Police Faked Emergency Calls To Improve Stats

from the emergency? dept

Sometimes when you rely too much on stats, it can lead to some pretty ridiculous unintended consequences, as people focus on "fixing" the stats, rather than actually dealing with the issue. That appears to be the case with a police emergency call center in Scotland. After a "busy night" in which the center's "call response targets" were not met, one of the dispatchers was sent outside to dial 999 repeatedly (999 being the equivalent of 911 in the US) on his mobile phone. Those calls were, of course, answered immediately, until the center's stats were at an acceptable rate. And we wonder why so many people get busy signals when calling in an emergency?

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