One of my kid’s called 911 once when she was about three years old. I guess she had been playing with the phone, managed to hit the right digits, made some loud noises and hung up. Some time later, a police officer knocked on the door and asked if someone had called 911. When I told the officer that I didn’t think so, the officer said that the 911 operator thought that the caller might have been a child and that she would need to verify that any children in the house were safe and unharmed. At this point, I yelled out for the kid. The kid came running up the hallway that is attached perpendicularly to the entryway, hit the tiled entryway in her stockinged feet, and slid all the way across into the kitchen, screaming in glee like a howler monkey the whole way. The officer was still laughing when she got back in her cruiser.
I’ve called 911 twice since i lived in the US, and the Australian equivalent (000) twice when i lived in Australia.
In Australia, i called the emergency number once when i was about 18. A few of us had been out drinking, and one of the girls had way too much and began to pass out. It wasn’t just regular stumbling or going to sleep, but looked to us like trouble. The ambulance arrived within about 5 minutes, and when they got her to the hospital they pumped her stomach.
The other time in Australia, a woman knocked on our door and told us that she had been mugged outside our house. Another woman had grabbed her from behind and threatened her with a wooden mallet until she gave up her handbag. The police arrived within 5-10 minutes.
In Baltimore, a friend and i were watching TV in my apartment when we heard a commotion outside. We opened to curtain, and saw a guy on the ground being kicked and punched by about 5 teenagers. My friend ran for the phone, and i ran straight for the front door. By the time i got out the door, the teenagers were running down the street with their victims backpack. The guy wasn’t badly hurt, but was pretty shaken up. the cops arrived pretty quickly. I guess it wasn’t actually me who called on this occasion, but i think it counts.
The final time was also in Baltimore. I was reading on my front porch and heard a massive crash. Two cars had collided very heavily at the lights just up the block. I had my cordless phone on the porch with me, so i called 911 to report the accident. Ambulance and police arrive within a few minutes.
I’ve called it once. I’d just gotten home from work and saw my 91 year old neighbor laying on her back in her front yard. Turns out she’d fallen and was very much awake but had been laying there for an hour waiting for someone to come by and help.
The paramedics were there very fast (>5 minutes). It took longer than that to convince her that she needed to go to the hospital.
The first time I called 911, I was 2 or 3, and pretty much the exact same story, except for that the dispatcher managed to send a fire truck and a few cruisers. Apparently I was playing with the phone and called them accidentally. I wonder how often that happens…
The second time, I was way older, and as I was driving in the rain I saw a homeless man face down in the dirt in a ditch on the side of the road. I called 911 and gave them his location so they could send someone out to check up.
The third time, I was calling on my own behalf, having been involved in a 5 car crash on 75 north, with my sister screaming that she needed an ambulance, cars whizzing by at 70+ mph, and still feeling the burn of the airbag. Good lord I hope I never have to call 911 for that kind of a situation ever again.
I’m well into double figures on emergency calls.
[ul]
[li] Several burglaries (of my own home) - police not bothered.[/li][li] Burglar alarms going off many times - police not bothered.[/li][li] Shots fired nearby, police on the line for the last shot - they were round in 30 minutes. It was probably someone shooting or scaring birds at the airport.[/li][li] Found stolen property - the police were just up the road.[/li][li] Fire in a litter box in the street. I’d put out the fire but the fire brigade came anyway.[/li][li] Confused elderly driver going the wrong way round the roundabout - police didn’t seem too bothered[/li][li] Assorted car crashes as a witness with varying results[/li][li] Someone called 999 on my behalf when I was in a major accident. All three services turned up for that one.[/li][li] Reported kids throwing stones at passing cars - police not bothered. [/li][/ul]
Plus I used to do some work for the local fire brigade and the local police.
There’s probably more.
I had my first conversation with a 911 dispatcher just last week, when a car was rearended by a truck at the intersection near my house, and swerved into two pedestrians waiting at the corner. I happened to be standing at the bus stop across the street and called 911 on my mobile.
