Wasting Police Time -or- STOP CALLING 999

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Yes, we have no emergency number*. So when the community center next door has people playing music so loud that it’s drowning out the TV on the far side of my house from the center, or still thumping at 1:00 a.m. (we have a 10:30 weeknight/11:00 weekend noise ordinance), I have to call 911. I’ve asked if there’s a non-emergency number and there isn’t. I really, really hate bothering the 911 operators; but considering how many times I’ve seen police snoring away in their cars at the back of the community center parking lot (apparently it’s a popular naptime location), I guess I shouldn’t be so worried. :rolleyes:

*I’m whiterabbit’s mother

22

This is one of my new fears. My 6 year old keeps saying he’s going to call 911 for no reason. I keep telling him that we only use 911 in real emergencies, because we don’t want to keep the police from helping someone who really needs help, but he seems to think it’s a great joke. Maybe he just thinks it’s funny to scare his mother. Maybe I should call 911 on him.

23

Part Three

Noisy neighbours/keeping score

Female idiot: I want my neighbour done.
P: What do you mean?
FI: He’s givin’ me abuse right, and I want him done!
P: What is he doing?
FI: He just swore at my kids cos they was in ‘is garden, and I want him done for it.
P: Why were your children in his garden?
FI: Cos they was, and he was shouting abuse through the window. Now are you gonna arrest him or what?

Before I started working for the police, I never realized that they could be used to get ‘revenge’ on your neighbours, or act as referees in your petty disputes.
The conversation might continue like this:

P: We can’t arrest someone just for swearing, especially if he was inside his own house.
FI: I don’t want my kids to hear that kind of fuckin’ language (seriously). I want him done.
P: This isn’t an emergency. I’ll ask a local area officer to drop in and speak to you during the week, but you can’t call 999 about someone swearing.
[What’s that? The police aren’t coming right this second? Better up the ante.]
FI: Now he’s at my front door kicking off.
P: What is he doing?
FI: He’s trying to kick the door down! [half hearted scream]
P: I can’t hear him.
FI: He’s kicking the door down! Are you just gonna wait til I’ve been murdered? [complete silence in the background]

Meanwhile, my colleague sitting next to me is speaking to the neighbour in question:

Male idiot: I need the police here right this second!
P: What’s happening?
MI: The woman next door is kickin’ off.
P: What is she doing?
MI: She’s swearing at me. And she sent me a threatening text message.
[The calltaker doesn’t sound impressed. Better up the ante on this side too.]
MI: And she’s abusin’ her kids too.
P: What is she doing to the kids?
MI: Just send the police round, I want her done.

Just think of all the fun you can have when you can call out the police for every minor irritation. There are several groups of people which call us out at least once a week for similar problems. They make out that they are victims of something terrible, but the real victims here are the other neighbours, the ones that aren’t involved and have to listen to their slanging matches and have the police on their doorstep every other day.

And it doesn’t stop with your neighbours either! Why not get the whole family involved?

Disclaimer- domestic violence is a terrible thing. It deserves to be taken seriously by the police and it is. We always take reports of domestic disputes seriously and make sure an officer attends to check on the welfare of everyone involved.

However: remember we talked about the magic word, ‘racist’? Well here comes another one boys and girls: ‘domestic’. All domestic incidents are given priority treatment. About one in every thirty times this is warranted and results in us really helping someone who is a victim of abuse. The other twenty-nine times go like this.

P: Police emergency
Divvy: I need you to remove someone from my house.
P: Who is it?
D: My ex partner. He’s kicking off. [Kicking off being a Manchester term for anything between a full blown riot and not letting your partner watch Pop Idol]
P: What is he doing?
D: He’s drunk and I want him to go.
P: [Checking computer systems] The police only just removed him from your house half an hour ago.
D: He’s back.
P: Did you let him back in?
D: Yes.
P: Why?
D: Just send the police. I need him removing.

And I do send the police, and they do remove him, and she does let him back in. And when she calls again an hour later we have to go out again because you just never know… the time we ignore her might just be the time he kills her (Yes, this really has happened).

