A disgruntled man rang 999 to complain about a police helicopter that was reportedly keeping him awake in the early hours of the morning.
The Metropolitan Police shared a video of the exchange on social media, explaining the National Police Air Service chopper was helping them look for a missing woman.
They said she was later found with “serious injuries” to her arms.
But it appears the call left officers rather bemused.
Dialling 999, the man says: “What time is this? It’s two o’clock in the morning and at the moment there’s a very noisy helicopter shining a beam of light above where I live.
“And it’s awoken me. Now this is utterly ridiculous and outrageous.”
The call handler then tells the man the helicopter is “not a life or death emergency”.
But he continued: “Could you get that internal machine out the sky so that I could get some sleep.”
The handler adds: “Okay, you have called a life or death emergency line to say a helicopter has woken you up.”
But the man, undeterred, continued: “I want you to get that…look, I want some sleep. I want you to get that thing out of the sky.
“I want you to get that thing out of the sky so I can get some sleep, if you don’t mind.”
The handler then explained to the man his call was “not an emergency”. They added: “You shouldn’t be calling 999 for this. I’m going to end the call okay.”
Sharing details of the video on social media, the Met Police urged people to “only use 999 in a real emergency” and directed other issue to the force website.
