Connecticut woman calls 911 over pizza order mix-up

HARTFORD, Conn., March 30 (UPI) -- A Connecticut woman sought help from law enforcement after claiming a local pizza shop delivered her the wrong order.

The woman said she ordered a small half-cheese, half-bacon pizza from Empire Pizza, but instead received a half-hamburger pizza. She then contacted Hartford police department complaining that the shop would not refund her order.

The pizza shop said they would have refunded her order, but she had already eaten half of the pizza.

"If I order a pizza and they don't want to give me my money back, can you guys do something," the woman told the 911 dispatcher.

The woman then repeatedly asked if an officer would be able to call the pizza shop to resolve the matter, as the dispatcher informed her that her complaint was not a police matter.

"If you go over there, you can call and have an officer meet you, but an officer's not just going to call them and ask them to give you your money back," the dispatcher said.

Deputy Chief Brian J. Foley told WTNH that police were forced to send an officer to the location, to ensure that the incident did not escalate beyond a simple complaint.

"Maybe a physical threat was made, maybe a verbal threat was made," Foley said. "Something along those lines we don't know by the 911 call, so we did have to send an officer, finding out that it was no more than a complaint over the pizza service."

According to Director of Communications Clayton E. Northgraves, Hartford receives about 160,000 calls and about half of those calls are determined not to be actual emergencies.

These calls put a strain on resources in the city that have already been stretched thin and can make it difficult for people with actual emergencies to get through the line.

"A lot of times when people are tying up a 911 line, people are trying to get through. So we are trying to get them off the line as quickly as possible. We need to answer the calls for people who actually need emergency services," Northgraves said.