An online friend (call him Mike) of an online friend (call her June) today notified June over webcam via Skype that he intends to kill himself on Thursday. He showed June the pills he intends to take and seems pretty serious about this. He recently had a pretty bad romantic upset (got dissed by the girl he lost his virginity to) and both his parents died within the past 2 years. I don’t know Mike well enough to talk to him about it. I tried contacting Skype live chat, they won’t do shit. I called the US’s suicide prevention hotline, and was told they can’t call internationally (nor do they have a procedure in place for this). I can’t call the UK police because I have a US cell phone and I’ve never made an international call, nor do I know how to, and it’s probably pretty expensive.
It is currently 4am on Wednesday in Mike’s time zone. A Facebook message was left for Mike’s brother (and Mike’s brother’s wife) and it is hoped by June that he will deal with this in the morning. Is there anything I can do at this point? Any UK dopers who can PM me and maybe call the local police to do a wellness check? I know his real name, phone number, and city/province (state?).
Do you know enough to be of use? Do you know his full name, his street address, or at least what city he lives in?
I don’t think you should be making a call. Everything you know is hearsay. It is your friend who should be making the call.
As to other stuff – fuck the cost. It will be a few bucks, it’s not going to break your budget.
(Have your friend do this)
Dial 0 and get an operator, ask for help reaching the British police.
If you can’t get help from a phone operator, call either the FBI or the closest British government office in the States. They have them in DC, probably NY, Chicago and LA or San Francisco.
Why is your friend not doing this? What does it matter that you have a cell phone, as you are not the witness to what happened?
Thanks for the information. I’m trying to do the right thing here, and I can’t make anyone else do anything. I found out what happened, and I’m the only one who seems to be doing anything about it. June doesn’t want to call them because she’s got some baggage around this. She attempted suicide as a kid, and she thinks it would be betraying his friendship to call the police (she’s fairly young, whatever).
All you have to do to call a UK number from your US cell phone is add the prefixes 011 (for international calls) and 44 (for the UK). So like, if the phone number is 1234567, you dial: 011-44-1234567. Then you just pay the per-minute international rate charged by your carrier, which is probably fairly high though not prohibitive. When I was in England last year, my mom back in the US had a personal crisis and I needed to talk to her on the phone (she doesn’t have Skype and it was not the time to talk her through setting it up) - a 15-minute call to the US cost me, IIRC, around $20 or so. Expensive for a phone call, but it didn’t break the bank.
Rach, can you answer those two questions please or ask me to proceed without the answers (but I think they are basically needed to acheive anything) cheers
That’s all passed on… quite cool, there are two addresses for the property I’m in and both of them work (think nos. 12 and 14 although those are not the numbers) and I called up and they asked my address and I said I was in 14, and they said “you’re coming up as 12”… anyhoo good luck and well done on looking out for humanity
So I might be a little late to the party, but some suggestions for next time:
Some phones * can’t * make international calls; they’re blocked. Callyour carrier, they can turn this on, & even put you on an int’l plan. Verizon is something like $ 4/month + pennies per minute. Call back when done & remove.
Google Voice advertizes free int’l calls.
One more note on international phone calls: I cannot make them with my cell plan but a $10 phone card gets me about 60 minutes of talk to the UK and the rest of Europe. I usually get them at Rite Aid.
For future reference, Skype offers calls to a UK land-line for pennies per minute from the US.
Some 9-1-1 centers are pretty good with handling such matters reported by third parties and can pass the information on to competent authority on the ground in another jurisdiction. Some offices aren’t so good in such situations. YMMV.
Out of interest, in the US do 9-1-1 call handling thingys deal with fire, police,ambulance (and presumably other stuff like coastguard) in the same place? When you call 999 here you are first asked what service you require and are then put through to (in this case) the police. But when I’ve heard 911 call recordings they seem to be suggestive of a combined call centre?
Combined call center here in Michigan. First question the 911 operator asks is “what’s your emergency?” and when you tell them, they dispatch the relevant first responders.
SC here - 911 is a routing service for everyone else, as well as an emergency line. They’ll ask why you’re calling, and if it’s a real emergency, you stay on the line with the dispatcher, and they sort out who needs to be involved and headed your way. That way there’s no break in the official contact with you, so they don’t lose track of you.
If it isn’t an emergency, they’ll patch you through to the sheriff’s office or the fire department or animal control or whoever you actually need so you aren’t tying up one of their emergency lines.
There’s no penalty for calling 911 with a problem that doesn’t end up being an emergency, but there IS if you’re pranking, or if you’re a regular offender with problems that aren’t emergencies (“Jimmy’s TV is on too loud again - make him stop that!”) Some people do have difficulty grasping the concept, which is why you may hear stories about people calling 911 about their McDonald’s coffee being too cold, or some ridiculous shit like that.
PS - Rachel, please update us if you find anything else out about “Mike” if you’re able - you did a good thing.
Following up, things worked out well. I don’t know whether the police contacted him, because I never got a call from them. But June said Mike’s brother saw the Facebook note. He took him to the doctor today, he got an urgent psych consult, and they did some nice brotherly things together. Mike says he is no longer feeling suicidal.
I think most of the problem is he just started a new anti-depressant, plus the girlfriend drama didn’t help.