Official guidelines state that a domestic is an altercation between two people who are immediate family members or are/have been intimate partners. Great! So we can have domestics with our kids too! That means the police will come round and we won’t have to take any parental responsibility at all!

Obnoxious Big Sister: You need to come and arrest my little sister.
P: Why, what has she done?
OBS: I need her to go to my Gran’s but she won’t. I need to go out, I can’t look after her, I’m meeting someone
P: What do you want us to do about that?
OBS: Come and pick her up.
P: We won’t arrest her for not wanting to go out.
OBS: [heavy sigh] Well, she’s smashing the house up then.
[After a little more discussion we find out she’s smashed a mug]
P: How old is she?
OBS: Twelve.
P: Where are your Mum and Dad?
OBS: Next door.
P: And can’t they come and deal with it?
OBS: Just come and get her. She needs to be arrested.
P: So you want to come and give your sister a criminal record at twelve years old because it’s easier than going to get your Mum and Dad?
OBS: I need to go out.
P: OK I’ll send someone. But you’re the witness so you’ll have to stay in for the evening so we can take statements, and if you’re looking after her you’ll have to come with her to the police station.
OBS: [slams down the phone]

Needless to say, the little girl wasn’t arrested, nor did big sister stay home.
This little gem belongs to a colleague of mine:

Mother: My son has just assaulted a guest.
P: How old is your son?
M: Six.
P: Six years old?
M: Yes.
P: Why did you call the police?
M: I want you to come and tell him off.
P: That’s not our job. This is a family discipline matter.
M: I want you to scare him.
P: We don’t scare children. You have to be a parent and deal with it.

He got a complaint against him for that. God forbid we tell parent’s to bring up their own kids. Another beautiful piece of parenting (which also resulted in a complaint) was the lady who decided to punish her daughter for running away from home by locking her out of the house. The 14 year old daughter called the police saying she had nowhere to go and a police officer phoned mum and told her to let her in. She said no, she wouldn’t let the child in until 10pm. Remember that time. 10pm.

Loon: How dare you put my daughter in danger?!
P: Excuse me?
L: One of your officers has told my daughter that she’s going to be taken into care and she’s waiting outside and won’t come in.
P: [Quickly reading everything that went along before] No one has told her that. And last time we spoke to you, you said you wouldn’t let her in.
L: I was taking back control. You can’t tell me how to raise my children. Now it’s your fault that she is outside on her own in the dark and won’t come inside.
P: How is it our fault?
L: Because you told her to do it! I said she could come in at ten o’clock! Now she’s outside and it’s dangerous for a girl her age to be outside at this time of night.
[Time of call: 2205hrs. Apparently 10pm is a fine time for a 14yr old to be outside alone. Five past 10? Inconceivable. We are wicked police officers indeed. Who is really the child here? Do you blame the girl for not wanting to come inside?]

24

The 911 Hamburger

Note, this is “undetermined on Snopes.com.” Take it for entertainment value only.

25

This thread is great - more more! It’s not just 999 operators who have to deal with fucktards of course, the rest of the police force is stuck with it too. A friend of mine is a detective constable and some of the crimes she has to investigate are so ridiculous they border on funny (including a woman who claims she’s being cyber stalked on her mobile phone but has flatly refused to even consider changing her number).

Working as a public employee I’ve also had my own experiences of public calls in the “I pay your wages” category, including one guy who demanded to speak to the Secretary of State for Education but was informed he’d have to speak to me instead. The guy was ranting (and I mean shouting down the phone) about the recently announced change to school truancy policy which, it later transpired didn’t even affect him as he wasn’t a parent or in any way connected with the education service (he just wanted to call to give his opinion, you understand?). Fortunately civil servants do have some discretion about who they speak to and I put the phone down on him after he called me a fascist.

26

Damn, I was getting all excited until your link showed the list and my city’s not on it.

