# 911 hanging up on caller for swearing -- can they DO that? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 4, 2009, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308 "2009-05-04T17:22:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![EpicNonsense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c37758/32.png) [@EpicNonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EpicNonsense)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/21 "2009-05-04T20:55:15Z")
I’d hear worse from customers on the phone while working at a department store… this guy is supposed to be handling 911 calls, what the fuck did he expect??? Should be fired, sued, and be ordered to wear a pacifier for the next 12 months, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/22 "2009-05-04T21:30:31Z")
Man, they’d better not pull that shit with my girlfriend if she’s ever on 911. She swears more than any woman I’ve ever met. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/23 "2009-05-04T22:36:46Z")
> [@Litoris](#): > > 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. (((Litoris)))) Reading that made me curse out loud. Very loud. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/24 "2009-05-04T22:51:00Z")
He’s a cop – a cop ! And he’s moaning about foul language. What an asshole. He’s very lucky nothing apparently serious happened to the person in question as a result of his assholery. ---
**Author:** ![Omega\_Glory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7c8e57/32.png) [@Omega\_Glory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omega_Glory)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/25 "2009-05-04T22:58:41Z")
That reminds me of the operator who scolded a little boy when he called 911, and hung up on him, instead of sending someone to check on the situation. The kid was calling because his mother was sick (and died at their home, without getting help). Why take a job as a dispatcher if you’re incapable of \*dispatching \*help? ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/26 "2009-05-04T23:00:18Z")
I read a couple of news articles–apparently they arrested the girl when she went to a police station, for “abusing 911”–a non existent charge. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/27 "2009-05-04T23:01:29Z")
> [@Litoris](#): > > 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. Oh shit, **Litoris** , I am so sorry. (Oh wait, I swore!) Seriously, please, accept my condolences. I thought it was that no matter what, even if it was an obvious prank-call, you send someone out there? ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/28 "2009-05-04T23:14:01Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > I thought it was that no matter what, even if it was an obvious prank-call, you send someone out there? Me too. I’ve heard stories of toddlers/kids calling 911 and officers coming out to the house anyway, even if an adult caught the kid in the act and explained it to the dispatcher because of the whole better safe than sorry mentality. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/29 "2009-05-04T23:29:42Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > I read a couple of news articles–apparently they arrested the girl when she went to a police station, for “abusing 911”–a non existent charge. Tell me someone got fired. Tell me the asshole who started this got canned, and the other asshole cops who arrested her on a trumped up charged got canned too. The world is not that just, is it? Fucking pisses me off! ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/30 "2009-05-04T23:32:55Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > /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. Exactamundo! 😉 Virtually any girl I went to high school with in dark ages of the mid-sixties would have been able to communicate the need for an ambulance, panicked or not, without using the word fuck. It’s a perfect indictment of today’s society that a teenager apparently cannot be expected to react to stress without shouting “fuck” all over the place. Having said that, sending an ambulance should still have been the dispatcher’s top priority. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/31 "2009-05-04T23:35:45Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Exactamundo! 😉 > > Virtually any girl I went to high school with in dark ages of the mid-sixties would have been able to communicate the need for an ambulance, panicked or not, without using the word fuck. It’s a perfect indictment of today’s society that a teenager apparently cannot be expected to react to stress without shouting “fuck” all over the place. Okay, well, insert “Gee whiz” or “Jimminy jillickers” or “Goshdarnit” instead of fuck and we’re good to go. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Violaceous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Miss\_Violaceous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Violaceous)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/32 "2009-05-04T23:40:39Z")
