A QUICK-thinking crimestopper from Bebington tried to call an emergency number and ended up talking to an answerphone.

John Ball rang the Crimestoppers helpline to report four youths he had seen climbing on the roof of St John's School in Bebington.

Mr Ball, from Oak Road, who has been a 'Homewatch' leader for eight years, rang the number - as he had been told to by police.

However, he was not happy with the response he finally got. He told the Globe: "I got a recorded message saying, 'Crimestoppers is now closed until tomorrow morning'. I then rang Merseyside Police and transferred to the Bromborough branch.

"I asked what the point of ringing Crimestoppers was, and the officer told me he did not know. Does that mean that no-one commits crimes after five o'clock?"

While Mr Ball was busily trying to get through to the police, his son had chased the youths away, so he told them not to bother coming.

A Merseyside Police press officer said that Mr Ball's case was unfortunate, because he did not get a quick response, but the problem could have been avoided. She told the Globe: "Although the Crimestoppers service is a 24-hour-a-day service, it is not manned for 24 hours. When there is no-one on duty, there is an answerphone message which says, 'the office is now closed, but will re-open at 8am in the morning.' The message also tells the caller that if the crime problem cannot wait until the morning, they can either call 999 or ring the police emergency hotline on 709-6010 and ask for their area control room."

Martin Andrew, of Merseyside Police Incident Management Unit, said cases of children climbing on roofs should not normally be reported through Crimestoppers but that the public should ring 999.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.