911 hanging up on caller for swearing -- can they DO that?

I’m putting this in the Pit, mostly because I know it’ll get heated:

Basically, what happened was, a young girl’s father had a severe seizure, she calls 911, panicking. It takes her three calls to get through, all the while she’s saying, “When are they going to fucking answer?” Apparently, it was recorded the third time before they picked up, because the dispatcher proceeded to lecture her, and when she started panicking further, and asking for a “fucking ambulance”, he told her she was abusing 911, and hung up. She calls again, and again, he lectures her, and refuses to listen to her reason for calling. All the while, her father’s not getting help.

Long story short, she was eventually charged with abusing 911, for swearing.

Mind you, yelling for a fucking ambulance isn’t exactly Emily Post. HOWEVER, I would think that as a dispatcher, your first duty is GETTING that fucking ambulance, not lecturing panicking teenagers. (And yes, before anyone says, she was rude. Let’s get that out of the way. However, I would think that the cop’s behavior was inexcusable.)

So can they DO that?

Link (YouTube video)

Dispatcher: “Are you going to swear again, you stupid ass?”.

That seems way, way out of line.

People swear when they panic. It’s not like you compose yourself and then call 911. Why fault someone for what they say in a panicky situation?

In Los Angeles, swearing doesn’t seem to matter.

After the Wisconsin 911 debacle that just made them confirm what they need to do it wouldn’t happen right now. It should never happen anywhere. All 911 calls need to have people sent. This lady will likely find she’s jobless or get a severe reprimand and retraining. The local community needs to let the governor know they won’t accept nothing being done if this isn’t addressed.

Worse than that – it was a cop. He’s being sued, as is the department. You’d think he would know better.

What indicates that that call is from Los Angeles? I can’t find any more information about it.

Who cares if they can or not? They shouldn’t! It sounds like this idiot put the guy’s health in danger because he wanted more respect from the girl on the phone.

It was on the news and they said CA.

That explains it.

It was a direct disrespect to his Authority!!

Bust that idiot down to a desk job somewhere in the back of the precinct.

No, check that. Run him through a proven effective sensitivity training course and then bust him down to said job.

Not enough. Put it in his new “condtions” that if he ever even looks at a phone, the Desk Sergeant will shove said phone up his #%^@@@^%#%^.

:eek:

What body part even has that many letters?

/channeling StarvingArtist

This is all the fault of the hippies and the erosion of civility brought on by those smelly assholes in the 60s. Why, the Beave would never use such foul language.

Lower intestine?

Two weeks unpaid suspension seems to be entirely too little punishment for this man’s behavior. This ought to be a firing offense. I hope the family finds great success in their lawsuit. Reckless endangerment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false arrest… this guy needs to do some time himself, really.

What an absolute load of crap that is. People swear on 9-1-1 all the time, just because you’re rude doesn’t mean you’re not bleeding or your house isn’t on fire. That Sgt. needs to lose his job today and be relegated to fetching office supplies and making coffee. There’s no excuse for this behavior at all. The guy’s a 20 year veteran who is obviously such a screw-up at his policing duties that they put him in charge of answering a phone. Something that most cops don’t understand is harder and more complex than they realize.

When my father had his aortic aneurysm, the godsdamned 911 dispatcher was a moron who wouldn’t listen to my explicit directions – I stood on the front porch and watched the fucking ambulance drive past the correct turn 3 times all the while telling the dispatcher what I was seeing and being told “ma’am, they know where they are going.” Had the fucker listened to me, my father might have gotten help in time, rather than dying. The asshole in the OP’s story needs to be dumped in the middle of the ocean and allowed to figure out how to get help for himself without the aid of 911. Fucker.

Better yet, allow him to call 911 only be hung up on when the invetiable occurs.

Dispatcher: “this is 911, what is your emergency?”

Asshole cop: I’m in the middle of the fucking ocean!

Dispatcher: “click”

Lord knows, I do.

I normally do not swear in front of people I am unfamilliar with, but I will curse like sailor when the adrenaline starts to flow.

Professionals should know better. This fucknut should find a new profession.