Leeds woman jailed after phoning 999 nearly 50 times in a two-hour period

Sarah Coates, 48, of Noster Place in Leeds, was sentenced to 12 weeks’ imprisonment at Leeds Magistrates on Monday (24 April). She was also ordered to take part in rehabilitation activity and pay court costs of £85 and a victim surcharge of £154.

West Yorkshire Police received 36 999 calls from Coates between 6.24am and 8.11am on Sunday (23 April). BT confirmed that they received further calls on 999 from 6.13am which had not been connected to West Yorkshire Police. She admitted that she kept calling for no reason.

Superintendent Mick Rutter, said: “We recently relaunched our campaign asking the public to ‘help us to help you’ by making sure you only use our emergency and non-emergency numbers appropriately and make use of our online contact options.

“Callers like this who misuse these services can delay us in answering real emergencies. This was a persistent wasting of police time and we will take action where it is appropriate to do so.”