Woman arrested for calling emergency number 3,000 times

The police arrested a 57-year-old woman from Velp for “harassing the 112 center with false reports since February this year.” According to the police, she made around 3,000 calls to the emergency number.

The police had been looking for the woman for months and finally tracked her down on Thursday, September 21, when she made a mistake. The woman had always called the 112 emergency center from a phone without a SIM card. The authorities managed to track her general location but did not yet find a concrete address.

On September 21, the woman again called 112 anonymously, but this time had a SIM card in. “The attentive operator immediately made the link with the previously received fake calls,” the police said.

The police responded to her address in Velp and found her at home. “She fully cooperated, honestly admitted that she was the caller, and her phone was confiscated.” The police arrested her and will further investigate to determine which steps to take next. “Aid is not excluded,” the police said.

This was the second such arrest this week. On Monday, the police arrested a man from Oirsbeek in Limburg for calling the emergency line over 800 times in 16 days.

According to the police, about 40 percent of the almost 3.5 million calls the 112 center received last year were not forwarded to the emergency services because they were false calls. “It causes the police and other first responders a lot of unnecessary work and is considered a serious offense” that could result in “community service or even a prison sentence,” the police said.