I’ve called 911 a couple of times for medical emergencies. The kind where you need emergency services right away. But last week I helped chase and catch a thief. He was way speedier than the shopkeeper, but when I started running towards him with our Hound of the Baskervilles-sized dog, he got scared and gave up. No struggle. He was unarmed.

Anyway, we had a momentary dilemma: 911 or non-emergency number? Calling 311 would have made it much easier to get through to the non-emergency police number quickly. As it was, I had to get the non-emergency number from 411 (directory assistance who entered our query into a computer and a computer voice then toldl me the number). That route causes an unnecessary delay, plus some people would be annoyed at paying for 411 (I have to pay a fee every time I use it).

The idea of 311 definitely has some appeal.

So Why Bird, in this kind of case, where the thief was caught and there was no fight or injuries, would that be a non-emergency number call or a 911/999?

In hindsight, the kid could have had an army of gun-toting friends waiting in a nearby car for all we knew.

27

I’m not sure that list is exhaustive.

A few years ago, I was calling the police non-emergency number fairly regularly. There was a car with a hair-trigger alarm that was parking outside my apartment building, and the alarm was going off pretty much every night. After someone called them the first time, the police said we should call them when this happened, so there would be a record of multiple complaints that could possibly be used against the car owner (or something like that). I ended up programming the police non-emergency number into my cell phone.

I never even considered calling 911 over a car alarm going off at 2am, though. Now, if the other residents and I had gotten our hands on the jerk who let it happen night after night, something worthy of a call to 911 might have happened… Fortunately for everybody, we never did find out who did it, and the problem stopped after a while. Our very-intolerant-of-this-kind-of-BS landlady may have had words with the tenant who was responsible. Whatever happened, no more car alarm.

28

I would consider this a legitimate 999 call. You had an offender there with you who easily could have ran off whilst you were trying to get through, and though he wasn’t fighting with you at the time he probably wasn’t thrilled about being caught so it’s a potentially volatile situation. In addition to this (I assume) you aren’t trained to detain people and probably don’t have some kind of secure safe holding area for the criminal, so go right ahead and call 999/911. I’m impressed that you had the presence of mind to go find out the regular number though. Most people don’t do that even when nothing is going on, and I’m sure your adrenaline was pumping.

In answer to the 911 Hamburger, that is exactly the type of call we get at least once a day. I don’ t know if it’s genuine or not, but I could certainly believe it. It’s a very good fake if not. It made me laugh- I guess it shows the idiots are the same everywhere.

29

The Why Bird - Many of the 911 departments here are automatically set up to give the street address of the caller, so that if someone dials but can’t speak or passes out, the police are dispatched. If someone dials and hangs up as soon as they hear “911, What’s your emergency”, they are called directly back.

My company is one that had us dial 9 for an outside line. We had so many hangs on the 911 system, and folks sending a fax tone accidentally that we we fined. Finally the company just changed the number to dial to 4.

StG

30

The 911 dispatch person did say to call 911 “…if the situation changed” so I guess she meant if anything escalated or anyone started fighting. We were actually a little worried that some locals wanted to beat up the thief, so we waited with our dog, since eveyone was afraid of him.

ETA: In all honesty, the situation was so calm and everyone was so polite and co-opertive, thief included, the whole scene looked more like what you’d except to see at a school with a naughty kid waiting in the principal’s office. It was so very, very Canadian. :slight_smile:

31

This is true here if you are calling from a landline. The problem is, just about everyone has mobile phones now and so we don’t usually get any details about where the caller is. We get ‘eastings and northings’ which give us a rough map point but these can be inaccurate by up to 3 kilometers, so they aren’t much help if we’re looking for someone.
If it seems like there really is an emergency, and the caller is on a mobile phone and can’t/won’t give the address, we can ask the phone company to check who the subscriber is which gives us their home address. This is only useful if the caller is at home. And many people use pay as you go cell phones which don’t have a registered address.

We always call people back if they hang up. If they keep making hang-up calls, we disconnect their phone lines (after making sure they’re ok)

32

I don’t think that fining people for abusing the emergency services is out of the question. Some of these people need a real lesson in not abusing the system to the point that supporting actual emergency situations is jeopardized.

