Police have appealed against abuse of the emergency 999 number, after 1,293,452 calls, or 58 per cent of those received last year by command and control centres were nuisance or misdialled calls. A total of 2,239,457 calls were received, of which only 946,005 were genuine calls. A police spokesman said that misuse of the emergency hotline would unnecessarily engage operators of the control centres and delay the handling of genuine emergencies.