SOMEONE calling to get help to turn their mattress over and a woman who wanted her son to get a haircut are among the 999 calls dealt with by Police Scotland in recent months.
The force took to Twitter yesterday to reveal the more bizarre requests that have come through the emergency hotline since the merger of the former police divisions.
One drunk person called 999 to report a woman for using drugs. Officers said: "We asked how he knew this. He said: 'Because I collect them for her'."
Another wanted to report their friend for "stealing their heroin", while a common time-wasting call was said to be: "I cannae afford a taxi home, any chance of a lift?"
A caller even dialled officers on 999 to ask: "What's your non-emergency number?"
The examples were issued throughout the day to raise awareness of the prevalence of time-wasters calling 999, meaning genuine calls were sometimes left in a queue.
Police Scotland service centres answer 999 calls and non-emergency 101 calls. Since the force formed in April 2013, they have taken 888,783 calls on 101, and 648,818 calls on 999.
The force said inappropriate calls slowed the process of answering genuine ones
Another caller said: "There's a pigeon with a broken wing in my garden, can you come out and help?", while someone wanted Scottish officers to go to a house in Tottenham, to see if their friend was having an affair.
Other calls included a person who said: "Restaurant delivered the wrong carryout. It contained nuts, which I'm allergic to. What are they trying to do to me?"
One caller on 999 said his phone had been stolen, but when asked what phone he was calling from, he hung up as "he was speaking on it".
Police Scotland's Sgt John Kerr said: "You should call 101 any time when it isn't a 999 - any time when it isn't an emergency. Examples are when you've been involved in a minor traffic accident, if you've been the victim of a minor crime that isn't ongoing, if you've seen a missing person."
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