911 operators overdid. What's the strangest serious
emergency you've heard? I answered the phone and gave my
usual 911 Do you need police, fire, or ambulance?
And the person on the other end just started screaming.
Bees. Bees.
I assumed that the bees were neither mugging him nor on fire,
so I put it through to ambulance because what the Frick even
comma. I assumed that the bees were
neither mugging him nor on fire, so I put it through to ambulance
because what the Frick even? And now there is coffee all over
my desk and my supervisor is looking at me weirdly.
Take your up vote. Had a dude who called in on
Thanksgiving because my wife is chasing me around the house with
a knife because I called her bird dry.
Also had a guy shoot somebody while on the phone with me.
Also had a guy get arrested while on the phone with me.
I don't miss those days. The emergency itself wasn't
particularly strange. Vaginal bleeding during
pregnancy, nor was the call mine.
But in training I listened to a call that contained the
following exchange. So she's bleeding now?
Yep. Where is she bleeding from?
From her bottom part? Which bottom part?
Sir, I need you to be specific. Her rectum front part?
Her weight? What?
So is she bleeding from her rectum or from the front?
God Dang it. She's bleeding from her pee
hole. I think it's simple possible to
read that last line without a heavy Southern accent. 911,
What's your emergency? There's a pig in the road.
A big one. So where are you?
At? The stoplight.
It's the biggest Dang pig I have ever seen.
Get someone here now. One stoplight town.
The bar is near the intersection.
How big is the pig? About the size of a Volkswagen.
How much have you had to drink? I'm not freaking drunk.
It's a giant pig the size of a small car.
What is wrong with you people? Officers show up to find a full
grown hippo that had escaped from the local wild animal park.
Big frickin pig eater. This was at 2:30 AM when the
bars close. Lots of calls from elderly
people hallucinating because of a UT.
One woman had been following CPR instructions and when the crew
arrived she was doing very gentle chest compressions on her
slightly confused but very much alive cat.
We had a lady who would call all the time about people in her
yard or on her house, usually doing nasty things, always a
false alarm. This lady had been calling since
way before I got my job, and even now after I've switched
agencies, she's probably still calling.
She's mental but not a danger to herself or others, so no real
need to commit her involuntarily.
Well one day we get a call from her about a man at her house
causing the troubles for her. It's my supervisor who had
answered the call, finally got fed up and asked to speak to the
man. To everyone's surprise, the
woman handed the phone over to the man and there was someone
there. It was her brother.
He was there trying to get her committed.
We ended up, I believe, asking him to leave the property
because he couldn't have her committed against her will at
that time. Just goes to show you that crazy
doesn't always mean wrong. A family member was working in
an emergency room and said the following case came in about a
month ago. A guy got high on PCP suddenly
thinks hum I'm a bit hungry and would like to have some eggs.
Proceeds to cut out one of his testicles and fry it in a frying
pan. His girlfriend walks in while
he's doing that and goes what the heck.
At which point he's like oh whoops sorry and tries to put
his fried testicle back in his scrotum.
Then he was in the hospital. I don't know the result but I
can guess. This made my balls shrivel up
into my body and I'm a female. Jesus.
I've got one for you. The obligatory not 911 but it'll
tie together. So I worked for an alarm
monitoring company. I get an inbound call in the
middle of the night from somewhere in Philadelphia.
Guy on the line sounds real out of it.
Drunk maybe? My first thought was it was
someone calling in to cancel a false alarm.
Messed up voice was them waking from sleep.
Not uncommon. Some alarms help start going off
in my head. The guy isn't making a whole lot
of sense and it's really hard to get basic information out of
him. Eventually I pieced together
that he's a gas station worker and he's been shot.
For some reason he dialed the alarm company instead of 911.
We weren't even his alarm company.
There was probably an old sticker in the shop somewhere.
So I've got no info on this guy. Mind you, we don't have any
magical reverse phone lookup system and our systems are
locked down such that we can't access a web browser.
Genius. I know.
Pulled out my phone also not allowed.
Managed to look up a gas station with the inbound number in
Philly. Called 911 and got police and
medical out there. No idea how it ultimately shook
out. Stayed on the line keeping the
guy conscious and talking until they got there, then
disconnected. My sister is an EMT in a small
rural college town. Apparently there have been more
than one calls about horses collapsing and hurting their
rider, handler, broken arms, legs trapped under horse, et
cetera. When she was new to it someone
just described it as a collapsed horse and she thought that they
were supposed to treat the horses condition.
I'm close to an area where equestrian stuff is pretty
popular. When I was a medical student on
trauma I was surprised we had like 4 horse related injuries on
service at the same time. Apparently it isn't that unusual
here. Heard this one the other day.
Not from the perspective of an operator, but close.
EMS responds to a call where a man reported having multiple
potatoes stuck up his rectum colon.
Not red potatoes, those big brown suckers.
The kicker? I was washing my potatoes in the
shower when I slipped and fell and all the potatoes went up
there. What?
I wouldn't even try to say I fell on it.
I know nobody would believe me and I'd look like a bigger
idiot. I'd just own it and the
dispatchers would probably make just a little less fun of me
behind my back. My mom was a dispatcher for 20
plus years. The eeriest call she ever told
me about was one that started off with no voice, only
breathing. She kept asking yes or no
questions, working out a system to guess what was going on.
Eventually he could talk a little bit and said the person
who hurt him was still there. So the officers went in, guns
drawn. He'd said the person was there,
but hadn't specified that they were dead.
Turns out the guy couldn't talk because his throat was sliced
open, which he had done to himself to make it look like his
wife, whom he had just murdered, had attacked him first.
I got dispatched for neck pain. Get there, find out a couple
were having sex on a couch when the female heard a large pop in
her head, followed by splitting headache and nausea.
We transport and after a CT scan find that she somehow developed
a tear in her arachnoid meningeal tissue.
Serious crap, but humorous and odd.
Roe. He almost literally fricked her
brains out. Not sure if that makes him a
legend or a monster lol. I once dispatched her helicopter
for a woman gored by a reindeer. Apparently there is a reindeer
farm for tourists and she tried to kiss it.
My pilot and flight crew laughed at the Moy and asked three times
to repeat. I responded to a man in his
Whitey tighties standing on the yellow lines in the middle of
the road. Arrived on scene to find this to
be true. The reason he was in the middle
of the road was to practice his karate moves on cars.
Dispatch was even having a hard time keeping from laughing.
The very first emergency call I took by myself during training.
Trainer was hooked into my phone and could jump in whenever I
answered a 911 while my trainer was trying to grab a cup of
coffee from the machine. Long cords and as soon as the
phone connected there was what sounded like an explosion and
people screaming all over the place.
Scared the Jesus out of my trainer who sprinted back to the
desk thinking I had just picked up some huge disaster or
accident. Takes over the call, starts
asking questions and it turns out what we heard was just
rushing water from a hot water heater that ruptured and was
spewing water all over these two girls apartment and they were
freaking out not knowing what to do about it.
Bonus story, had a similar call a few year later picked up to a
bunch of people being loud sounding panicked talking about
someone being locked in a car. Thought it was a child locked in
a car. A very high priority call for my
agency due to being in Florida and a few recent deaths.
So I put the call in his urgent while trying to get anyone on
the phone to actually talk to me.
But then I hear a door open and someone in the background scream
it's out the chicken is free. Phone disconnects.
Florida comma Florida say no more.
The first call I took was from a blind elderly male.
He called because he had found his son on the floor of a
bedroom. He was not responding so I had
him tilt his head back and listen for a breath.
Nothing. He said he was warm and he had
talked with him less than 20 minutes prior.
So I guided him through CPR compressions only because of the
circumstances. He lived in a rural part of our
county and we will know on Riggs.
So we did this for about 12 minutes before help arrived on
scene. EMS goes inside and immediately
ask for people PD. This isn't unusual.
Sometimes loved ones can't or don't want to believe that it's
too late. So we go through the motions
until a train dies there. PD gets there and asks for a
detective. This is also not unusual for
younger deaths. 2 hours later and still there.
It piques my curiosity. I called the first officer that
arrived and found out that the poor man had been doing CPR on
his now mostly headless son. He had been taking a nap and his
son committed suicide with a shotgun.
It woke him up, but not quickly enough for it to register as a
gunshot. When I had asked him to tilt his
head back, he did so by using his chin, which was still there.
I think it worked out for the best because he had support
there when he learned the truth and it didn't make my job any
tougher, but it definitely made for unusual start to my dispatch
career. Obligatory not 911 operator.
I'm the son of the caller. My dad called 911 late one night
to report hitting a six foot tall chicken while driving and
running off into the ditch. He had just crashed his car and
his voice was a bit shaky on the phone, so the operator asked him
to repeat himself a couple of times and then promised to send
someone to help. The first cop on scene got out
of his car with a brief Elizar in hand.
By the time he got to the back of my dad's car, he was laughing
hysterically over his radio telling people that it wasn't a
DUI call. My dad actually did hit a six
foot tall chicken. And that's the story about the
night my dad and all the local cops learned about emu farming.
I think I'd be panicking just as much.
It's one thing to hit a normal animal, another to run over a
Dang emu. Not me, but my dad works in an
emergency room and one time he had to treat someone who had
been attacked by an owl. The owl was unconscious on the
side of the road and she thought it was dead because she didn't
want the children on the school bus to see the dead owl.
She decided the best course of action would be to put the owl
in the back of her car. Unfortunately, the owl wasn't
dead. It woke up and attacked her like
the deer and Tommy boy. OK so my friend is a former 911
operator and she told me that she got this call from what
sounded like an old man. B was telling her that it's been
a while and that she should come back over.
Like hey it's been so long I miss you.
Do you still remember the address 123 St.
Remember? She assumed that he was just
senile or something. Turns out he had someone in his
house and he didn't want them to know he was calling 911.
We got a call from a woman having severe abdominal pains.
Simple enough. We ask the normal questions.
Are you feeling faint? Are you vomiting blood?
Stuff like that. Then we asked if it was
traumatic or not. Well, she eventually tells us
that she had a tampon stuck inside of her for more than 20
days and she thinks that might be why she's hurting.
Thanks for telling me that second story.
I'm going to go throw up now. Not me, but my cousin.
She had this lady who would call regularly and often make up
stories, most likely due to loneliness, but they still had
to send someone out every time. So one day when they got a call
from her, they figured it would be another one of those calls.