The pranks are the worst. First time offender that’s a minor, sure give them a warning. But grown adults? Drunken college-age? OC soccer moms?

That’ll be a $75 fine. Do it again and it’ll be $150. That ought to shut up at least a few of them.

33

The problem with that is that while the assholes are annoying time-wasters, there are a lot of people who don’t call 911 when they should.

On the way home there is a neighbourhood drunk who has been carted away time and again for alcohol poisoning after drinking mouthwash. I saw him again sprawled on the ground, a bottle of rubbing alcohol next to him. :eek: He was unresponsive and some college students were standing around calling 911, but really worried about it.

They were actually worried that calling 911 might be the wrong thing to do. PSAs growing up had it so ingrained in their heads that: “You’re not supposed to play with 911. 911 is serious business! Only serious emergencies for 911” that they were hesitant to call in a legitimate emergency. Was “passed out from drinking rubbing alcohol” serious enough?

If you add a fine for 911 misuse, people might not call if it was anything less than flames, gunfire, or buckets of blood. Like Why Bird said that given that we had apprehended an offender, a 911 call would have been legit, but at the time I thought “now way, it’s not enough of an emergency, not serious enough for 911.”

34

Sure, I see what you’re saying. But I’m not talking about those gray areas. I’m talking about those Hamburger calls and the ones that Why Bird is talking about. Seriously, it doesn’t take a genius to sort out the people who are so bone-numbingly stupid and/or self-centered to the detriment of others, who could at least contribute something to society for their abuse of the system. The fines might actually pay for better services.

A few people are worried about the fine that they don’t call when they should is certainly unfortunate. But how much more unfortunate than the people who undoubtedly suffer as a direct result of delayed services because some schmoe thinks it’s amusing to play a hamburger prank on 911 so they can tape it and plaster it on the internet (or worse, an actual procreating nitwit who is perfectly willing to use the police as her personal thugs for cheeseburger)? People can be jerks. They should pay for that.

35

I used to work in social housing security & we were hooked up to all the flats via an intercom system. I had the pleasure of receiving emergency calls by proxy from residents who didn’t have a telephone. One man would ring every day for an ambulance. Our protocol was to take down his symptoms, age, medication he was on & relay this to the ambulance service - let them judge how ill he was. Usually he would hang up when asked this. If we rang for an ambulance and if they turned up, nine times out of ten they would decide he was ok. Whenever this happened, he would then ring us back and demand that the police be contacted as the paramedics had stolen his wallet. Every dam day. If we refused to call the police he would walk the twenty or so metres to the police station and complain in person.

But it wasn’t just members of the public. I witnessed a stabbing once and rang 999. I was put through to an officer with a Wigan accent - I assumed Wigan nick. She asked the address of the incident and when I gave it to her, she said, “where?” “Salford.” “Where?” “Salford.” "S-O-L … " “No, S-A-L-F-O-R-D.” “S-al-furd?” “No, pronounced S-oll-fud.” Salford is a city of nearly three hundred thousand people. It shares a border (& a police force) with Wigan, whose town centre is about ten miles from central Salford.

One trick I learned was that it was often quicker and easier to ring the local number than it was to ring 999, especially at certain hours. But for anything that involved a knife or a gun (presumably trigger words?), 999 was ace. If I saw a kid with a gun (never saw an adult with one) on camera, I would ring 999 and armed officers would be there in maybe ten minutes, which is phenomenal considering.

36

For the record, all calls within Greater Manchester go to one of four call centres depending on who has someone free to take the call. People assume they’re talking to the local police station when often they’re speaking to someone on the other side of the city (This is why it gets frustrating when people say ‘I’m on high street, you know, near the shops’). Pretty amazing that she didn’t know where Salford was though.

