Palm up, thumb folded in and make a fist, trapping your thumb. Do it 3 times. Usually behind the back.
If you see a woman doing it, she’s in danger.
At a bar or restaurant you can ask to see Angela or order an Angel Shot.
If you’re calling 911 secretly you can say, can I order a “Pepperoni pizza”
911 operators are alerted. And you can easily give a delivery address.
I’m not disputing you, but I’ve never heard of any of this.
And while I was working I was in a position subject to annual training on detection and intervention of human trafficking.
So if these are “well-known”, they’re a secret to at least one Fortune 500 company with nearly 80K workers who interact with the public in person to do their normal job duties.
Well, you’re a man. Right?
Not a bartender?
Not a restaurant server?
Not a healthcare worker or 911 operator?
Not a previously abused woman or female friend of one?
I’m assuming.
I learned it volunteering at a women’s shelter.
I’ve definitely heard of Angel Shots and the hand signal you’re talking about. (I watch a lot of YouTube shorts). I was wondering how well known it is, and it does sound like it’s more than just an internet meme, so good to know.
Mostly #3 and #4, leaning towards #4.
I am glad to know too.
I picked just one, and would urge you to use caution in making this kind of post:
Lots of other sources say the equivalent thing.
Thanks.
I’ve heard of Angel shots and asking for Angela. Never heard of that hand signal. I assume that if you call 911 and say anything weird, they try to follow up. I once accidentally “dialed” 911 at night when my bedside phone tumbled to the floor and i grabbed at it. I heard the 911 operator come on, and i told her what happened. She said she had to send someone out anyway. I said, “okay”, and got dressed enough to meet the police officer at my front door. When i told him all was well, he went home. Probably, my face and body language also said, “tired but unafraid”
I never thought about it before, but i just learned you can text 911. Good to know.
As far as I know, that’s location dependent. Here in Chicago, there’s no text-to-911 that I know of. (ETA: Supposedly, there was a deadline of July 1 this year for all of the state to have text-to-911 capabilities, but all I could find is that Chicago missed the deadline as of a week later, and I can’t find any follow-up or anything on the Chicago police website that says they’ve instituted that capability.)
I’m not giving anyone advice
I saying what I learned from a Women’s Shelter, that taught personal safety classes to previously abused women.
It’s all dependent on whether another person knows and realizes the sign or words.
Which is mostly gonna be missed or ignored anyway.
It’s worth a try, IMO.
The FCC has an info sheet on the text-to-911 program, containing a hyperlink to a spreadsheet that’s updated monthly and contains info about the locations where the program is currently functional (2pp PDF):
In Nebraska it is dependent on location, county by county. Two years ago 73 of Nebraska’s 93 counties had implemented it or were in the process of putting it in place. My county implemented it in 2019.
I’m a woman and I’ve only ever heard of the “order pizza on 911” one.
That actually makes a lot of sense, and I’m surprised it’s dismissed as “false”. Because you can give a lot of relevant information ordering a pizza, you don’t need a lot of extra irrelevant words (ordering Chinese you probably want to order several items, not just one pizza) and it’s normal enough that you might get away with it
The open palm and closing around the thumb is a real sign.
“Danger” in ASL is a two handed sign…awkward to do if you’re trying to be secretive and who’s gonna know it?
My children were taught to cross their arms across their chest at school if anyone other than a parent was trying to pick them up from school. That probably was just that school.
Text to 911 is helpful if you don’t/can’t speak vocally. You can also press keys on the phone on a voice call.
But, like I said, I’m not qualified to give any advice, just telling what I’ve learned.
I speak ASL, have trouble speaking so I pay attention to these things.
It’s not false. CNN reported a case where a woman in Florida did this and got rescued.
I can’t say it would always work out. But you gotta do what you gotta do in that kind of situation.
I got a chuckle out of that, because it’s actually “Kinder, Küche, Kirche”, “Children, kitchen, church”. What you wrote is “Children, cake, church”. Well, maybe cake too, someone has to do the baking 
I was going to say, I’ve heard several 911 calls like this. I don’t think they were all specifically “pepperoni pizza,” but there were a couple pizza ones, and the idea was the caller would hope that the 911 operator would pick up on the nature of the call by asking “do you know you’re calling 911” or “are you in danger” or something like that. It’s not so much specifically that pepperoni pizza is some sort of code phrase, but rather the idea is to make a call to 911 about an innocuous subject and hope the operator is trained well enough to pick up on it. So I wouldn’t call it “false,” either.
What’s false is:
The post “gives the impression that asking for a pepperoni pizza is somehow a ‘secret code’ to the 9-1-1 operator,” LAPD said on Twitter. “That is false. Operators are trained to recognize voice inflection, odd conversations that would indicate a dangerous situation, among other things.”
The problem with the isolated cases in the links is that they’re numerators. What’s the denominator? In other words, how often was this tried, but unsuccessfully, and … with what outcome or consequence? Could it make a horrible situation even worse?
I feel like this isn’t a casual conversation on the Dope – the relative merits of Spanish vs. Hungarian Paprika.
This kind of thing can have serious consequences … to other people.
Also, the hand signal … done three times … seems to imply that the person using the hand signal is in the South American country of Guyana:
This seems to explain the ‘standard’ method well:
IMHO, we should view this kind of topic the way we ought to view chiming in on medical inquiries: very carefully and ensuring we have our facts straight.
Being right is better than a post hoc ‘disclaimer,’ IMHO.