Cousin 911, what's your emergency?
Her, there's a lion in my living room.
Cousin, there's a lion in your living room.
What's it doing? Her pauses to ask it what it was
doing. I don't know, just standing
there. Can you send someone over?
Turned out there actually was a lion cub in her living room that
had escaped from a circus or something nearby.
She's the real life boy who cried wolf story, except she
still had a response in the end. Obligatory not a 911 operator,
but my soon to be mother-in-law. She got a call that a guy and
his roommate were doing drugs H and the caller's friend
overdosed. So this absolute Mensa hooks up
a couple wires to the inside of a toaster, turns the toaster on,
and attaches the wires to his unconscious friend's testicles.
Honestly not sure if it successfully electrocuted the
unconscious guy, but the caller definitely seemed to think it
would wake his friend up. But my mother in law's response?
So please don't do that again. At first I was thinking somehow
he was going to miraculously use it as some sort of defibrillator
to revive him, but the story turned quickly.
I still give it a 10 stroke 10 woman screaming that her drug
addict partner had been bitten by her vimar around a dog.
She was getting on about how he loved the dog and the dog was
lovely normally but her partners finger was bleeding.
When the crew got there they reported back to the control
room that the man's arm had been degloved from the elbow down.
Yikes, got a call from some girl saying someone stole my car.
I ask if she saw what direction they went.
She says they're heading down the street and starts telling me
the stores they're passing. I ask if she's following them.
She says that she is in the car. I freak the freak out.
She then says to whoever is driving, babe slow down this is
crazy. Turned out she and her boyfriend
were arguing. He started driving crazy since
he was mad and she decided to call it another stolen vehicle.
Another story, we get A to call that there's two loose dogs
running around a major St. About 30 seconds later an
officer comes over the radio to tell me that they just hit two
dogs on the street. Same dogs.
That's just a couple of minor stories I could think of.
I'll post more as I think of them. 911 operators should have
a million crazy stories. I only did it for four months,
was a 911 up for five years, had a female call screaming, he's
stabbing me, he's stabbing me. She's get away from her husband
who's going at her over and over with an ice pick.
It becomes evidence to me that she's moving around the house in
an attempt to get away. I'm telling her can you
barricade yourself? Can you get away from him?
Can you get out of the house? She told me that she's trying
and that interjects that her husband is blind.
Now I'm really confused. She's not giving me much
information, typical with Pat anarchy victims in the heat of a
crime, and I'm trying to figure out how she can't get away from
a blind person. She gets quiet and I can hear
him saying all kinds of nasty things about her.
Cops get there, secure the scene, and they fight her to a
trauma center. She lived still.
We were all standing around after, so confused that this
woman couldn't escape a blind man from stabbing her.
Had lived with a blind person. They can't move with a
confidence that would surprise the heck out of you when they
need to in a highly familiar environment.
Anyhow, 1 ultra calm cola girlfriend is having a fit me.
Does she have any weapons? Him just the eggs throwing at
me. Me What is she wearing him
underwear? Two Took a call for a hostage
situation in a cab once. The driver was talking to me but
trying not to make it obvious. Passenger implied a weapon and
wanted him to drive to the middle of nowhere so that he
could kill him and the lady in the front seat.
Driver ended up crashing into another car to cause a
distraction. 3 screaming lady collar.
He's throwing the car thing at me.
It was a hubcap. 4 He flushed my weed so I poured his beer out
and we bout to throw down. Five Guy found his pet cat's
head sitting upright on the table on his front porch.
Nobody called back. Later, someone had placed the
body in his car. One reminds me of a call I
dispatched for where the subject was hitting people with a sub
from. One of my proudest moments was
updating the units in route that their subject was armed with a
sandwich. In the most serious tone
possible. Of course it was my call to 911,
but something tells me they've relayed this story from their
perspective a few times. I got hit from behind by one of
my 220 LB Suffolk ram sheep. Never saw it coming.
Knocked the snot out of me. Barely escaped as he was trying
to finish me off. Once outside the fence I went
into shock as all the adrenaline drained.
Had to call 911. Overheard the EMT in the
ambulance trying to clarify to the ER that the patient they
were transported was not a victim of pedestrian versus
track. The hospital thought I'd been
hit by a Dodge Ram pickup. My friend in the told me how
someone passed out on an escalator and his hand was
running into the great where the top of the escalator meets the
floor for half an hour before someone found him.
His hand was pretty messed up from what I heard.
Thank you for giving me a reason not to sleep for weeks.
That's one dream I don't need. One jogger found drunk male
passed out in the bushes with his pants around his ankles.
He was apparently robbed of his wallet, but the thief was
considerate enough to leave a single debit card wedge between
and sticking out of victim's buttocks.
We called the poor bastard. Swipe ATM for weeks.
Two couple having sex in hotel room.
Female falls off the bed and lands on a champagne flute,
breaking it at the stem, puncturing through the side of
her groin and hitting a femoral artery.
She bled out and died. I was a zero operator, not 911,
but many small towns didn't have 911 so I got quite a few
emergency calls. I got a call from a 13 year old
girl once that had just gotten home from school.
She couldn't find her father, but there was an ominous note
there that she had read to me. I had police on the way and told
her to wait outside for them. Rather.
I heard her walking around her house, going from room to room
opening doors looking for him. After about a minute she let out
a blood curdling scream yelling he's here, he's here, he's here.
He was hanging dead in the garage.
Was a terrible call. I got a 15 minute break and had
to get back on the board taking calls again.
It's been almost 20 years and I can still hear her voice.
Strangest call. Kid who felt experimenting and
lost an adult toy up his ass. Wasn't anything I could do but
transport to the air and try not to laugh.
Most serious call. Milk truck tea.
Boned an Amish buggy going about 60 mph.
The buggy was in the wrong. It annihilated the buggy and I
don't remember for sure but I'm pretty sure the occupants inside
did not survive. I remember they got flown to the
air with massive trauma but it was like 2007 to 2009 ish being
an EMT for over. 12 years now going on 13.
I feel old lol. Pretty sure I'm going to move
back to volunteering soon. I sometimes drive in Amish
country and they always scare the heck out of me.
A friend of the family was potentially still is, a
paramedic with the helicopter service here.
I'm not sure if this was when he was a ground based or in the
helicopter but he enjoyed this story.
He was called out to a head trauma incident and arrived to
find a man sitting in his living room acting very normal for a
call like that. So he asked what was wrong and
the man said well I've got this here and turned to show a
screwdriver buried to the hilts in his head.
So the paramedic obviously said something along the lines of how
that isn't good and the man said nap it's all right and began
turning the screwdriver. They told him to stop.
I had a professor who exploded a cat with a shotgun in an attempt
to get it out of a tree and another who made his partner
pass out by having a girl show him her eyeball that hadn't
popped out after a car accident. That first story made me cringe.
Like now. 911 operators overdid. What was the most petty call you
have ever received? Once got a call about a stolen
matchbook from the caller's front porch.
Ashtray and cigarettes were left untouched.
Caller was so worked up and concerned about a proud of that
I sent an officer over. Matches were located in the
garden where they had fallen over the railing.
Caller immediately demanded the officer leave the property.
No police were called in this case, but a relative of mine was
100% convinced the hotel maid had stolen a purse sized pack of
tissues from her. The good 4 ply kind tissues were
later found under a towel. I don't know what it is about
some people that their mind goes immediately to theft.
Obligatory not a dispatcher, but my hometown received national
attention when a woman rang 999 because her snowman had been
stolen from her garden. An actual snowman, not a ceramic
garden decoration. A facsimile of a man made out of
fallen snow. The word someone's nicked ma
snowman haunt me. I like to imagine this happened
towards the end of winter and the rest of the call was her
frantically realizing that someone had stolen all the snow
off the ground too. 911 operator here.
Honestly, 90% of what we deal with is petty things that I
would never think to call 911. Four people are calling.
My brother threw a tube sock at me.
My neighbor is mowing his lawn. He's doing it to annoy me.
It's 11 AM on a Saturday morning.
My son brought his girlfriend over.
I don't like her. Can you remove her from the
house? Mom, Is she being threatening or
violent in any way? No, I just don't like her.
Those are some of the more memorable from the past week or
so. Honestly, if it's something
you're interested in, see if your local 911 dispatch center
will allow you to sit with a dispatcher.
It'll be enlightening to what we really have to deal with.
Couple things the Sun and girlfriend situation.
Sun is a legal tenant resident and invited the girlfriend over.
This complicates the whole trespassing thing.
Owner of the property is usually irrelevant in all three
situations. A good dispatcher will still put
in a call for liability reasons. If any of those escalate, I need
to show that I did everything I could.
If the field decides they don't want to go, that's up to them,
but a call for service should be put in for all of those.
Regardless of how ridiculous it is.
A throne tube sock could still be considered assault.
A lot of people seemed interested in sitting with a
dispatcher in a 911 centre. Many centres will allow this,
some won't. If it's something you're
interested, call your local Police Department and just ask.
You can say you're interested in what goes on and would like to
sit with a dispatcher. Different departments have
different procedures for this. Likely they'll get you in touch
with someone who will take your information and find out what
day's times work best. A simple background check will
usually be performed, mainly to see if you have any active
warrants or anything else that might be of concern.
Once that's done, they'll tell you when you can come in, tell
you where to go and what to do when you get there.
Most dispatchers enjoy having the public sit with them because
it doesn't happen too often and they like showing people what
the job is really like for the son and girlfriend thing the
parents should be doing. You know, parenting, not making
the police do it. Kick them out if you don't like
them. Not dispatch, but EMT.
Worst call in this regard we ever had.
My partner and I show up in the morning to find out we have a
trainee on our shift. First ride out during his EMT
school. Cool, nice kid.
About two hours later we get paid out for prostate problems.
No further information. All right, fun.
We show up at an assisted care facility, not full nursing home,
think more apartments that have a nurse on staff make contact
with patient. I send the student to do vitals
while I start questioning him. Is he having pain, discomfort,
more urine output, less urine output, funny feelings on
urination, discharges, anything all negative.
Finally I tell him I need some help.
Why does he think he is having prostate problems?