I did not get put on hold, definitely. I told the operator what had happened and where, she asked me if anyone was hurt and I told her I didn’t think so but I wasn’t sure (I hadn’t seen the pedestrians at this point), and she thanked me and said emergency services were on the way. The ambulance showed up in about two minutes, maybe three. A fire truck showed up about two minutes after that, and a couple of police cruisers maybe five minutes later.
One of the pedestrians had just gotten winged and was mostly fine, but the other one got thrown into an iron fence and taken to the hospital with critical injuries. I still don’t know if he made it or not. 
Twice, both in Hamilton, and as far as I know, no one ever showed up to check on things. Actually, the second time, it was all non-emergency numbers.
The first was a domestic dispute; our neighbours had frequent screaming fights, and it was clear that the girl (maybe 20 or so) we being abused at least psychologically by the guy. She wouldn’t look us in the eye, and seemed to avoid talking to anyone at all. Anyways, one night it was way worse that usual, and she locked him out in the hallway (their door was directly in front of ours, so we could see what was happening through the peep-hole). He was pounding on the door, screaming at her to “let me in, I’ll fucking kill you, you fucking bitch!” So we called 911 and, as I said, we never heard or saw anyone show up. They both moved out about a month or two later, though.
The second time, there was a guy standing on the side of the highway, here. He was on the edge of the road, on the other side of the wall, but definitely over that span of water. There was no parked car in the area, and I couldn’t see any reason for someone to be standing there. He was clearly not a city/road worker. Anyways, I got home (about 3 minutes away) and called the local Hamilton police to tell them about a suspicious looking guy on the side of the road, and they told me that “It’s the highway, call OPP” and hung up on me. So I call the non-emergency OPP number, and they tell me “well he’s not actually on the road? He’s on the side of it? That’s not the highway anymore, call the city!” So I called the city back, and told her that someone had better go out there and figure out what the fuck some guy is doing on the side of the bridge, because it looks awfully suspicious, not to mention dangerous, and I wouldn’t want someone to get hurt. She told me “he’s probably fishing”, and hung up. So I gave up. Nothing more I could do, especially since it had been a good 20 mins at that point. The bridge never blew up, and I didn’t hear of any bodies in the water in the following weeks, but who knows. Stupid fucking cops and their jurisdictions… if someone’s doing something illegal/about to kill themselves, does it MATTER what uniform you’re wearing? Oh, and all this was in October 2001, which makes the cop’s attitudes even less excusable, IMHO, since everyone was still jumpy from the events in NYC in September.
I called once when I got shot at on the freeway. Or, rather, I tried. Alltel hadn’t bothered to program ( as the 911 autodial on my phone like they were supposed to. I manually dialed, then got transferred between two different agencies since the highway I was on was under highway patrol jurisdiction rather than Phoenix local, despite running smack through the center of town.
Several times when I was a bouncer I called 911 for people who were injured in fights or suffering a medical condition. Most times, Friday and Saturday nights usually, I’d ring into the auto-attendant telling me to remain on the line and someone would be with me shortly. That lasted more than five minutes a time or two. One time I got a busy singal for the first several attempts.
Cops and ambulance would normally roll in within ten minutes once I actually got through.
Well, I called 911 a long time ago! Can’t you see how late they reacting?
(Threw that in for any fellow hip-hop heads in the house)
I have dialed them lots, as I live in a rather rough neighborhood. But the last time I called was because my mom’s sugar was dangerously low, and she fell down, disoriented. This particular time sticks out for me because the paramedic was very stern with me and admonished me for not being more on top of all my mom’s diabetes info. I felt pretty guilty that I couldn’t answer the questions more readily, and since then I have commited her meds and info to memory.
When I worked Security at a small University, we got a few calls about 911 hangups from dorms or office buildings that turned out to be International Students trying to call home. We’d get to explain to them how this can get them into trouble and they’d better stop doing it, especially because if it didn’t work the first time you did it, it’s not going to work the next NINE TIMES (and believe me, a lot of third world International students get really freaked out when issues of “police” become involved).
