I’m working on a story, so do not need answer fast.
The main character has to call 911 and he gives all of the information and stuff, but in his opinion, he can’t stay on the line until the cops show up. I was under the impression you’re really really supposed to, but I’m often an idiot, so I could be wrong.
Would he get in trouble? What sort of trouble?
The specific situation is that he found a girl tied up in the woods. He calls from the road, but wants to untie her before her circulation gets cut off worse and get her warmed up. It’s not life threatening, but she’s been alone and naked in the woods for several hours (it’s warm and the middle of the day). She’s quite insistent that she’s fine and he doesn’t want her to know he called the police until they get there.
And if there’s somebody knowledgeable that wouldn’t mind answering questions via PM, that’d be awesome.
I’m guessing that each jurisdiction may have differing laws.
But I’m not aware that one is legally required to stay on the phone after reporting an incident to 911, in fact a lot times they want you get off the line because the only have a limited number of operators.
The situation where you hear about 911 operators wanting to keep accident victims on the line to make sure they are okay until medical/safety personal can be on the scene and they can report to the crews in route if there is a change in condition.
Plus, in some cases 911 assign high priority to hang- ups, because that is often a sign of real trouble, bumping it up in the dispatch queue.
I doubt it would be an issue. One, the authorities give a lot of slack to people in emergency situations who try to do the right thing; and two, going back to tend to the victim is entirely reasonable.
Okay, so this is another incidence of me being an idiot. That’s good. I’ll just rewrite that a bit. Thanks y’all.