Well it's Saturday morning and he just watched a medical show
that mentioned it's important that men his age get their
prostate checked once a year and it had been about 15 months
since he had a prostate exam and he called his primary care
physician and couldn't get an appointment until Monday
morning. In over five years of EMS, this
is one of like 3 patients I ever tried to talk out of going to
the hospital but he wanted transport so we did.
We radio the hospital ahead when bringing in a patient.
This is the only time I ever said in front of the patient I'm
sorry for what I am about to tell you.
We get to the hospital and as we are moving the patient into a
bed, this older male nurse storms into the room and starts
laying into me. Why?
He thought I was joking when I called in the report.
When I assured him that it was legit, he turned to the patient.
I can't remember his exact words, but it was something like
this. You actually called a mother
fricking ambulance to bring your sorry butt into the emergency
room for a fricking prostate exam that you couldn't wait two
days for. The patient looked stunned but
nodded. The nurse turned to the tech
that had entered the room. Get this freaking butthole a
prostate exam and get him the Frick out of my app.
He then slammed down clipboard he was holding on the counter.
As we were cleaning the ambulance, my trainee looked at
me. Is it always like this?
He asked, hope dying in his eyes.
I clapped him on the shoulder. Welcome to EMS County 911.
Where's your emergency? My neighbor is mowing his yard
in pajamas, and I don't think that's very necessary.
Excuse me, Mom. Is he threatening you or harming
you? No, but he's nearly nude mowing
his yard. Can you get a cop here to tell
him to put clothes on? How about I'll let an officer
give you a call about it, Mom? Sure, that'll be fine.
I'm tired of seeing old, shirtless men mowing their yards
early morning. My number is blah, blah, blah.
OK, I'll give this to the officer directly.
Hangs up me on the radio. County 911 to North County 939.
Go ahead. Have some telephone traffic
regarding a shirtless old man mowing his yard.
Subjects requesting you to give her a call.
Sensible laugh over radio. Sure thing.
I am ready to copy. Give him her number 5 minutes
later. 939 to county 911. Go ahead.
It's going to be a civil matter. She told me she's going to start
knowing how yard naked I'll be. 10-8 me in tears of laughter. 10
four 1432. Our CAD is being updated and
this happened when I couldn't send texts over the CAD software
itself. Otherwise I would have just
thrown the comment and the narrative and he could have read
it. Fun times that.
That's amazing lol. Not a 911 operator but I do
mapping for 911. An operator had a call once from
someone that was extremely concerned that emergency
services wouldn't be able to find his house if he ever needed
them. Not a reason to call the
emergency number, but still a valid concern.
The call gets kicked over to me and I'm on the phone with him
going through a checklist to verify the location of his
address. I asked him a few times what
prompted his concerns about emergency services not being
able to find his house and he just Mumbles something like I
just know they won't. I eventually get things worked
out, his address is in our system and in the correct
location and I assure him that we will be able to find his
house. There's a few seconds of silence
on his end, then he says, well, if the police know where I live
and can get here, why the Frick couldn't Pizza Hut find my house
last night? He hung up before I could
respond. That's actually surprisingly
rational. I remember hearing an audio
recording on TV when David Cameron was still Prime Minister
of the UK, but some old woman actually phoned 999 to ask the
police operator to tell David Cameron he was doing a great
job. The understandably irritated
operator told the woman that the line was for emergency use only,
to which the old woman responded by asking the operation if she
could get her a contact number for the Prime Minister.
The British ones wind me up rather than make me laugh 'cause
I can imagine the thick sod that I'd probably call that would be
the one that got me fired. Actually, they let me resign,
but it's essentially the same thing in this case.
A woman called in a man walking down the street in her
neighborhood, not being loud or suspicious or disruptive in any
way, just walking along the sidewalk.
Mom, what exactly is the problem then?
If he's just walking down the street?
Well, he just shouldn't be walking here.
They have no business in our neighborhood.
So she called the police on 911 and not the non-emergency line
because a black man was minding his own business walking down
the street. But she just kept saying he
shouldn't be walking here. And eventually I snapped back
with would you feel better if he was running?
It's one of those moments where you immediately think, Dang now
I have to find a new job. I work at an A&E.
We received a patient who arrived by ambulance because of
a bite on his foot which he suspected might come from a
venomous spider, scorpion, etcetera.
We live in a country where there are no venomous spiders or
scorpions. Upon arrival, he realized that
he'd have to wait for a doctor to attend to him as he wasn't
exactly prioritized in fridge. So he left.
Roe such emergency. Obligatory not a 911 operator.
I'm a doctor and I once had to see someone in A&E who called an
ambulance because he had a paper cut. 911 emergency.
Yes. I can't route to my favorite
restaurant to make dinner reservations.
Call them and tell them we need seating for eight at mom.
That's not something we do. Then what good are you?
LPT 911 is for dinner reservations.
A friend who is dispatch 4911 had a call about someone's pain
and possible appendix bursting. VMS police fire truck and
everyone came. The person who called apparently
stood up and let out a huge fart, at which point their pain
stopped. After 10 minutes of vitals,
questions, ETC. All emergency vehicles left in
person refused to go to hospital.
This made me laugh, although I didn't just take my kid recently
to urgent care because I was convinced he had appendicitis.
Ended up he was constipated. Apparently Constipation and gas
can be incredibly painful. Obligatory not a 911 operator
but I called the police on my brother when I was 8 because he
kept hitting me. Hung up when it rang the first
time BC we both panicked. Neither of us realized cops can
trace where a call came from until a cop showed up at our
house and asked to search our house to make sure we weren't in
any danger. He asked why we called and my
brother was like she was trying to call her friend and the
number is really close. Apparently that's common enough
that I learned in school that if you dial 911 on accident, you
should stay on the line and explain that instead of just
hanging up. A teacher of mine was a former
paramedic. She said she got called out to
an apartment for a medical emergency shortness of breath.
Turns out the guy wanted help plowing up an air mattress.
She said it was 2:00 AM and she was too tired to be angry, so
she blew up his air mattress while her partner made a coffee
run. To be fair, he was short of
breath, just not in a way anyone could predict.
I'm not a 911 operator, but I have a story that fits here.
Several years ago, shortly after I had moved into my current
house, my neighbor at the time would get mad at me for letting
my dog crap in his yard. Now, my dog only goes out in the
front yard when I'm with him, and I keep him contained in my
yard. Sometimes he sneaks a squad when
I'm tending the garden, but I usually catch him in the act and
use a leaf or something to toss the turd back into my yard.
However, my backyard is fenced off by a wooden privacy fence
which was in disrepair, so I figured my neighbor was
complaining about my dog slipping through somewhere and
pooping in their backyard. Fair enough.
So I go through and repair all the gaps I can find with new
boards and all is well. Next day I come home from work
and my neighbor is complaining about dog turds in his yard
again. I suggest it must be someone
else's dog. He suggests I go Frick myself.
Whatever, I've done my due diligence, I'm done with their
dog shit. I want to say it was about 2-3
days later that a cop knocked at my front door holding a glad bag
my neighbor had given him with a huge dog turd in it.
And I mean HUGE. Almost 2 inches in deonator.
The officer explains that my neighbor was filing a nuisance
complaint against me because I'll let my dog crap in his
front yard and had been so kind as to provide this bag of
evidence of my dog's wrongdoings.
He had barely finished his introduction when my 11 lbs
Pomeranian finally woke up from his nap and came bounding to the
front door to be petted by the owner of this new voice.
I said something along the lines of officer if my dog left that I
don't think he would be able to walk right now.
He laughed, petted my dog, and wished me a good day.
Meanwhile, my neighbor's bull mastiff is raising heck in their
backyard. TLDR neighbor blamed their dog's
pews on my dog. Despite that the offending turds
were roughly the same size and weight as my dog.
Almost all of them. Honestly, the worst are the
people who won't parent their freaking kids.
The worst was probably when some see called because his kid
wouldn't go to his room. There was also this guy who
called regularly because of kids playing on 4 Wheelers.
They were in a rural area with adult supervision, all the
proper safety equipment, nowhere near the guy's house, and were
breaking literally no laws. He called all the time even
after being advised to stop. Honestly I hate that he was
never fined or executed for it. Let's see, we also get a lot of
vicious person calls. It's always just a bunch of kids
hanging out. The 2 black people in our area
or the two Sikhs though the callers would say Muslims.
Honestly, people are stupid. The job would have been
infinitely easier if we could tell people that their call is
freaking retarded and if they would actually be punished for
it. Execution might be a bit
extreme. Not exactly 911 as this was in
Australia so it was 000. However, I spoke to some
ambulance officers once and asked a similar question.
Their response was well we once attended someone's house who
called us because they had a nightmare.
Had a good chuckle at that one. Something like this happened
yesterday in the Netherlands. Someone called 112 because his
kitchen was on fire. Turned out it was just a bad
dream. Not a 911 operator, but rather a
firefighter listening to police band.
Heard a conversation between dispatch D and an officer Oh.
D Unit 1, be advised that we have a report of a girl riding a
bike barefoot down the road at 100 mph Oh.
Please confirm. Did you say 100 mph?
D? Yes.
Caller is afraid she is going to get a tow caught in the spokes.
Oh, I'd be more afraid of her legs falling off at that speed,
but will try to make contact. D trying not to laugh.
Will mark you in route. I want to see this.
I wasn't a 911 operator but I was a receptionist for a law
firm once. We once had a lady call and
wanted legal advice on suing her paramedics.
We asked what happened and she explained they broke her ribs as
they resuscitated her. We tried to explain that it is
common to break ribs while preforming CPR.
She did not care. In lieu of payment, the court
rules that the plaintiff's heart will be stopped.
Got a call once from a man about a noise complaint.
Pretty standard stuff at first but then a priority call came
out in the unit on the weight of the noise complaint.
Was pulled off to respond to the burglary in projects IE Badger
is still there. About 10 minutes later we get a
call from the same guy ranting and raving about why we aren't
there yet. I tell him it's because a higher
priority event has occurred that needed multiple deputies to
respond. He says he doesn't give a crap
in that his call should be responded to first because he
called first. He then proceeds to call back
every 5 minutes for the next 30 minutes or so until our watch
commander that night keys up on the channel to say she'll be en
route to the noise complaint. About 5 minutes after she
arrives on scene she keys up again with one in custody for
abuse of 911 released with a notice to appear jail.
Ride some people. By that I mean most people.
Also, I like parentheses. Definitely understand.
