Photo/Illutration A police officer receives an emergency call at Kyoto Prefectural Police Headquarters in Kyoto’s Kamigyo Ward on January 2019. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Summoning police to drive a drunk caller home or to deal with a cockroach isn't what the 110 police emergency hotline is set up for, according to the National Police Agency.

Those were among the nearly 20 percent of more than 8 million emergency calls police across Japan received between January and November last year that were not urgent.

The NPA compiled figures on the number of calls to the emergency number ahead of Dial 110 Day on Jan. 10 to raise awareness about the proper use of the line.

The data shows that police received 8,299,775 emergency calls between January and November in 2019, 59,937 fewer than those received during the same period a year earlier. The number of those not requiring urgent police attention was down 79,179 from the same period in 2018, to 1,524,542.

According to the figure, 18.4 percent of the calls were not urgent, such as callers checking if their new cellphone was functioning properly or asking, “What’s the date today?”

By the contents of such calls, 46.3 percent were inquiries, such as asking which number a caller should dial to summon an ambulance, while 43.8 percent were complaints or requests, including asking police to install a traffic signal.

False reports or prank calls accounted for 9.9 percent of the non-urgent calls.

The NPA is expressing concern that police may become unable to respond to calls from victims or witnesses that require urgent attention if they are flooded with such nuisance calls.

The agency says that police have investigated particularly malicious cases as fraudulent obstruction of business or false reporting of a crime or disaster in violation of the minor offenses law.

The NPA is asking the public to dial #9110, a dedicated telephone line for consultations with police, when they wish to contact law enforcement on non-urgent matters.