Yeh someone with a knife would get you an ‘immediate’ or ‘grade 1’ response. (Blue lights and sirens).
I’m amazed that anyone got there that quickly for guns. On my side of things, we spend forever phoning various people to advise them, doing risk assessments, nominating rendezvous points and so on. It’s a miracle we ever get to firearms incidents at all. ‘Gun’ is definitely a key word, but not one I would recommend using just to get a quick response- if anything it slows things down.
Scary huh?

Brown Eyed Girl and Swallowed My Cellphone both have valid points with regards to fining people. It can be done, but rarely is for a few reasons. Our officers are so stretched as it is it’s hard to find the time to go out and fine someone. A lot of the nuisance callers are children or the mentally ill who can’t be held responsible. And we don’t want to discourage people from calling in a genuine emergency- I’ve spoken to a little lady before, who was violently robbed and waited fifteen minutes to get through on the non-emergency line because she didn’t want to trouble us.

I’d like to come up with a point system. Something like this:
-Every person has three points.
-You dial 999, you lose a point. If the police arrive and it turns out to be a genuine emergency, the point is refunded.
-If a child under the age of 8 calls, their parent loses a point.
-You run out of points, we start to charge you fifty pounds a call.
-You still keep calling/you don’t pay and you get put in jail.
-If we can’t trace you (say you are calling from an unregistered cell phone) then we disconnect the phone line after the first call. Someone else used your phone? Too bad. Be careful who you lend it to next time.

At the moment things have to get pretty bad before we cut off your phone or fine you. Occasionally someone will get an ASBO (anti social behaviour order) telling them not to call 999.

For anyone not familiar with an ASBO, it’s a piece of paper telling people not to do things that they shouldn’t be doing anyway.
-Conditions of the ASBO
-Not to use threatening or abusive language in public.
-Not to harass or intimidate any of your neighbours
-Not to carry around weapons in order to threaten and scare people
-Not to steal things from the local shops

You and I might take it for granted that we are not allowed to do these things, but apparently not everyone does. They need a court order to remind them not to break the law.
Should they breach their ASBO, and continue being naughty, we will tell them once again to stop. Truly an incentive to reform and repent.

37

Now explain to me why the local Plod aren’t worried about burglar alarms going off when the owners aren’t in. Do they really expect an unarmed and untrained person to investigate? And the response of Anotherville Plod to my calling in an elderly confused person driving the wrong way round a roundabout was less than stellar.

38

That’s our office line, as well. 9 to get ‘out’, 1 for long-distance, the letter for the tenants of 201 at Fairview is on your desk, and oh! Bob dropped this off for you–

1 'cause I’m dialing long distance, and–

Ten minutes later the nice policeman arrived. :smack:

39

It ain’t a free call around here. The NC legislature just passed a law that allows them to collect $.70 on every 911 call made on a landline, cell phone, or internet phone. The money’s supposed to go to enhanced 911 call centers.

Also, I’ve always been told that it’s illegal to make non-emergency 911 calls, or at least make fake calls. My Google-fu is down, so can anyone check and see if that’s true for NC?

40

Hi. Guess what I do for a living? My coworkers and I dispatch EMS and Fire, and take the initial call for law enforcement, for a small area (about 300,000 people). And we get the calls that turn ambulances into a taxi service and bring out the fire department for the funny smell (that happens every year when Mr. Jones turns his heater on for the first time), and from the woman whose tax bill entitles her to use 911 to bypass the waiting she would endure on the non-emergency line, the folks calling from the common-room at the mental hospital, the thousands of calls that come in from inactive cell phones (that can still call 911) people give their children to play with, and so forth. I hate the calls that come in from people who report a man down but can’t be bothered to find out the location, or who won’t approach closely enough to tell you if he’s breathing, much less follow instructions and render assistance, or the “suspicious person” calls in which the suspicion revolves around a black or hispanic man walking down the street minding his own business. I also hate in equal measure parents and schools who want police assistance in dealing with an obstreperous but sane and non-violent seven-year-old girl, the officious assholes who insist on an ambulance for a stranger who, in the background, is declaring clearly that they do not need or want one, and the people who call to report the guy who’s been speeding and weaving dangerously around cars for the last ten minutes and is right behind them.