Man who made more than 1,000 silent calls to police ‘for fun and enjoyment’ gets jail

The police found that he had used the number to call the police centres.

Foo admitted using call directories or leaflets from the NPCs to obtain the landlines, adding that he had made the calls “for fun and enjoyment”.

Out of the 425 calls made to Yishun NPC, 330 were picked up by four officers while the rest were not answered.

The unanswered calls also resulted in obstruction to the phone lines because subsequent phone calls were put on hold in a queue, preventing other calls from being answered promptly, the prosecution said.

Foo was arrested in May and later remanded at the Institute of Mental Health for psychiatric assessment.

He was found to have mild intellectual disability, but the institute’s report found that this had no contributory link to the offences.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Ng Jun Kai sought three to five weeks’ jail for Foo, noting a previous conviction in January 2025 for the communication of false messages, but did not elaborate.

Mr Ng also said that there were no similar precedents for this specific offence, but a large number of calls had been made to the NPCs, disrupting non-emergency numbers.

Defence lawyer Daniel Atticus Xu sought two weeks’ jail and highlighted that calling the NPCs was not equivalent to calling the 999 emergency hotline.

In sentencing, District Judge Koo Zhi Xuan said the court had to consider and grapple with the fact that Foo has mild intellectual disability, while the foremost sentencing consideration was deterrence.

For obstructing a public servant in the discharge of his public functions, Foo could have been jailed for up to six months or fined up to S$6,500, or both.