For myself, I think I may have called once or twice about small matters that I don’t recall anymore. The only larger matter I remember was the last time someone tried to break into my old house.
Long story short, because I’ve posted it several times before, someone was trying to break down my back door. Me being there, yelling at him, displaying a large knife, none of that disuaded him. I called 911 while holding the large knife and told him that. He looked at me through the open window and went back to trying to break down the door (steel core - in perhaps 10 minutes of throwing his shoulder at it, he didn’t even damage it).
911 assured me that an officer was being dispatched. But fearing what would happen if the guy managed to get in, and seeing that he didn’t seem to be afraid of me or the big knife, I told the operator that I was hanging up the phone and going to get my gun - that the officer had better be there damned quick! The operator tried to convince me to stay on the phone. NO.
I went up, had to dig through my stuff to find the .357 magnum I’d recently packed away, then find the ammo that I’d put somewhere else (last time I did either of those). Loaded it up and walked back down to the back window, where I held it up sideways pointed up for maximum visibility and said “Just want you to know what’s waiting for you if you get through that door”.
ZOOOM! Guy took off like a rocket. Hurdled/stumbled over the 4’ chain link fence (rather than going through the OPEN GATE) and down the alley.
FORTY FIVE MINUTES LATER, a police car comes down the alley…and keeps right on going.
Thank you, Minneapolis Police Department. :mad: Glad I don’t live in the city anymore, but while I did after that incident, I swore that I’d rather deal with such incidents myself from then on rather than trust their sorry asses to protect me.
Called twice, both from the office (in a mostly oil related industrial town). The first time was a few years ago when the snow melted, exposing a boxed bag of some oilfield-related goop that fell off a truck near our building sometime during the winter. The phone book said to call 911 for hazmat-related stuff, so I did.
What seemed like all the cops in town showed up shortly after lunch (the building is right next to the county centre), who poked it a bit but all ended up driving off w/o doing anything, so no real effect.
The second was when an electrical transformer on a pole 1/2 a block away exploded on afternoon, setting the grass nearby on fire. (A good show from the meeting room where we happened to be) The dispatcher said to move away if we had to, and to tell the two guys trying to put it out with extinguishers from the nearby gas station to watch out, but I had to say that it would be hard since we were on the 4th floor. A bunch of cops, the fire department, and a utility vehicle all showed up for that one. Oh yeah, and I had to tell everyone in the room to STFU 'cause I couldn’t hear the dispatcher over them. 
Several 999 occasions:
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Housemate’s boyfriend’s car broken into, while we were in the house. He’d just arrived home from a week away playing in shows, with a whole car full of gear, When spotted, they made off with the nearest item, which happened to be his laptop. Housemate’s BF gave (fruitless) chase while I called the cops, who were with us quick enough for me to pour extra tea from that which was already being made. No chance of actually catching the little sods, of course.
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This one’s by proxy: held up at gunpoint, we then walked to the nearest place to get help, a side entrance of a hospital, which turned out to be closed at that time. However, there was an intercom to security, who opened the doors remotely to let us in, and called the police themselves. The armed response patrol were there within a couple of minutes.
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After being driven off the road at close to 60, by a driver on the wrong side of the road. My car and I were unhurt, and while very sympathetic and calming, my description of ‘blue, foreign number plates’ was of little help to the police operator, who pointed out that the offender was most likely now on the correct side of the dual carriageway they’d have joined shortly after, and that “if they weren’t, we’d know about it by now”.
Speaking of kids accidentally calling emergency services, I did that myself once. Only it wasn’t 9/11, it was the silent alarm at a bank. My mom was the branch manager, and I was there after school, waiting for her to finish some paperwork so we could go home. I was about twelve or so, sitting at someone’s desk, reading a book (IIRC, it was Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre by HP Lovecraft). I was pretty into the story, so when my hand brushed against the button under the desk, I didn’t really think about what it was until I’d idlly pushed it about half a dozen times. Once I realized what I’d done, I was too scared to admit to it. Luckily for me, my mom was ready to leave before the cops showed up. Unluckily for her, as soon as we got home, she had to turn around and go back and deal with all the squad cars that had showed up at her work about five minutes after we’d left.