When I was 12, my mom had a nervous breakdown. I called 911 and they told me they wouldn’t send an ambulance. I don’t know why, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that I didn’t say “hello, my mom is having a nervous breakdown” but something along the lines of “my mom has had a computer chip implanted in her brain that is telling her to do things and thinks that every red car is being controlled by her ex husband and following us.” All I heard was “well, I’m not going to send out an ambulance…” before hanging up the phone in desperation. She ended up driving us to the hospital herself. We both could have died, because by then she was having some kind of gigantic tremors. While driving. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/33 "2009-05-05T00:27:40Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Okay, well, insert “Gee whiz” or “Jimminy jillickers” or “Goshdarnit” instead of fuck and we’re good to go. Outside of the occasional newspaper comic strip, no teenager of those days would be caught dead saying any of that. (And btw, I think what you’re looking for is “Jiminy Cricket” or “Gee, willikers”, not “Jimminy jillickers”.) It would more likely have been along the line of “Yes! Hello!..I think my dad’s having a heart attack! Please send an ambulance! The address is 1234 Hawthorne Ln.!” See? Panicky, but quick, concise and to the point, and yet somehow not a vulgarity in sight. How _did_ they ever do it? Of course we had racism back then…:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/34 "2009-05-05T00:30:45Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Outside of the occasional newspaper comic strip, no teenager of those days would be caught dead saying any of that. (And btw, I think what you’re looking for is “Jiminy Cricket” or “Gee, willikers”, not “Jimminy jillickers”.) Nope, definitely jimminy jillickers. I watch the Simpsons, too, you know! ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/35 "2009-05-05T00:38:45Z")
Oops, sorry. (I’m a _South Park_ guy, myself.) 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/36 "2009-05-05T00:52:51Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Outside of the occasional newspaper comic strip, no teenager of those days would be caught dead saying any of that. (And btw, I think what you’re looking for is “Jiminy Cricket” or “Gee, willikers”, not “Jimminy jillickers”.) Hang on a mo. Surely, standards being different back then, that would simply mean the words we consider tame and amusing today to be pretty vulgar back then? I mean, I would imagine people taking more exception then to “damn”, “hell”, and the various permutations of blasphemy back then. Really, I wouldn’t say there wasn’t the same vulgarity back then, but that the kind of vulgarity used doesn’t seem _as_ vulgar now. I imagine I could easily shock a group of people from the 60’s (including your high school girls) with a speech that would be pretty reasonable nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![Spezza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a698b9/32.png) [@Spezza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spezza)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/37 "2009-05-05T00:58:27Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Bust that idiot down to a desk job somewhere in the back of the precinct. Isn’t a cop on 911 duty _already_ in the darkest corner of the precinct? ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/38 "2009-05-05T01:03:32Z")
😕 This happened last [October](http://www.wxyz.com/content/news/investigators/story/WILSON-Emergency-Aid-Delayed/8UXeuN7eFkytW0KGC5IDKg.cspx). Looks like Phillies / Tampa Bay in the Series this year! ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/39 "2009-05-05T01:23:54Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Outside of the occasional newspaper comic strip, no teenager of those days would be caught dead saying any of that. (And btw, I think what you’re looking for is “Jiminy Cricket” or “Gee, willikers”, not “Jimminy jillickers”.) > > It would more likely have been along the line of “Yes! Hello!..I think my dad’s having a heart attack! Please send an ambulance! The address is 1234 Hawthorne Ln.!” > > See? Panicky, but quick, concise and to the point, and yet somehow not a vulgarity in sight. How _did_ they ever do it? > > Of course we had racism back then…:rolleyes: For once, would you kindly just shut the fuck up about how perfect everything used to be? Nobody fucking cares. You are the most superficial, shallow, stupidest person I’ve ever come across. You should have known my grandmother. Devout Catholic, used to volunteer at the local food bank, a nurse’s aid…and a vocabulary that would make a Teamster blush. ---
**Author:** ![Sleeps\_With\_Butterflies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@Sleeps\_With\_Butterflies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleeps_With_Butterflies)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308/40 "2009-05-05T01:25:02Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Exactamundo! 😉 > > Virtually any girl I went to high school with in dark ages of the mid-sixties would have been able to communicate the need for an ambulance, panicked or not, without using the word fuck. It’s a perfect indictment of today’s society that a teenager apparently cannot be expected to react to stress without shouting “fuck” all over the place. > > Having said that, sending an ambulance should still have been the dispatcher’s top priority. Hey Fonzie will you save us a booth down at Arnold’s? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/911-hanging-up-on-caller-for-swearing-can-they-do-that/495308.md?page=3)