The officer left without further incident, but the calls from Harris didn’t stop: Within the next half-hour, she dialed 911 14 more times, using profanity each time and never once giving a reason for the calls, the report states.

Shortly after 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, the same officer responded and warned Harris that she would go to jail if she placed any more non-emergency calls to 911, the report states.

AD

Harris called again an hour later.

Police found her inside O’Shea’s Irish Pub and arrested her.

AD

Harris was charged with misusing the 911 system, a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine. The Office of the State Attorney in Palm Beach County told the Palm Beach Post that Harris has been arrested for similar charges in the past, though a spokeswoman told The Washington Post that there’s no record of any conviction.

Online jail records show she was released Tuesday afternoon to the South County Mental Health Center.

A spokeswoman for the West Palm Beach Police Department declined to comment.

According to the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, a national nonprofit, misuse and abuse of 911 is widespread, although there are no national surveys that detail the full extent of the problem. Non-emergencies constitute a large portion of 911 calls nationwide, according to the organization.

AD

AD

In Colorado Springs, people with non-emergency calls are inundating the emergency line, resulting in longer wait times for other callers, police Chief Pete Carey told ABC affiliate KRDO. Carey told the station that he’s often worried that someone in a life-threatening situation will get stuck behind non-emergency calls. The average wait time for the city’s call center is 35 seconds, which officials hope to shorten to 10 seconds, the station reported.

Officials in Nashville launched an advertising campaign using billboards and radio commercials urging people to call 911 only for truly life-threatening emergencies as part of an effort to reduce bogus and unnecessary calls, the Tennessean reported. The campaign reduced the number of calls by about 30,000 from 2012 to 2014, according to the paper.

In Southern California, at the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office Communications Center, 911 callers have waited up to 47 seconds for a dispatcher, though the average wait time is 15 seconds, the local CBS affiliate reported. “Frivolous calls” — including non-emergencies and pocket dials — are clogging the system, according to the news station.

“While they are tying up 911, we have someone else calling in reference to a possible heart attack or a multi-vehicle accident,” an emergency services dispatcher told the station.