There is one time I witnessed a long 911 response time. We were riding on an Amtrak train that hit a car in a small town in rural Mississippi. It was early in the morning, maybe 6am. I imagine train-hits-car incidents get called in with a pretty high priority, but it still was about 45 minutes before the ambulance arrived. All of the passengers lived, but at least one got loaded into the ambulance on a stretcher. That was a real “there are two Americas” experience, watching someone wait 45 minutes for an ambulance. There was no bad weather or other obvious circumstance that delayed the response. I do think some police were there sooner, and maybe they counted as the 911 response.
Now that I think about it, we were in a fairly minor car accident this summer and waited about 15 minutes for police response. There were not injuries but the vehicles were blocking a lane of traffic. This was in an area capable of very quick response time, so I guess it was a low priority call. The weather was perfect and it was around lunchtime.
Maybe there was a delay in giving a meaningful location? There’s no way an ambulance can be dispatched to ‘a train on xyz route’. Perhaps only when the police got there were they able to pass on the information needed. (All of that is a WAG.)
Not likely. Once someone knew that it was in the town, on the railroad tracks, it would have been impossible to miss. It was a rural town, but it wasn’t just random countryside. Probably 50 residents came out and gathered around to observe, and could easily have given any necessary directions. Why 50 residents observing at 6am? I think it’s safe to say the town didn’t get much excitement.
I suppose it’s possible the people in the accident initially said they didn’t need medical attention, but the policeman realized they did.
I think I’ve called once, but it may have been twice:
The first time was when I was mugged outside my front door in the crappy apartment complex we lived in in college. I honestly don’t remember if I called 911 or the regular police line–there was no real emergency, so I probably called information and got the police number. The police came out pretty quickly–under half an hour, and, again, I wasn’t in danger.
The second time, and I know for sure I called 911, was when someone started kicking through our door after midnight one night. It later turned out that it was just a teenager who had been walking down the row of townhomes, kicking the ancient, warped wooden doors because he realized they’d “pop”. But at our door his brand new shoe flew off and into our living room, so he had to keep kicking until he made enough of a hole that he could lean in and get it. I suspect he was as scared as I was. I kept yelling “I’ve got 911 on the phone!”. Cops showed up within 5 minutes of the start of the car.
They never caught the kid, but I think he got lucky: half the people in the neighborhood had guns, and it wouldn’t have been crazy to use one when, at midnight, someone starts kicking their way into your living room.
We have no choice. All calls for any type of assistance – life and death emergencies to the most benign waste-of-taxpayers money-and-police-assistance – all must go thru 911. We have no non-emergency number.
Several times. A neighbor illegally dumping semi trailers on residential streets, unknown people prowling in my neighbors empty home, responding to cries of help from a former neighbor as her boyfriend beat her, underage kids using an empty house as a fuck and smoke den (That was fun watching the mothers of the underage girls showing up at 3am to pick them up - so you really don’t know where your 14 year old daughters are at 3am on a school night? Interesting that no fathers showed up on that one. The boys went to jail.) Called for several grass fires.
The list goes on. Every time the police, fire, ambulance showed up within five minutes.
Thank you. I was waiting for that!!
I called 911 today. I’m on the second floor, and my apartment overlooks a major intersection in town. I heard a big ol’ thud, looked out, and saw that there had been a collision. I picked up the phone and called 911. They answered immediately. I quickly said “I live at <address> and there was just a car acci…oh wait, the police are here already. Never mind.” And the guy said “okay, thanks” and hung up.
So response time was much less than a minute. But we’re a block and a half from the police station and this town is crawling with cops anyway.
We only come and we come when we want to, you know. 
St. Urho
Paramedic