A few minutes ago, I heard a guy on my street hollering, “Help me! I don’t wanna go!”. Loudly. And a lot. The thing is, my building has a number of “privacy trees” in front of it. This keeps people from seeing in, but it also keeps me from seeing much of anything from the second story window. I didn’t know what the h was going on, but it didn’t sound good, so I called 911.
Turns out, the reason this guy was carrying on was that the cops were already there, arresting him for whatever. I did tell the dispatcher, “Sorry to bother you”, but now I’m starting to worry.
Some of you may remember a thread I posted a few weeks ago, about calling 911 when I heard a woman screaming. A police car pulled up to the house from whence I’d heard her, but apparently “found nothing”. I think I called about some other matter, back in January, but I can’t remember. Anyway, I’m wondering if maybe I shouldn’t do this.
I’m not a wolf-crier, I don’t think. I’m not making false calls, and I don’t think I’m calling about “nothing”. A woman screaming is definitely not “nothing”. And since the dumb trees kept me from seeing the police car that the guy was being put into, I had to give the benefit of the doubt that this guy was being taken away on a hit or something. The way I see it is, this is a pretty good neighborhood, and I’d like it to stay that way. One of the ways good neighborhoods go bad is through people practicing omerta, and not calling 911 because they don’t want to “get involved” or “make trouble”.
But I don’t want to start getting a reputation as one of those people who has “nothing better to do” than call in every time “some little thing happens”. If someone breaks into my apartment, I definitely don’t want the dispatcher to think, “Oh jeez; her again”. So should I not call unless it directly affects me?
If I was involved in some sort of incident, or even if it just sounded like I was involved in some sort of incident, I would appreciate a concernec neighbour.
I’m the 911 king at my office, Rilch. I work in a high-rise right next to a freeway. We see all kinds of accidents, and we’ve seen a couple of fires.
Recently, there was an accident on the freeway where several cars tangled up, and people got out and the freeway started backing up. I called 911 and sure enough, all those folks on the freeway swapped info and got rolling really quickly, so when the cop got there, there was no accident to see, 911 called back, and my co-workers enjoyed my discomfort to no end.
Nevertheless, I had to take a fire marshall course several years ago, and the instructor related how one of this city’s large apartment complexes burned with a crowd of thousands watching, yet it was 20 minutes before anyone called the fire in.
As long as you’re not calling for company, my take is they’d rather make a milk run than let something bad get out of hand. Keep lettin’ 'em know when there’s stuff going on in your proximity.
The way I see it, if you’re calling in every day, you’re probably abusing it. But if you’re making one call every couple of months? It’s more than I’ve ever called 911 (never), but it’s certainly not that big of a deal, as long as they’re mostly legit. Better safe than sorry.
Rather than calling 911 except for the obvious emergencies, why not get the phone number for the local sheriff to call when you hear disturbances like you’ve described?
My mother & I kept a list of numbers like that by our main phone to call when there were problems in the neighborhood (we had a few drug dealers that lived a few doors down from her house–if things started to get weird, we’d much rather call the local sheriff than call 911).
Rather than calling 911 except for the obvious emergencies, why not get the phone number for the local sheriff to call when you hear disturbances like you’ve described?
My mother & I kept a list of numbers like that by our main phone to call when there were problems in the neighborhood (we had a few drug dealers that lived a few doors down from her house–if things started to get weird, we’d much rather call the local sheriff than call 911).
I second JavaMaven1’s idea, most stations will check up on situations that aren’t dire emergencies if you call the local #. They promised to go check on someone who was stranded in the rain in the middle of no where when I called in, and they were polite about it. You calls sound like bigger deals, so I’m sure they’d check them out too.
I don’t know how the emergency services are organized in the US, but anyway my take on this issue is the following :
When in doubt, contact the relevant emergency service. Tell them exactly what’s happening. They’ll be able to assess the situation and know whether an intervention is in order or not. Better to take the risk to disturb the dispatcher for a couple of minutes than the risk to leave someone dying in the street.
When I’ve called the emergency services in situations when I wasn’t sure whether it was necessary or not, I’ve been told a couple of times that the situation didn’t require an intervention (and they politely explained why they thought so both times), I don’t know what happened in some cases, and I’m happy I did in some others instances.
When in doubt, one should ask someone who knows better. In these circumstances, nobody is more able than the emergency services to tell whether their assistance is needed or not.
As for whether you should call the 911, or the local police or whoever else, not being an american, of course, I’ve no clue. But calling someone is what I would advise. And there’s no reason to be embarrassed because everything turned out to be fine. It’s in the opposite situation (not having called when it would have helped) that one should feel bad.
Of course, if you’re calling them twice a day, either you should take medications, either you should move out of the war zone where you’re living. But it doesn’t seem to be the case.
If you’re in some cities, like notorious big Los Angeles, you can expect to be placed on hold if you dial 911. I know this from experience, calling from a freeway. Other cities have local police who answer and will listen. With them you can describe what’s happening. I think you probably have good judgment enough to not call for very trivial matters.
Unless you are calling a couple times a week or more, or live in a tiny town, I suspect the 911 operators get enough calls that they won’t remember you. I you’re just one of 10,000 calls every week, I doubt you stand out.
IIRC, a woman was beaten, raped, and eventually killed over the course of a half hour in a neighborhood in NY. She was screaming for help the whole time. Nobody called. They thought somebody else would.
I’d always thought that was the best way to handle situations that called for police or fire or whatever but weren’t emergencies. I’d never had to call, but that was, I assumed, the right thing to do. Then one night, I was sitting in my apartment and heard a crash. I looked out the window, and saw that there had been a traffic accident. The drivers got out of their cars, there seemed to be no serious injuries involved, but one of the cars wasn’t going anywhere on its own. At the time, cell phones weren’t that common, so I figured I’d call it in, since they probably couldn’t and didn’t want to have to walk down the street to a gas station. I looked up the number of the local police station, called, and told them what the story was.
I was promptly instructed to call 911. Wasn’t 911 just for emergencies? I asked. No, that was the number one was supposed to use to call the police. So, on the one or two occasions since then that I’ve had to call the police, none of them emergencies, strictly speaking, that’s what I’ve done.
I don’t know if this policy is peculiar to my area, or if that’s a widespread policy.
I got more or less the same answer, but with a little clarification. I was told it’s the number to call to get the police
(ambulance, fire truck) dispatched. If the police are needed at the scene (whether of an accident or an assault), you call 911. If you want to report your car stolen at sometime since you parked it , or that your wallet was stolen sometime during the day, you go to the station.It actually makes sense, because if you report it at the station, they’re going to have to go through the 911 system to get the car dispatched anyway. Places with 911 systems don’t generally have cars waiting at the station to be sent out on calls.
Both of the OP’s example’s were ones where it seemed the police were needed now. 911 was the right choice.