Emergency call taker here. Every weekend Subaru men in
noise complaints. For some reason I get some kind
of joy out of telling people police won't be attending for a
long time before it's the weekend and they're heck busy.
So in the military we had a call on base from a lady who said her
dog was missing. I was like did you or anyone
begin looking? She said no.
I just paused for a second. She then says I'm the
commander's wife. Flash fire to 15 minutes later.
Half of the police patrols are running around base looking for
a poodle that went from zero to the biggest case of bulls ever
really Dang fast. Got a 911 call from a person
because their fire extinguisher hadn't been checked that month.
Wasn't too happy about that one. I once had a 911 call that was a
drowning death of a four year old.
The very next 911 call I answered was a woman yelling
hysterically because she wanted to sign up for the rewards card
program at the grocery store and it said her number was already
and used. Someone stole my identity.
I think I probably would have lost my crap at the lady on the
second call. Yeah, like Ginger Scourge said,
it's hard to compare the pettiness and banality of most
of the 'cause we deal with what is more petty, A 32 year old
male who wants medics for toe pain, someone calling to get the
batteries changed on their smoke detector, or a neighbor dispute
over tree leaves. Who can say?
One of my favorites was over dog poop.
Neighbor one let their dog crap in Neighbor 2's yard.
Neighbor 2 went and picked it up and placed it in Neighbor one's
yard. At this point Neighbor one
called us to report watching this happen, then against the
best advice I could muster went outside to confront.
Then I got to listen to them both yell at each other,
threaten each other, and continue the hot potato, the
turd back and forth across their property line until police
arrived. Another gem a few years back was
a guy who stabbed his own mother with a fork for eating his Hot
pocket he had microwave and felt entitled to.
A guy who stabbed his own mother with a fork for eating his Hot
Pocket he had microwaved. Let's be real though, you don't
eat something that someone else microwaved.
That's just wrong. I have a story that is not
petty, nor am IA 911 operator, but years ago my family once
made what must have been the most ridiculous emergency call
on Christmas Day. Our large dog fell and got his
testicle stuck on the radiator. Luckily it was not on.
We thought they would have to pry him out but the level headed
firefighters were able to help slide out his swollen bean
without without any tools. It was the craziest Christmas we
ever had in the weirdest call the operator and fire department
ever received on Christmas. Friend in the fire department
says they are still telling that story today.
I have been on thousands of non memorable calls in my 37 years
in EMS. My most memorable though was a
guy called 911 and said he couldn't walk all of a sudden
and felt weak. I was dispatched as a stroke.
Got there and started talking to the guy, he had Jokic.
I think I may be one of these. I called 911 because there was a
dazed bat in my yard flopping around in the middle of the day
and I was concerned it was rabid and didn't want the dog getting
at it. They gave me the non-emergency
number and a cop came over, scooped him up and gently placed
him in the woods nearby. I know I could have done the
same thing, but I didn't want to get attacked or sick and the
officer was more than happy to help.
Calling the cops was my last line of defense, but I had to
due to the following. My town has no animal control
branch of law enforcement. I was unable to find anything
for neighboring towns either. All the third party animal
control services were either unresponsive or wanted an
expensive premium. The non-emergency line number
wasn't displayed on my town's website.
Not a 911 operator, but I remember a story that happened
in Germany. Wife called 911 because her
husband wouldn't stop watching pee.
The cops explained they couldn't do anything but recommended a
marriage counselor. Not the operator, but I have a
relevant story. I was in the awaiting room with
a particularly bad kidney stone. I had already been there three
hours and the waiting room wasn't really that full.
I had already gone through Tridge so I was wondering what
the Frick. I go up to the receptionist type
person and ask her how much longer it will be.
She responds with Ohio. You were next.
But someone came in by ambulance with a sore throat.
An ambulance for a freaking sore throat.
It was at that moment I lost faith in humanity.
Luckily I was called in about 10 minutes later and 10 minutes
after that I had my sweet sweet die lauded.
We have several regulars who abuse 999.
One of them goes through phases of calling countless times in a
day, never speaking, but you can hear she's there listening to us
trying to get a response from her.
Thing is, when we go and arrest her she admits an interview that
she knows it's wrong and could be preventing us from responding
to an emergency but still does it again a few days later.
Another calls police because he has mental health issues and
doesn't like calling NHS 111 non-emergency medical line and
thinks police are nice but then abuses us down the phone and
refuses to accept any help or advice we offer.
He's actually started calling 101 now rather than 999 as he
thinks it'll keep him out of trouble.
I had a woman the other night who called 999 and opened with
OK two things which is never a good start.
Proceeded to complain about a drunk man lying in the middle of
the road shouting at people. I was actually aware of this
already. It was an elderly male who
slipped and broken his hip and had been calling out for help
for an hour before someone called us and we got an officer
ambulance out there so that pee me off that she hadn't bothered
helping him or calling earlier. Then she complained about
someone parking in her parking space.
Shut that one down pretty quickly.
Most annoying is the ones that start with it's not an
emergency, but they always know there's a non-emergency line but
can't be bothered to wait to be spoken to. 911 stroke 999 call
operators of Riddick. How do you tell the difference
between a distress call where someone may be trying to contact
the police without alerting an attacker or just an accidental
call gone off in someones pocket?
How often do accidental calls, discrete distress calls happen?
I used to take 911 calls in Norway.
Number is 112 for police here though.
And one time I answered but there was complete silence on
the other side. I tried to get some sort of
response but nothing. After a couple of seconds
though, I heard clicking on the very soft kind.
It was hard to understand what was going on, but I understood
that something was wrong. That was when I heard that the
clicking was actually someone tapping their nails on the phone
to make SOS with Morse code. Immediately got a police car to
the address and surely enough there was an armed robbery going
on where the mother of the house had managed to hide in a closet
right by the one of the robbers. There were two of them that was
holding the rest of the family hostage.
It truly could have ended very bad if she didn't remember or
was too afraid to call. Sorry about any bad English.
Why do all the sorry for bad English comments have good
English? Accidental 911 calls happen all
the time. The majority of offenders are
offices that have to dial 9 to get an outside line, then dial 1
before the area code. But dials on cell phones.
Kids that have an old cell phone that still has a battery and
they hit the emergency call button.
Any cell phone can dial an emergency call even if it is not
activated. Our local policy here is that
any 911 call, even if someone gets on the phone to say sorry,
the police have to respond to check it out.
I did 911 call taking dispatching for 13 years.
Sometimes you just get a feeling.
Most computer aided dispatching programs have features that tell
you if you've received calls from a particular number,
address person in the past along with the type of call history.
So if I look over call history and see domestic issues, then
they are getting a cop no matter what they tell me.
But if I'm talking to a little baby and hear the mother walk in
the room and take the phone and she says everything's OK with no
call history, then I tell my Sergeant and let him be the
final decision on whether or not there will be a police response.
I felt pretty comfortable with my intuition.
We handled a call one night where my partner thought she
heard a little sniffle on the line.
When she answered it was just barely audible and then the line
was disconnected. System gave us a general GPS
location so we got police started.
Then we researched the number and got an exact address.
As the officer got to the house he peeked in the front window
and saw slight movement over the stairs.
He kicked into the door and found the woman hanging.
He cut her down and saved her life.
She had called 911 so that officers would find her instead
of her family. She later told the officer that
as soon as she saw him turn on her St., she strung herself up
and my partner not paid attention.
OR and continue searching for an exact address.
That woman would probably be dead.
That's incredible. I guess that intuition is a big
part of the job. Thanks.
A friend of mine drunkenly decided it was a good idea to
call 911 on my phone while we were at a bar.
I quickly hung up, but they called back from a normal phone
number when I answered to apologize.
They asked me a lot of yes or no questions, assuming it was to
protect me if someone were telling me what to say.
I are you safe? Could you tell us if you were in
any danger? But they didn't show up once I
confirmed that I was OK. I've also dialed 911 by accident
once from a home tell that required dialing 9 before the
number. That time I spoke to them tell
them I was OK but they showed up at our hotel room 10 minutes
later to check everything out. I used to be a 911 operator
dispatcher. That is what we had to do, Ask
them if they are able to tell us if they were in danger.
We also still had to send an officer to them anyway.
It seems a bit overkill but better safe than sorry.
Not the same, but I do phone systems.
We were doing a large install for a multi building campus.
Their old system was such an old pose that 911 either didn't work
and some buildings always run out of a different building so
the address was wrong, etcetera. I took a significant amount of
time setting everything up properly and working with the
local PDMS to make sure that if any of the local fire EMS police
slash 911 were called, they got the correct caller.
It along with the exact right building.
You might ask how do you test this?
Well in this case, because this was my project, I spent overtime
two days 88 going to at least half of the phones in the
building dialing 911. Due to what these buildings did
the 50% phones and testing every building was of high importance.
Hello 911 this is from calling to test.
Can you please give me the location which this call
resolves to? As you might imagine that line
lasted all of three calls. After that it was me.
Yo 911 same or address me thanks.
Click all day. 2 days straight, 40 plus buildings, hundreds of
phones. Not one mistake.
Client said. And did you test the fire depth?
No, and I'm not going to. I'm confident it works.
After two days of testing, I called back, thanked them
profusely for putting up with me, and sent 2 pizzas over to
them. I was a 911 operator for two
years in a very small town and I dealt with both of these
situations. More often than not, it was
children who would call over and over thinking that it was
hilarious to hang up in our ears.
That is until we sent the cops to their house and would be able
to hear the children get spankings.
Then one incident happened where a girl called and put the phone
in her pocket and I could hear her crying as her boyfriend beat
her and threatened to shoot her and I had to get officers to the
scene without the boyfriend knowing.
The girl got out of the room with him long enough to unlock
the bedroom window for the officers to enter through.
Very scary, but very rewarding when the girl was able to thank
me face to face row. It must get annoying getting
kids and idiots who don't know how to lock their phones, but
things like this I suppose make up for it.
I was jumping on a trampoline with my eldest son once and he
was bouncing me and I was screaming because I couldn't get
up. Turns out I accidentally dialed
911 from my pocket. The police showed up and asked
if there was a girl screaming at this address.
I had to explain, rather embarrassed, that it was me.
I'm a 28 year old man. Let that sink in.
It is very very difficult to tell when this is genuine and it
is something I worried about as a 999 call handler.
