operations unit – responded to the fake offences yesterday evening. These pranks also tied up call handlers.

As a result, officers were not able to respond to other offences and tend to victims of crime. Police said that they will be following enquiries to find those responsible and ‘knock on their doors’ in future.

‘Our call takers and control room staff work really hard to take details of incidents and to ensure our officers are deployed to incidents as quickly as possible,’ they added.

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‘False calls such as these make it really hard for us to do this. Some people might say, “it’s just kids being kids” or “it’s just a harmless prank”. This is simply not true. All police officers and staff join to help people, we cannot do this if we are attending false and malicious calls or having to take false 999 calls.’

Anyone with information is advised to call 101, quoting 44230003148, or visit the police website.