CHICAGO, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- Chicago authorities are cracking down on false-alarm calls to 911, including people in one house who made nearly 4,000 calls in six months.
Of the approximately 10 million calls last year to Chicago's 911 center about 30 percent were fraudulent, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday. The high rate of phony calls is leading officials to warn against the crank calls, with repeated violators facing fines of up to $1,000.
There are some 17,000 911 calls in Chicago every day.
Chicago officials said since mid-August 50,672 false-alarm 911 calls were placed from 500 phones. Authorities said 3,896 of the calls came from one house on Chicago's West Side.
"Some of them are kids," Ron Huberman, executive director of the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications told the Sun-Times. "But this is not purely a problem defined by children. It includes adults who get a kick out of seeing police and fire recourse dispatched when there's no real emergency."