I got a call once from a woman who had collapsed in a church.
She was talking normally one minute and the next I could hear
her whispering the words help, help.
Then she would go back to answering my questions normally
and again whisper down the phone.
Help me, help me. We are trained to ask them to
tap the phone if in danger, but English wasn't her first
language. The phone cuts out and we
advised a crew who went out. Turns out she was talking to a
friend and needed her to help translate the call.
However, there was another case here where a woman did exactly
this. It was a pocket dial and all you
could hear was a man asking about a woman and directions or
something similar. Anyway, the call handler ended
the call and it turns out she had been kidnapped and murdered
eventually. It was horrible and it was
something I honestly feared missing.
The short answer is you don't. Almost without exception, you
will be getting a quick visit from the police.
It's not a big deal and no one gets in trouble or anything, but
there's no way to tell that you are actually safe unless an
officer lays eyes on you. Despite what you read on Reddit,
most police officers are really nice folks.
They would rather respond to 100 butt dials than show up late to
a domestic turned homicide. They would rather respond to 100
butt dials then show up late to a domestic turned homicide.
This a million times over. Absolutely devastating.
I used to be an EMT in the catch or dispatch when someone would
dial 911 and it wasn't clear what was going on.
Were dispatched as a sick person and they'd send us the ambulance
and a police cruiser. So when we were waiting at the
station for a call and got sick person it was always an exciting
ride over not knowing what it would actually be. 90% of the
time it was boring or nothing, but there's always that 10%. 911
dispatcher here. When I first started the job I
had no idea what the heck I was doing.
I had an experienced officer sitting the desk with me for
three months. I was the only dispatcher on.
After a while you get to feeling talking to people.
You understand tones or stress in someone's voice.
You also understand when someone is being a prick and fricking
around. Either way you are going to get
a knock on your door if you are pranking 911.
Also, I let my officers know you are screwing around and they
make sure to give you a nice talking to.
Any other questions that I can answer I gladly will.
I have been a dispatcher for almost 2 years now as well as
police fire. I will answer the best I can
hopefully. The site's so stuffed away in
these 2713 comments. Here's my time to shine.
So back when I was 16 or so I had this stupid two sided phone.
One side was all touchscreen with two buttons and the other
side was a tiny screen with the number pad.
Anyways, I am at a friend's house and he suggests we go hang
out with his neighbors. All right, no prob.
We head over there we are all sitting in the kitchen when the
neighbor guy says oh hey let me show you guys this cool new
thing I got. Little did I know my friend was
in on the whole deal. So a couple minutes passes by
and my my friend says hey chop chop medafica look.
I ever so slightly turn my head to my left and I'm face to face
with a snake. I have never screamed jumped up
around so fast in my life. I lock myself in the bathroom
thinking I'm safe while these butt holes one up me and start
shoving the snake under the door.
Commence more screaming and me begging them to stop while
simultaneously trying to hoist myself onto the sink.
I managed to butt dial the emergency call option on my
phone so the operator picks up unbeknownst to me and hears me
screaming bloody murder saying stop please for the love of God
stop please Siri. Finally they stop at which point
my phone rings and I hear Mom I have units dispatched to you are
you in a safe location? So after calming down and
explaining what was going on the dispatcher asks.
All persons in the house stand outside and wait for units to
arrive. We are outside and we see a
helicopter and we are all saying I wonder what they are looking
for. Units arrive, check me out, see
Snake. All the while this helicopter is
in the yeah. So I ask what the helicopter is
looking for. The officer is like Oh yes
there's something in 10 codes over his radio and the
helicopter bee lines out of the area.
I've never felt so stupid in my entire life.
TL doctor friends scared me with Snake but dialed 911.
Dispatcher heard my bloody murder scream.
Send helicopter and units out to see Snake and make sure I'm OK.
I was on the road with my local PD as a crash investigator so I
was on the same radio channels because I was often the first
only person besides rescue if needed to show up to a crash.
We had hang ups get called out but they would always include a
number so the first thing they would do is call it back from
the 911 station. If that didn't get an answer,
they would put out a call with a specific signal code, like A10
code that was just a call and hang up with no dialogue.
If it seemed like a pocket call or the phone was hidden, but
they could make out background sounds, they would describe them
to the officer. There's a fight or someone
crying or something loud in the background.
The call center has call history built into the call receiving
system. So let's say this happened four
times in the last 10 minutes. That would be relayed to the
responding officer. If it happened 10 times in the
last year, that would too, because it's probably a messed
up alarm system or something. So it's case by case.
Ex dispatcher here. This type of call was common.
We simply could not tell if the person is in distress and acting
or if nothing is really happening like they are
claiming. So we would always send out
deputies. It's very common to send
deputies out in one of these situations only to be called out
to the same location later in the night for an incident as it
escalated after they left. From my perspective, as long as
I could hear something on the other end, I would listen and
take notes for what is going on as possible.
If I couldn't anything on the other end, I would stay with the
call as long as possible. I also had situations where the
person called and pretended to be talking to their sister or
something else. I'd have to ask all of my
questions with yes or no answers.
Are you in danger? Can you get away to somewhere
safe? Does the other person have a
weapon? Do they have a stick or bat?
Do they have a knife? Do they have a gun?
Is the person a male? Is the person a female?
Are you related to this person? You get the idea.
It was like a mini mystery piercing together what happened
until the deputies arrived. Then you'd hear a deputy's voice
in the background. Usually they didn't even say
goodbye, much less thank you. When people are petrified they
forget their manners. I'm sure they appreciated it.
Don't take it personally. I currently work as an emergency
call handler in the UK. During a standard shift we end
up with a number of silent calls or calls that have dropped
before the operator has passed them to us.
When calling 999 in the UK you firstly go through to a BT
operator where they will ask you what service you want.
They will then pass you to US police.
If you request more than one service that includes the
police, then you will always be put through to us first.
We can then call either fire or ambulance.
When you have a silent call you will always try to call them
back. While this is happening you tag
the Intel team to start completing checks on the number,
such as whether they have called before and possibly gave an
address. If you call from a landline then
the operator will know your address.
If you call from a mobile we will be given approximate
location details. Red flags would be previous
calls linked to domestic violence, Intel objects relating
to child neglect, or issues in the home.
If we have an exact address, such as when people call from a
landline, we will always attend. If it's a mobile with no
previous calls or Intel, then we will call 3 times and then close
pending further calls. If anyone has any other
questions relating to the job, fire away.
Tip for American tourists visiting Stuttgart.
If you dial 911 there, you end up at Porsche headquarters, not
the police. Police is 110 in Germany, not
sure about everywhere. Where I grew up, any ambiguous
911 call, including silence on the other end involved sending a
police car, an ambulance, and a fire truck just in case, even if
they are 99% sure it's a prank or accident.
Hopefully this is similar everywhere, though probably less
practical in large cities. It may have been stopped to have
police, an emergency medical service, and a fire department
involved in every 911 back in the day, but now it's just send
a police car and check out if there is a real emergency.
It would cost too much money to send out all three services on
every 911 calls. I usually listen, if it doesn't
seem bad just attempt a call back.
If they answer I get an address and send a cop.
If not they get a voicemail saying they need to give us a
call back on the non-emergency line.
If it seems suspicious then I'll take a couple extra steps in
locating an owner to the phone but other than that you can't do
much more. One call I had was I heard like
a woman yelling and then the line went dead.
After that I called back and spoke to a male who said he
lived in the woods. So we searched the area of the
pink from 911 and get nothing. Then we ping the dudes cell
phone and find him in his house. He did have one and everything
appeared normal and we haven't had a body show up since.
Fingers crossed. Also check out our slash 911
dispatchers where we have weekly discussions and also allow for
these types of questions all the time.
I am late to the party, but I was a 911 dispatcher.
It relied on a lot of intuition. Honestly.
Dispatching really requires you to trust your instincts and they
get scarily accurate. When I was training, I learned
from a lady who won a national award for her work.
We had a call where the female caller said she was in a car
accident and hit a tree but was now at home.
She sounded more afraid and upset than most car accident
victims so we pressed For more information.
The caller got more up set so we started asking yes, no
questions. Are you hurt?
Yes. Are you alone number?
Is your husband with you? Yes.
Did he hurt you? Yes.
Domestic violence calls are highly dangerous for officers,
so it was really important to figure this out and dispatch
multiple officers when we wouldn't have for just a traffic
accident. We sent two or three officers.
It turned out that the caller had been assaulted by her
husband and he was trying to pass it off as injuries from a
car accident. That job is hard as heck, but
very rewarding. Another gut feeling helped me
take part in the rescue of a kidnapped child from an Amber
Alert. It's one of my proudest moments.
UK 999 operator here. I work in the center which takes
the 999 call initially. The caller then tells us which
emergency service they need and we connect them to that service
for us. We have very strict procedures
to follow if the caller won't speak or it seems to be a butt
dial. The mantra we follow is if in
any doubt, connect and let the police deal with it.
Back in college there was a guy who was constantly scamming
people by saying his car broke down and he needed money for fix
a flat but would pay you back then disappear knowing a few
people who had been scammed. He tried it on me one night.
I said sure but my cash is in my car parked down the block let's
walk to it. I then say Oh my girlfriend is
calling me one second I pull my phone out and dial 911.
The answer and I say oh hey honey I'm all right, but if you
need me you should really come to intersection.
The dispatcher kept asking if this was an emergency and again
I'd say yeah you should really come here if you need me.
This went on for about 5 minutes until I eventually said how have
you not picked up on this by now?
The 911 dispatcher then hung up on me and the dude ran away.
Not only was I shocked she couldn't get the hint, but that
she would hang up on a person. About a year ago someone in our
company had the wonderful idea of creating an internal safety
hotline and they had lots of expensive handouts printed up
with the number on it. All kinds of themes around it
and the number was drum roll please X 9911.
I was the poor killjoy who had to break the bad news to them.
Did try to suggest 01189998819991197253 as an
alternative. 911 dispatcher here.
As a general protocol, we ask callers who do not respond after
the call is answered to tap twice on the phone if they're in
distress. In most cases, whether they do
or not, we send an officer their way just to be safe.
Accidental calls happen all the time, 810 times a day on an
average day. Discrete distress calls are not
so common, maybe one a week and 90% of the time it's a domestic
violence call where the the victim doesn't want his her
attacker to know they've called 911.
