It is ‘Mad Friday’ – the last big Friday night out before Christmas.
And even with the concerns over the spread of the Omicron Covid variant, the police are expecting that people will head out to parties, bars and events.
This is one of their busiest nights of the year, and they’re expecting 1,200 calls to the Force Control Room.
[tptn_list limit=3 daily=1 hour_range=1]
So the force has brought back its Tweetathon. Taking place from 2pm today (Friday 17 December) to 2am on Saturday, the force will tweet every call that comes into them during a 12-hour period.
To deal with the expected high demand, extra police officers will be deployed to the streets of North Yorkshire.
More staff will be working in the force’s Force Control Room in York too. As well as dealing with members of the public, staff in the control room also deploy police officers and take control of incidents.
Hundreds of 999 calls
Jane Larkin, manager of the Force Control Room, told David Dunning on YorkMix Radio about the volume of calls they were expecting.
“We’re expecting around 1,200 calls, about 400 of those will be 999 calls around 600 will be one-on-one calls.
“The public will also request around 100 callbacks, so we can make a call back to members of the public rather than them actually waiting on the line to be answered.
How to follow the Tweetathon
Every call that the force’s control room receives during the 12-hour period will be tweeted on the North Yorkshire Police Twitter account @NYorksPolice with the hashtag #NYPfor12
Updates will also be posted on North Yorkshire Police Facebook page and Instagram account
“And in terms of incidents between five o’clock and midnight tomorrow, we’ll be expecting around 150 incidents to be logged and dealt with.
“That will include around 90 immediate responses, which we hope to attend within 15 minutes. in an urban setting. And in a rural setting. It could be 20 minutes, but that’s what we aim for.”
North Yorkshire Police has struggled to hit its response time targets – in August, half of 999 calls were not answered within the ten-second target set nationally.
The police commissioner has committed resources to tackle this, and that will make a difference, Ms Larkin said.
“We have a lot of students officers in training at the moment into our control room.
“We’re training more people to be able to take the 999 calls and one-on-one calls.
“Moving forward, we’re going to be using social media and online reports. So that’s another method by which members of the public can get in touch with us to report crimes or incidents.”