Police in Staffordshire answered nearly 2,200 calls to their control room in just 24 hours at the start of the bank holiday weekend.
Around 1,100 of the calls received by handlers required a police response, including a man walking on the carriageway of the A50 and a fire at a social club.
Our sister title, The Stoke Sentinel was given a behind-the-scenes look at Staffordshire Police's control room in Stafford in the run-up to the bank holiday weekend.
To cope with the expected spike in calls, double the number of officers were working over the shift from 4pm on Friday, August 25 until 7am the next morning.
Superintendent Carl Ratcliffe has worked for Staffordshire Police for more than 20 years and has dealt with increases in crime on bank holiday weekends many times before.
He said: "When you have nice weather, there’ll be more people going out and we tend to see incidents related to alcohol.
"I will deal with serious incidents where perhaps a firearm is involved and look at how we deal with it. I will also manage incidents where there has been a death, a serious road traffic collision, or serious public disorder.
"In the control room my role is to make sure we have sufficient resources available to handle the requests coming in."
At 8pm on Friday, 832 incidents had been reported throughout the day; many of these reports relating to cases of antisocial behaviour.
Dispatcher Tom Dodd said: "You never know what is coming and it is really dynamic. You have a chance to help people and you go home and know you've done a good job.
"We get some unusual calls. I have had to explain to people in the middle of the night why we can't go and arrest a cat."
On Friday evening, officers monitoring cars on the A50 recorded a car travelling at 105mph, while another car on the M6 was caught driving at 113mph.
A major problem faced by emergency service operators is hoax calls. While most calls to the emergency number are legitimate, Staffordshire Police recorded that someone made 42 calls to the control room in just eight minutes.
Control room manager Chris Andrews said: "Some people think by dialling 999, it boosts their signal, which it doesn't, it just comes through to us. We also have repeat callers. Someone made 42 calls within eight minutes."
