by Linda Olmstead
Cellular 911 calls, the voices from somewhere.
I feel like a back alley gambler, blowing across some dice, shaking them in my cupped hand and chanting, "Come on, 94-102-give us ANI/ALI!" It's just so frustrating when you don't know where that call is coming from!
There are an incredible number of accidental calls to 911 by cellular phones. Nobody dialed 911, the phone user usually doesn't even know his/her phone is providing us entertainment or frustration while we listen to someone singing along with the radiobadly. But you don't know until you answer if that particular 911 is accidental or not. [sigh]
We do everything we can to attempt to get someone's attention but there's just nothing else we can do! Every now and then, it's not a wasted effort. However, it's sometimes a harrowing experience to know you can't assist anyone at the other end of that open line.
I listened to a small child crying, "Mommy, no, no, no, please!!!" and sobbing as an adult woman's voice punctuated the background noise of several smacks with "Don't you ever, ever do that again, you understand me?!?!?!"
It was obvious she was striking the little girl as she drove; I could hear engine noise changing as she slowed and accelerated before and after each slap. No matter what I did: pressing numbers on the keypad for several seconds, first one number then another, to create a change in any noise she might hear and investigate, projecting my voice as I enunciated, "911 Emergency911! Do you have an emergency! This is 911!"nothing worked.
Eventually, the car-and phone-got into an area with poor cellular coverage and the call disconnected.
And I was reminded of incidents early in my career, with another agency, when there was only Basic 911-but we could at least hold a line and have the phone company trace the call. It's not the same anxious "Get it, get it, call us back with that address" sensation; now it's "Oh godI hope she doesn't crash into a tree or run off the road while she's smacking that little kid..." I didn't want to think any further down the tracks of that train of thought.
Increasing Calls
The "accidental" calls are increasing in number and frequency. They happen on all shifts, and they're especially annoying to the graveyard dispatchers. Swing shift folks have a great many 911 calls of all kinds to handle, so the extra ones made by the phones themselves-without benefit of a person actually touching the keypad to initiate just another one of those "911 misuse" calls-are simply part of the call-load mix.
The graveyard shift, however, has fewer calls (particularly in the wee hours of the morning) so the several "accidental" ones are more noticeable-and therefore more frustrating.
They're not TDD calls, they're not prank calls, they're not any kind of call actually made by a human being. We've made a SWAG at the cause: phones with "911" buttons on them or user-programmed to make a single-button 911 call are getting whacked on the keypad and make these calls. (Oh! SWAG stands for "Scientific, Wild-Assed Guess.")
[spooky, melodramatic voice-over] "Calls From Within Women's Purses! Film at 11!"
More and more people are using cellular phones. Some are even using cellular service as their primary telephone service, so it's not just people on the move, driving around or out shopping with their phones in their pockets any more.
Ticked Off
Quite early one morning, one of our dispatchers listened to a very ticked off man slamming things around and saying various threatening statements like, "Where are you, you little $&@##ers! I know you're around hereWhere the @)($@ are you!!"
After her initial, unsuccessful attempts to get his attention and hopefully pick up the phone before he found whoever he was looking for-and realize he had "911" on the phone and maybe he wouldn't harm them, she just listened in case he did find'em. His voice got louder and more clear, indicating he was closer to his phone so she made another attempt to attract his attention. The cursing stopped. He picked up his phone and said, "Hello?" in a puzzled tone of voice. She identified herself as 911 and asked if he had an emergency there (knowing full well he did!)
[Ahem] Well, it seems he was getting ready to go fishing and he couldn't find his wormsso he'd been looking all over in his garage, amongst his )(@$@#& fishing gear for the little @)$U@#@ersHe was just as embarrassed as she was!
The latest running joke for someone who gets caught swearing in the Comm Center is that they're just looking for worms.
Field Medical
A few of our emergency calls are initiated in the field: an officer requests an ambulance for someone in medical distress-we really like the maternity cases and will try to determine if Mom'll make it to a hospital in time. Sometimes it's someone getting a ticket who develops chest pain or shortness of breath. (They think the officer won't finish the citation, maybe?? Oh, sorrydidn't mean to display my cynicism so luridly.)
One night a speeder explained to one of our officers that he was rushing home because his wife had called him to say she was miscarrying, and his last "check up on her" call home reached a constantly busy signalwhich the operator determined for him was "off hook" without a conversation in progress. Our officer got the address, phone number, name and other particulars and asked us to contact the appropriate jurisdiction to send an ambulance to the residence, since the speeder had been stopped a good 30-40 miles from home.
That was an interesting call to explain to the other agency. But after a few transmissions back and forth, we got what we thought was the picture and delivered the message. (A trainee was handling this one and asked for a lot of guidance in how to deal with the field unit's request.)
Anyway, the agencies with jurisdiction responded, but no one answered the door. Just as they were about to force the door, the speeder's wife, in quite an anxious state, and a male friend of hersin disheveled clothinghurried downstairs to find out why the fire department was at the house.
Uh oh. The lady of the house wasn't miscarryingshe wasn't even full term. (The FD didn't tell us if she was visibly pregnant or not, either.) The story told by our officer's speeder had been so believable he'd gotten away without being cited, even though he'd been clocked at 85 mph before the traffic stop.
In addition to the citation he'll receive in the mail shortly, he's also going to experience what it's like to have charges filed against him for falsely reporting an emergency. The bill to reimburse responding Fire and EMS equipment for their wasted run probably won't be much fun to deal with, either. Another SWAG: ya think he'll be dealing with any other lingering domestic "effects" of that stunt he pulled?
Dangerous Laughter
The hazards of laughter at work: during a giggle-fest in here, one of the dispatchers got hiccups and it became an effort of will for her to time her transmissions between them. She wasn't always successful and everyone's feeble attempts to ignore her distress failed. What is it about hiccups that is so funny? We'd turn our gaze away, start a new topic of discussion, but some of her transmissions had little audible hitches in their get-alongs. We knew it was only time before someone in the field noticed it-and commented.
Our renditions of which hiccuped aural brevity code would sound the worst caused her to glare at us all and say, "Stoop that!!" Which simply cracked us up some more. Pretty soon she was laughing too-and gulping more air. She started to swear, "#)#&@ it, this HUR-URTS!" and someone quipped, "Just looking for worms, are ya?" (The hiccups did eventually subside.)
Upon my arrival at work today, they told me the entire swing shift called in sick and all of the day watch was holding over until I could get someone in to relieve them. (Actually, only three of the four called in sick... but the fourth is a trainee only able to work as a call-taker right now.) My calls to the midnight shift dispatchers weren't "Can you come in? If you can't, I'll try one of your partners" but "I'm calling the whole shift in early."
The day shift crew said it was sort of funny as the afternoon folks reported out sick. After the first one, one of the dispatchers volunteered for the OT. When the second call came in, another shrugged and said she'd take it. When the third swing shift dispatcher called in sick, the last day shift dispatcher slammed the phone down and began "looking for worms." And then burst out laughing. What else could they do?
Happy to be here, proud to serve.
Linda
May, 1999
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