This will probably get buried with a great story about my wife
then. Girlfriend comes home with me
from college for first Thanksgiving with my family.
When we get to my parents house my parents make sure she gets to
a phone to call her folks and let them know we're here safe.
While at college you had to dial 9 to get an external number,
then dial the whole number including the one before the
area code reflects. Probably she does this and
realizes after dialing 9/1 she didn't need to.
Well apparently where my parents live they can monitor for
attempted 911 calls. She's still on the phone with
her mom when the cop shows up and takes a look around the
house and sees my brothers, myself, and my dad tapping the
keg for the weekend. We offered him a beer after
having a good laugh. Obviously he declined.
Also offered him some Turkey the following day.
Thanksgiving, but he was fortunately off to spend time
with his family. My wife is still mortified about
calling the cops on my parents. We still laugh about it every
Thanksgiving. Hey, dangerous in 2004's wife,
you going to call the cops this year?
Good times. About 10 years ago or so, a body
was found behind the dumpster of a convenience store.
It had been there a few weeks. They checked 911 calls from the
outside pay phone from around the estimated time of death.
A young man had called, said he was getting hassled by some
guys. Then his voice changes
dramatically, sounds almost like a little boy and he's saying
stuff like Oh no Oh my God why they never sent any cops and he
was getting stabbed while on the phone.
When I heard it played on the news it made me crazy.
Just remembering it makes me sad.
One time I was driving home from a concert down the back roads
and saw a car off the road in a ditch with airbags deployed.
I stopped the car, got out and dialed 911.
Before I could talk to the dispatcher a gun was pointed at
me and a guy said you get in your freaking car and drive
away. Do not call for help.
I'm drunk and I got this under control.
So I hung up the phone, got in my car, and drove off.
Minutes later the 911 operator called back and asked if I was
OK. I explained the situation and
told them I was leaving the scene out of fear for my life,
but would wait in a nearby public place if I needed to be
questioned. I waited about 1/2 hour in a
Kroger parking lot for the cops to talk to me.
They never did. I don't know if anything came
from it. People should know that many
communities in the United States are utilizing a database service
called Smart 911, which allows you to log onto the site and
proactively add information about your household that will
pop up on the dispatcher's screen if and when you ever have
to make a call to 911. This might include medical stuff
like a person has seizures, number of family members,
security codes for the front gate, etcetera.
It's especially helpful with people with just cell phones or
VoIP so it can give a clear address attached to your phone
number. In my community, Snohomish
County, Washington, it literally was launched today and seems
like a great service. A friend of mine discreetly
called 911 when a man with a gun got into his car at a gas
station and made him drive somewhere he was going to rob.
When the call went through, he started talking loudly.
Put down the gun and let's talk this out.
We're on the corner of Main and State Street.
Isn't there somewhere I can drop you off?
The idiot on the other end couldn't figure it out and began
to loudly say hello. You H did you dial on accident?
So this line is for emergencies only.
Needless to say, this agitated the man with the gun.
How he managed to talk the guy into letting him drop him off is
beyond my understanding. He did work at a crisis center
so this wasn't the first time he's had to deal with
descalating a situation, but still, he is lucky to be alive
after that massive freak up on the part of the 911 operator.
911 stroke 999 call operators of.
How do you tell the difference between a distress call where
someone may be trying to contact the police without alerting an
attacker or just an accidental call gone off in someones
pocket? How often do accidental calls,
discrete distress calls happen? I'm not a 999 stroke 911
dispatcher. I arrived at work one morning
before anyone else, as is normal.
The phone starts ringing so I answer it.
It's a lady who works one the 999 switchboard and tells me
that they'd had a call from this number and wanted to check
everything was OK. I explained that has just
arrived at work and that there's no one else here but me.
She asked if I was sure because a lady had called 999, screamed
down the phone and then hung. I just about crap my pants.
They send a copper around and found everything to be normal.
We never found out what had gone on.
Long time lurker, first time poster.
Not a call operator but I had a situation happen with me so I
had been out of work for a while and been looking but no luck.
I was at an AA meeting one Friday night and was outside
talking to some friends. Guy walks up and asks if any of
us are looking for work. I pop up and start discussing
with him what the job would be. Limo driver?
Dope. I'm up for it.
So we arrange a meeting the next day at 4.
Now the next day I start to realize I know nothing about
this guy other than that he is supposedly sober.
I did meet him at an AA the meeting.
So I also have a Galaxy S5 as a phone and playing around with it
one day led me to an emergency setting where if you push the
lock home button three times it will take a picture with the
front and back camera and send a message to your emergency
contacts with an approximate GPS location.
I had told my sponsee mom and roommate about this and about my
arrangement for the night and if they get a message to call the
cops. Fast forward, I meet up with the
guy, everything's fine, phones in my back pocket and I'm
driving this late 90s Cadillac stretch.
The car was also when out of nowhere I feel my phone
vibrating off the hook. I have the security partition up
so I pull my phone out about 30 minutes prior and my buttness
have set the emergency setting off twice and all my emergency
contacts are freaking out in a group text.
My heart drops. I immediately start to respond
to the text when I get a call from an unknown number.
It's the local sheriff. My sponsee had called the cops
and reported me as kidnapped. I had to convince them that
everything was cool and that I really was safe and not tied up
in a basement or deliverance style.
So that's my story and that's why I don't keep the emergency
setting on my phone anymore. Paramedic here.
Depending on what the dispatchers hear, they'll also
send EMS and fire in addition to the police.
EMS won't bill you for above dial, but my fire department
will bill the caller $500.00 for a false alarm.
If you don't pay then they add it onto your or your landlord's
property taxes. This is why I don't pre program
911 into my phone or have a phone with an emergency button.
My friend once called the cops about a shooting outside her
apartment. The operator just told her it
was probably a firecracker and hung up without there being any
follow up. But for Katrina, the NOPD did
the test. They went around different
neighborhoods and discharge blanks, hundreds of them to see
how long it took people to call 911.
No one ever called. I work for a large bank and
manage the process that used to send huge numbers of automated
fax confirmations. Some clients would request that
we stop sending the fax with the usual crap tools at our
disposal. The easiest way to do that was
to just change the number to some random non working number.
So we used 1,111,111,111. What could possibly go wrong?
Well you have to dial 9 to get an external line.
So the automatics system dials 9111 and wouldn't you know that
goes to 911. So basically we launched an old
school DOS attack on 911. The state police were about to
shut down the power supply to the entire building before IT
could finally terminate the process.
Little did they know the fax server was located in another
state. Surprisingly, I learned that 911
accepts faxes and had to go to the dispatch center to collect
those that got through. I also learned you don't need to
dial 9 to get an outside sideline 4911 instinct.
You just get this feeling something isn't right.
Have the spatched cops or medics just cause of a gut feeling.
Has worked out a few times where it helped the person.
You may be wrong 9 times out of 10 but that one time you follow
through it can save a life. Also looking a call history for
address or phone number helps. That has always been helpful.
Not a 911 operator, but I worked for an audio video surveillance
company for a while where we occasionally had to dispatch
police and other emergency personnel when required.
I once received a panic button alarm activation from a hotel in
California. Our standard protocol was to
pull up the live video feed and call the location if a panic
button had been triggered. I pulled up the feed and called
the hotel twice and didn't receive an answer and no one
including workers appeared to be in the lobby but this was
suspicious. There is at least one desk
attendant at all times. I had a Co worker go ahead and
dispatch police for a standard walkthrough.
While I was reviewing the last 10 minutes or so of video
footage. What I saw was one of the most
heartbreaking and tragic events I've ever witnessed.
I saw the woman carrying a young sleeping child, probably aged
two or three, from floor to floor of the hotel.
At times I would see her walking up the stairs and at others I'd
see her getting out of the elevators.
This woman was obviously distressed and was crying, but I
couldn't see any reason for her to be upset.
The hotel itself was a large square and there was a section
in the middle of each side where there were large balcony areas
for smoking. The woman eventually took the
elevator up to the 6th floor and walked out onto the balcony,
where she proceeded to throw her sleeping child down into the
courtyard area below. She then wrapped one end of an
extension cord around her neck and the other onto the balcony
railing and then flung herself as hard as she could over the
edge. The cord broke and she ended up
falling onto a balcony 2 stories down, dead from a broken neck
for a couple that had been now told a balcony, saw her fall and
went inside to tell the desk attendant.
The couple ran outside to see what the woman had thrown over
the balcony before herself and the desk clerk pressed the panic
button so we would dispatch police.
In the time it took about 10 seconds for us to respond.
The couple had found the child and picked it up.
The attendant saw what they were holding and fainted behind the
desk, making it impossible for us to see.
I'm so thankful for the 911 operators and police officers
who handle situations like these on a daily basis.
I only worked in security for a few months but it made me
realize how freaking courageous these people are.
I'm not a 911 call operator, but I just want to commend 911
operators of being as calm as they are when an actual distress
call comes to them. Speaking from experience, my
parents got into an argument which then escalated to a fight
once my dad struck my mom and my mom started to defend herself
and I immediately picked up the phone and called 911 out of
terror that my father would potentially badly hurt or even
kill my mom. My voice was trembling and I
kept stammering 'cause I was so afraid.
The 911 operator was just trying to keep me as calm as possible,
and for that I'm thankful. You guys have definitely a
seriously hard job and I want to thank you for your work.
As cliche as it may sound, this moment in my life changed me a
little bit. I accidentally did the emergency
call when my phone was locked. I think I cancelled and they
called back. I quickly apologized and told
them it was a pocket dial. They seem relieved, not mad or
anything. I've done it twice on my phone.
They appreciate it much better if you follow through with the
initial call instead of having up.
Both times I said it was an accident and there was no
emergency in that I was in no danger and they thanked me and
no trouble was had. I know I'm way late.
The current dispatcher here working now.
Actually on a typical day around 40% -, 60% of the 911 calls you
answer tend to be pocket dials and contrary to what you see on
TV, very rarely do people try to discreetly call 911.
We are trained to handle situations where they do, but in
the two years experience I have so far I haven't had it happen
and haven't been told any stories by my fellow dispatchers
of them experience experiencing it.
To answer your question, if people do discreetly call us and
don't speak directly to us, it is generally a bad thing.
TV has taught society that 911 can quickly and accurately
triangulate your location if you call from a cell phone.
