While all agree that the resources of the criminal justice system shouldn’t be abused, not everyone shares an understanding of what counts as enough of an emergency to summon the police.

In Boyton Beach, Florida, Jean Fortune will soon be appearing in court after he called 911 because his local Burger King had run out of lemonade.

Fortune arrived at the drive-through restaurant hungry after work and placed his order. He got into an altercation with the cashier when it turned out that the restaurant had no lemonade.

He dialled 911, then, while the police were on their way, kept the emergency service operator on the phone in a detailed conversation about his fury with the customer service at the burger bar.

When then nature of the crisis became apparent to the operator she gave him explicit advice: “Customer service is not a reason to call 911. 911 is for if you’re dying. OK?”

But Fortune persisted in his angry outrage. The affidavit filed for the court by the police officer who attended the lemonade crisis notes that Fortune was “unhappy with his order” and had complained that it was taking too long to cook.

Then, the affidavit notes, Fortune “became irate when there was no lemonade”. He was charged with misuse of the 911 communication system, which, upon conviction, can carry a custodial sentence. He will appear in court soon, although whether the canteen there is reviewing its soft drinks stock in preparation is not certain.

Meanwhile, 5,200 miles away, in Warsaw, Poland, police were preparing similar charges of wasting police time against Lukasz Zapalowski. The 22-year-old student had phoned the emergency services to report that he was being subjected to “psychological torture”.

Police rushed to rescue him but it turned out that the alleged torturer was his mother. Zapalowski said he had been impelled to make the emergency call after his mother’s regular and unrelenting demands that he should take a bath once a week and tidy his room.

In Britain, cases of misuse of the emergency services system have included a woman who phoned to demand help for the hamster that was trapped behind her wardrobe; a man reporting that his wife had got on the wrong bus after a shopping trip; and a woman desperate because she couldn’t find a DIY store.

The lost woman is recorded as saying “Help me — I’ve been driving around Huntington for an hour now and I can’t find Homebase”. When the operator explained that such a situation is not, legally, an emergency, she replied: “I know that, but honestly, I’m nearly in tears”.

Last year, in New Zealand, Arthur Cradock was prosecuted for wasting police time following an emergency call in which he exclaimed that he was being raped by a wombat. Cradock was sentenced to 75 hours community service after he testified that the marsupial’s sexual predation had left him with no anatomical injuries although, he asserted, it had traumatised him into speaking with an Australian accent.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at the Open University

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