Kurtz
10-14-2007, 10:12 AM
It's no joke. Bogus 911 calls waste money, threaten lives.
When Jay Leno or video websites replay zany 911 calls, they can be hilarious: A woman calls in to report a badly injured black bear that turns out to be made of plastic. A woman calls from a drive-through window to demand police come immediately because Burger King won't make her burgers the right way. Ha-ha.
But it's not so funny if you're the dispatcher fielding scores of those calls, or a taxpayer underwriting the 911 center. And it's particularly unamusing if you're calling in with a real emergency and get put on hold because some caller ahead of you thinks it's OK to use 911 to order pizza, flirt with the call taker, or rant profanely about traffic.
It's difficult to find reliable national statistics for false 911 calls, but officials in charge of call centers around the country agree it's a serious problem. No one wants to discourage people from making legitimate calls, but tougher penalties are appropriate for those who abuse the system.
Informal estimates are that at least 20% of 911 calls have nothing remotely to do with an emergency. Some of the biggest troublemakers are kids who either don't know it's wrong to call 911 and hang up, or think it's a kick to phone in fake emergencies, such as the girl who lit up 911 centers along Interstate 40 in Tennessee when she pretended to have been kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a car.
But the worst abusers are clueless adults who seem to see nothing wrong with tying up 911 lines to ask for movie times, swear at dispatchers or report fake emergencies. The problem has only gotten worse with the proliferation of cellphones, which users seem to think grant them a cloak of anonymity.
Bogus calls can be against the law — but not always or in all places. It's illegal to file a false police report, including via a 911 call, and some states explicitly ban misuse of 911. Tennessee just upped the maximum fine to $2,500 for the worst offenders, such as the person in Shelby County who made some 1,200 calls in 16 days.
Massachusetts Sen. James Timilty was surprised to find his state had no explicit law to ban the sort of abusive calls he heard about when he visited the center that handles most emergency cell calls. Operators there say about 1,000 of the 5,000 calls they get every day are non-emergencies, and about 30 to 50 of those are simply abusive. Timilty has introduced a bill to fine such callers $1,000. Even if police caught and punished only a few of those, he says, the message would go out and behavior might change.
That's worth trying, even if it means less fodder for the late-night comics.
Bogus 911 Calls (http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/10/its-no-joke-bog.html#more)
We don't have too many of these in my part of Texas,
there's a 17 year old doin' time in the county jail for his prank call. :lol
This is probably a good reason for me not to get too cranked up about livin' in the city.
I can't even imagine my reaction if I called 911 'n got put on hold. :twitch
When Jay Leno or video websites replay zany 911 calls, they can be hilarious: A woman calls in to report a badly injured black bear that turns out to be made of plastic. A woman calls from a drive-through window to demand police come immediately because Burger King won't make her burgers the right way. Ha-ha.
But it's not so funny if you're the dispatcher fielding scores of those calls, or a taxpayer underwriting the 911 center. And it's particularly unamusing if you're calling in with a real emergency and get put on hold because some caller ahead of you thinks it's OK to use 911 to order pizza, flirt with the call taker, or rant profanely about traffic.
It's difficult to find reliable national statistics for false 911 calls, but officials in charge of call centers around the country agree it's a serious problem. No one wants to discourage people from making legitimate calls, but tougher penalties are appropriate for those who abuse the system.
Informal estimates are that at least 20% of 911 calls have nothing remotely to do with an emergency. Some of the biggest troublemakers are kids who either don't know it's wrong to call 911 and hang up, or think it's a kick to phone in fake emergencies, such as the girl who lit up 911 centers along Interstate 40 in Tennessee when she pretended to have been kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a car.
But the worst abusers are clueless adults who seem to see nothing wrong with tying up 911 lines to ask for movie times, swear at dispatchers or report fake emergencies. The problem has only gotten worse with the proliferation of cellphones, which users seem to think grant them a cloak of anonymity.
Bogus calls can be against the law — but not always or in all places. It's illegal to file a false police report, including via a 911 call, and some states explicitly ban misuse of 911. Tennessee just upped the maximum fine to $2,500 for the worst offenders, such as the person in Shelby County who made some 1,200 calls in 16 days.
Massachusetts Sen. James Timilty was surprised to find his state had no explicit law to ban the sort of abusive calls he heard about when he visited the center that handles most emergency cell calls. Operators there say about 1,000 of the 5,000 calls they get every day are non-emergencies, and about 30 to 50 of those are simply abusive. Timilty has introduced a bill to fine such callers $1,000. Even if police caught and punished only a few of those, he says, the message would go out and behavior might change.
That's worth trying, even if it means less fodder for the late-night comics.
Bogus 911 Calls (http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/10/its-no-joke-bog.html#more)
We don't have too many of these in my part of Texas,
there's a 17 year old doin' time in the county jail for his prank call. :lol
This is probably a good reason for me not to get too cranked up about livin' in the city.
I can't even imagine my reaction if I called 911 'n got put on hold. :twitch