An Ontario woman’s petition to fine people who call 911 to complain about Amber Alerts has collected almost 75-thousand votes so far.
Earlier this month Toronto police received a flood of calls from people complaining about being woken up at 3am to an ambert alert of a grandfather and his two grandchildren missing.
Edmonton had a similar incident earlier this year after they were hit with a string of callings of people complaining about a 9:45pm (yes, 9:45PM!) call about a missing young child.
Dalia Monacelli is planning on sending the petition to Premier Doug Ford’s office and the Ontario attorney genera.
In the petition on change.org she states
“Ever since the Emergency Broadcasting System was brought to our phones, people have started to complain about being woken up in the middle of the night by said alerts, mostly Amber Alerts.
One of those times I remember very clearly. It was the abduction of 11-year-old Riya Rajkumar (pictured above) from Brampton, ON.
She was abducted by her father, Roopesh Rajkumar.
Her mother decided to call the police after he failed to bring her back home in time and also because he threatened to harm the little girl and himself.
The Amber alert woke me up that night but, all I remember was being worried about the girl and praying she would be found safe (as it happens in most Amber Alerts cases).
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for poor, innocent Riya.
While this was happening, some people (a lot of people) decided to start calling the emergency lines to COMPLAIN about the Amber Alert because it woke them up and “they couldn’t do anything about it anyway” or they were “too far” from where the Amber Alert had originated.
These people went on living their lives which were disrupted for all of two minutes, while the little girl was no more. They were never fined for taking time away from real emergencies.
The father had been found THANKS to the Amber Alert, but it was already too late.
More Amber Alerts have been issued since and more calls and complains have come through the emergency lines.
This is ABSURD. This has to STOP.
People have to understand that when they dial 9-1-1, they are taking time and personnel away from actual emergencies and that these actions could COST LIVES!
Please, take a moment to sign this petition and make sure these non-emergency callers get fined for their crime!
Thank you.”
Listen to Pulse FM callers thoughts on the petition and weigh in yourself at 107.7 Pulse FM on Facebook!