We can't. With a new generation of 911
systems we can get roughly a 100 yard radius of where your phone
is. But if you are in an apartment
or crowded urban street, good luck finding that.
Always give your location and if that is the only thing you can
give, that way we know where to go.
You learn to recognize pocket vials very quickly.
They are either just switching sounds or a whole lot of buttons
being pressed. Oftentimes we get calls from
children playing with disconnected but still powered
phones. All phones can call 911 even if
they aren't hooked up to a provider, and those are the most
difficult since they often call numerous times and we have no
idea where the phone actually is.
When you only have five people working at that time, that
constant 911 call can get very frustrating.
I've commented this before. I once received an emergency
call from a bulldog. The dog had knocked the phone
over and dialed 9 every time it moved.
It was sleeping on the phone and it sounded like someone who was
choking. Emergency services were sent
out, the dog was fine, was a hotel clerk, and was robbed at
gunpoint. They tied my hands together and
my feet together. Once they left I was able to
call 911. I told them what happened and
asked them to hurry for I was tied up.
The dumbass 911 operator laughed at me.
This is a really crap answer but in all honestly I think it's
something that just comes with experience.
I can usually tell in the 1st 5 seconds of a call how it's going
to play out. But Uofc get the occasional one
in someone's pocket where you I'm sure and we will devour to
do everything we can to make sure all is well with the
caller. As for how from prank calls
happen from adults, very rarely. Like genuine prank, absolutely
nothing happening. Maybe only one or two a month
tend to get regulars who come in and last a few days.
During school holidays we get numerous a day kids just messing
about. Often the operator will confirm
it was children on the line without they sounded like they
weren't genuine. I keep reading comments about
how people repeatedly but dial 911.
You're tying up the line for someone who may need it.
The first time it happens. You should take steps to ensure
it doesn't happen again. I don't think it's something to
be taken lightly. If somebody calls in and hangs
up, they are called back. A few attempts are made.
You cannot assume something is distressful by just hearing it.
A kid playing and screaming on a deactivated cell phone, which
cannot be called back, may sound like a female screaming.
Who is going to put money on making that distinction?
People in distress often are whispering.
You can hear screaming or crashing in the background and
use your gut. Sometimes when you run the
number, it has a history of domestic disturbances and then
the cops it will go. If it's a landline, there's an
address, which makes it easier. Cell phones also have records
which can take some time to pull from the record.
You have a name, an address, and can run any known history of
cause or violence or whatever. If you call 911 by accident,
stay on the phone. Don't just hang up and screen
the calls because then you're wasting police resources, but
stay on the line and clearly say something like yes I called 911
by mistake, it was in my pocket. That way the operator knows that
nobody who was in danger would be so blatant to say that kind
of crap. Even still they will ask follow
up questions like is there any reason why you wouldn't be able
to talk right now? Then again nothing is absolute.
Sometimes a female will call and say oh sorry wrong number and
you'll hear a male voice. Then you ask who they're with.
They say oh nobody, it was an accident and then you know
something's going on if they are not admitting there's somebody
else there. There is no real way of knowing
if a call is accidental or being made discreetly without being
able to talk to the caller. A silent cut off 999 call can
never be filtered and ignored based on any technique, which is
why our unit will always be dispatched to it.
If a location is known, the background noise will be a big
giveaway in most cases. If it quite clearly is a pocket
dial, you may be able to exhaust non-emergency responses in the
first instance, but a mobile phone has an unknown location.
Without someone to speak to, there is only so much you can
do. Ordinarily, you will have a unit
attend home address if that information is available to you
by way of a link from the number whom dialed.
However, for the reasons just stated, A discreet genuine
emergency 999 call without being able to communicate with the
caller presents a difficulty. You can dispatch a unit of a
home address if known. Otherwise you are completely
dependent on cues based on what the caller is saying, what those
in the background are saying, or if other noises can be heard
inside outside busy area in a vehicle.
Indicator clickers are noisy as heck on a phone call.
If you can speak to a caller, they may still be being
discreet. I want a taxi please.
Could quite easily be seen as a hoax accidental call.
But the caller really does want the police, which is why you
should vet such a call with closed questions.
Do you know you have have called the police?
Do you require the police? Is it an emergency?
Are you injured? Are you at risk of harm?
Are you at your home address? Tell them their own home address
if you know it all. Yes, no questions.
One thing I will say to you, all accidental 999 dials happen.
Never ever ever ever just hang up.
Ever explain it was an accident. Be prepared to get asked some
question to validate the authenticity of what you are
saying, primarily to ensure you are not under duress.
See closed questions prior. A cut off 999 call is an
absolute nightmare, especially from a mobile phone, especially
one with no linked address person data.
The inconvenience of 10 seconds to verify an accidental call is
a whole load better than thinking someone is being
attacked, killed, raped, and tried to summon assistants but
could not. How often do they happen?
Silent cut off 999 S happen frequently.
Generally, they turn out to just be accidental.
Most 999 calls do not warrant a 999 call.
A small percent of the total of taken 999 S are genuine.
I used to have a cell number that was X91-1 XXX.
My friend tried to call me one day and he missed the first
number on his phone and didn't know it.
The unfortunate part is that the guy that answered his mistaken
911 call sounded just like me. My friend thinks it's me
screwing with him and so he starts playing along saying that
a bunch of men are trying to get into his house to rape him and a
bunch of other messed up crap. Of course the guy on the phone
thinks this is strange so he's trying to get more info, but my
friend my friend thinks it's still me messing with him and
starts in on the guy again. He told me later when he got out
of jail that he realized his mistake about 5 seconds before
the cops kicked in his front door and hauled him off.
He also said the worst part of the whole thing wasn't the fines
or the jail time, but standing in a courtroom full of people in
front of the judge having the phone call plate and trying to
explain his jokes. This man is a doctor now.
We both still have 6 senses of humor though.
When I was a kid, there was a cat up in a tree.
Yes, like in the movies. I decided to be the responsible
one and call 911. As the 911 dispatcher started to
talk, my dad yelled at me to hang up the phone and not bother
the people who were there for emergencies.
A few seconds later, the dispatcher called our phone
again and my dad answered this time, but the dispatcher
wouldn't have it. She yelled at my dad that they
didn't want to speak to him after he told them it was a
misunder understanding but that they wanted to speak to the
little girl. So I got on the phone and told
them that there was the cat up in the tree.
The 911 dispatcher was nice and told me that help was on the
way. I guess it was a slow day since
2 fire trucks, one ambulance and a police car came to our house
for a cat. The firemen came out in their
huge uniforms all ready for the unexpected.
They got on the ladder and tried to grab the cat, but the cat
just jumped and landed safely on the ground anyway.
My parents were yelled at by the police again, saying that they
should teach me when it's necessary to use 911.
I was given a pat on the back and congratulated for being an
outstanding citizen. After all that was said and
done, the cat was back on the tree again.
An hour later, my dad warned me not to call 911 back for the
cat. My mom and grandma used to have
me practice calling 911 on my plastic toy phone.
They would wait in one room to come rescue me and I would go in
the other room to call. The first time though, I burst
into panic tears. My mom ran into comfort me,
thinking I was scared of the pretend emergency.
I managed to sob out. I can't find the other one.
I once was making out with my girlfriend at the time and my
phone went off. We were going at it hot and
heavy, but I took a moment to check my phone caller.
It wasn't something I recognized so I answered this number.
Contacted emergency services. Is there an emergency?
I stammered. I apologize.
I must have been dialed 911 while making out with my
girlfriend. I'm very sorry.
The dispatcher didn't seem angry and we didn't have officers show
up or check on us so I'm not sure what I said that saved us
from that headache. After I hung up I explained the
situation to my GF and we continued our session.
TLDR almost but dialed an emergency freeway in 1994.
We were watching the OJ Simpson slow speed Bronco chase live on
TV. Unknown to us, our toddler was
playing with the phone and he hit the 911 speed dial.
The dispatcher heard an open line and sent a patrol car. 2
cops rang our door and asked if we were OK.
We let them look around. I found the phone and hung it
up. Then the cops joined us as we
watched OJ on the TV until he reached his house.
When I was 4I purposefully dialed 911 because my granddad
was a police officer and I thought that was how you called
them. 911 operators overdid. What's the most blood chilling
emergency call you've heard? Mother calling stating her baby
is choking on a coin. Can hear the commotion in the
back and couldn't do anything. The kid was choking and dying.
Don't know what else happened after.
Oh God, I swallowed a nickel when I was like 4 and my dad
just grabbed me by the ankle and proceeded to beat me on my back
repeatedly until it fell out. No idea how that managed to
work. My sister is a 911 operator.
She would call my parents whenever she was upset after a
cold day at work. One of the worst ones she told
us about was an 8 year old boy calling from his bedroom because
the kitchen and hallway were on fire outside his room.
She notified fire department, but knowing the location was
rural and it would take them 10 plus minutes to get there, she
began to try and give instructions on what he needed
to do to get out. Starting with finding an object
to break the window so he could climb out.
But between having to calm him down, get the information, keep
him calm, and get him to listen to her instructions, he ended up
burning to death on the phone with her a couple minutes before
help showed up. From that day on I realized how
difficult and strenuous this job actually isn't, that I would
never be able to do it. There's a lot of things in this
thread that I find horrifying, but somehow this gets to me more
than anything else. Carjacking where woman was
dragged out of the car but her three kids weren't.
Got car and kids back 45 minutes later after Chase X town but
little girl had been assaulted. Suspect told her he'd kill her
little brothers if she screamed. That breaks my fucking heart.
I had a phone call from a distressed father.
His son had gone missing and had left a note saying he loved his
family but couldn't go on living anymore.
The call prior to this one was from the railway manager telling
me that a train driver had just hit a human.
I had already dispatched A patrilka to the area and I had
already heard the report and it was horrible.
My colleague in the patrilka was on the verge of breakdown
describing the scene. Border pets lay strewn
everywhere and then it was found.
Now knowing this, I put 2 and two together and knew that I was
talking to her father who had all hopes of finding his son
alive again. The son had done similar things
before. The father told me that his
wife, the dead man's mother, was out looking for the son.
I had a radio running in the background so that I could pick
up info from the Sioux citizen and as I was telling the father
that the police would help in the search for the lost son, I
heard the most bonacillin scream that I ever heard.
The mother had arrived at the tracks and I could hear the
horrified wailing at what she saw.
It was horrible and I had such a hard time holding back tears and
keeping my tone straight and civil.
The father thanks me for the help and I could hang up.
The call was not allowed to give the father the news and frankly
it is just not something to deliver in a phone call.
Their son was dead and gone. The father had to be kept in the
dark until my patrol could give him the news and the mother was
utterly heartbroken, Her desperate wailing on that radio.
It knots my stomach to this day. My mom has heard everything.
She's taken calls about children being abused, rapes and murders.
Nothing gets to her quite like suicide.
She's still shaken about one man in particular, four years after
taking his call. A man called into the most calm,
stoic voice. Said I'm going to kill myself.
Mom started her normal approach to this and tried to ask him not
to do it, ask him what was wrong.
He interrupted her immediately and said without emotion,
there's nothing you can do. I made my decision a week ago.
I'm going to kill myself today. Gave his location, said my wife
will be home in an hour. I'll be in my bedroom.
He hung up the phone. Mom repeatedly called his number
back, but there was never any answer.
With each call, she wondered if he did it yet, if he could hear
his phone ring as he was doing it.
He died that day. When the police arrived, he was
long gone. His wife arrived right on time,
and the police had to explain to her what happened.
It was all perfectly planned. It's as if my mom was speaking
to someone, one who was already dead.
He was so far gone when he called her there was nothing she
could do. It took her a long time to come
to terms with that. Been dispatching for eight
years. I work in a very rough area.
Taken a lot of messed up calls, shootings, suicides and whatnot.
Nothing is worse than SIDS having to calm down a parent
that just found their baby unexpectedly deceased.
Get them to tell you their address and give them CPR
instructions that you both know won't help is probably the
hardiest thing to handle. Having two kids of my own, it's
moments like this. I pull out my phone, look at
their photos and text home to make sure they're OK.
The one that stuck with me was a 911.
Hang up starts out as an abandoned call, As in a call
where the caller hung up before we could answer.
Call back and when I get an answer they calmly explain that
their cousin had called and that there was no emergency.
Right before she hangs up I hear cry of help in the background.
To be absolutely certain, I have the operator next to me listen
to the recording and confirm that there was a cry for help in
the background. Unfortunately, this was a call
that came from a cell phone, so automatic location information
is not a given and despite an attempt to call back and get
wireless phase two information, it is unsuccessful.
So I call the phone companies corporate security team which is
responsible for assisting us in such cases.
It's unfortunate that it takes something like half an hour to
get through the necessary authentication steps that they
are able to give us an address for the subscriber and the last
available GPS location. In this case, the two locations
were close together. The GPS coordinates came back
near a Creek behind the school, the addresser house about 1/2
mile away. A typical response for a 911
hang up is one officer who will casually drive through the area
with the windows down. If anyone needs help, they can
approach them more. The officer will hear any signs
of an emergency. This one got through a road
patrol unit, the student resource officer for the school,
the GPS coordinates came back near and the watch commander.
They were out in the area for about an hour looking.
Tried knocking on the subscribers address door and
went out on foot down to the Creek but found nothing.
Maybe it was never really anything.
Maybe the person who answered the phone was telling the truth,
I'll never know. I'm sorry, that sounds awful to
live wonder about. I was a dispatcher for about
four years in a rural county. The worst call I got was a
hunting accident. A guy took his six year old son
out hunting with him and gave the kid a loaded rifle to carry
with him. The kid, while trying to get
through tamarack bushes, grabbed the weapon by the barrel and
dragged it behind him. The weapon got caught on a
branch and discharged into the kids head.
The father called 911, got me and didn't know where he was at
as he wasn't familiar with the area and it wasn't his land.
All he could tell was that they had passed a lake or pond on a
dirt Rd. There are several dirt roads
with ponds and I was able to narrow it down to six roads with
the location data from the cell towers.
This was the early 2000s and triangulation in rural areas
sucked. Not sure how much better it is
now and his information. I dispatched every deputy I had
on duty, all two of them, the one city cop I had on duty, and
both our ambulances and fire trucks to the areas State
Patrol, also a city tested with the search.
It took us over 20 minutes to find them and the whole time the
father wept uncontrollably, screaming please don't be dead
over and over again through the instructions I gave him from the
flip chart to check his vitals, try to stop the bleeding, et
cetera. My instructions only lasted
about 5 minutes and I had given him all the info I was trained
to give. The remaining 15 felt like an
eternity and from what the father told me and what I was
told by the deputies after, he was pretty much dead immediately
after the accident, the EMT still went through with their
routines and loaded the kid in the ambulance because none of
them felt comfortable doing otherwise.
I'm the situation. This was my first shift back
after the birth of my son so I think that's why it sticks with
me. Two off the top of my head.
Car crash where the caller says hey this guy is bleeding from
his head, you guys need to hurry up.
Can you put pressure on it to stop the bleeding now?
I don't want to get involved. The guy died trying to talk to
an 18 year old son calling because his dad was just shot in
the head randomly by their drunk roommate.
Mum comes downstairs to see what the commotion is.
Total chaos. First guy in your story is a
Dong. It didn't happen to me but a Co
worker. I used to work for a company
like life alert. The person who rang in was
quadriplegic and there was a house fire.
The fire truck didn't make it in time.
They said the screams messed him up so much that he couldn't take
another call and move to iti still get chills thinking about
it. That is just horrifying.
Suicides are the worst and way more common than people might
think. A few days before Christmas
2017, we got a call from a father who woke up and found his
15 year old daughter hanging in the basement.
To make matters worse, officers revived her, but the loss of
oxygen left her brain dead. Her parents ultimately had to
decide to take her off life support.
Like losing your child twice. A good friend of mine did
something similar. Hung himself from a tree, told
his childhood friend where to find him right before and ended
up brain dead. Whenever I feel it all suicidal
I just think about how selfish it would be to put my family
through all that. I was a caller in this case but
when I was 12 I woke up to my dad, single parent, making
strange sounds. I walked into his room to find
him sat at his computer, eyes open, blood trickling down his
chin, non responsive. One of the most horrifying
experiences of my life. Immediately called 999 and
British operator was a champ and did the great job of keeping me
calm until ambulance arrived. Paramedics managed to wake him
and took him to hospital. Turns out he'd had a seizure.
The blood was from where he bit his tongue.
He continued to have seizures for a few years after that.
Caused a lot of permanent mental issues such as memory loss.
Turns out quitting alcohol cold Turkey after being a moderately
heavy alcoholic for years will Frick you up.
Alcohol withdrawal is a bee for anyone wondering.
Alcohol is one of few things an addict should never under any
circumstance quit cold Turkey. Always seek medical assistance
to do so. Almost 8 years I have heard a
lot. Kid hiding under the bed while
daddy punches mommy. I saved a man from suicide and
possibly from killing others in the process.
Lots of others. Had a van hit a guy on a
motorcycle. He went through the windshield
and out the back window. Thanks for doing your work.
Not a 911 operator, but when I worked for the District Attorney
we had a case of domestic violence where the perpetrator
was holding a baby only a few weeks old and threatening to
twist his freaking head off if his wife didn't come back home.
The mother screams as she begged and pleaded for him not to hurt.
The baby stayed with me for a long time.
Eventually the police arrived, baby was returned to mother and
the perpetrator went to prison. Even though I knew the outcome
after the fact, we were evaluating the tape for
evidence, listening to the. The tape was difficult.
A happy ending. Finally.
Not the dispatcher, but the caller.
My younger sisters bedroom door was locked and she hadn't
responded to my mom yelling from downstairs to do chores.
Maybe an hour later my dad got some tools to unlock the door
from my room. I heard as he finally got it
open and went in. I heard a crash and thought he'd
fallen and he immediately yelled for my mom.
My brother came out of his room to see what was going on and my
mom came in a towel, having just gotten out of the shower in her
room. My parents started screaming her
name over and over. My mom screamed to call 911.
I emerged from my room, really it was like 10 seconds since the
beginning, walked by the doorway without looking in and said I'll
do it. I walked downstairs and out the
front door because their screams filled the house.
I called 911 and when a woman answered I said I need an
ambulance. I could still hear my parents
hysterical screaming. She asked the reason for needing
an ambulance and I said my sister was unconscious in her
bedroom. She asked if I knew why how and
I didn't. I hadn't even looked in the
bedroom when I walked by. I learned later my dad had tried
to revive her with CPR. The operator asked for a cross
street and I hesitated. I wasn't sure what cross street
meant, though my guess would have been correct.
My brother came outside and I handed the phone to him, hoping
he could answer more clearly. I felt guilty for not having all
the answers, not using the landline, not looking in the
bedroom to even see what was wrong with her to better
describe to the operator. I thought maybe if I hadn't
hesitated about the cross street, help could have arrived
earlier and my sister would have lived.
Now I know that isn't true, but it bothered me a long time.
A movie called Life in a Day came out out in 2011.
It is about people all around the world living their life on a
specific day. By coincidence, it is the exact
day my sister died. It was comforting in a way to
see what other people were doing that day.
They were having a good day and the world didn't stop.
This is awful. You can't give yourself grief
from not knowing how to handle a horrible situation like this
though. My sister is a 911 dispatcher.
She went on leave after this. A man called in saying he had
shot his daughter and her six kids age infant to 11.
He said that when police arrived he would kill himself.
Dispatch arrived and he killed himself in front of them.
Police found the daughter Outback.
They think she was leading him away from the house and kids.
Kids were throughout the house. They had tried to hide.
The 11 year old was with the baby.
No one knows why and it was a small town.
It hit everyone in the community pretty hard.
Something similar happened with the family.
My parents knew the dad had disappeared for something like 2
months before he was found living at a campground.
Well he went home and a few months later there is a call to
911 from the dad saying he was reporting a murder suicide at
his address, hung up and killed himself.
My mom has been a police dispatcher 30 years and I worked
as one for the same large metropolitan agency.
About 12 years ago when I was 18 for three years, I took a call
from a person who witnessed A horrifying MVA.
The driver was trapped in the car and it was on fire.
She was a larger woman and managed to unbuckle herself, but
the door was jumped shut. I listened to her screaming as
she burned alive while the witness wailed and tried to pull
her from the window. She did not survive.
I have let a suicidal man call and say I just don't want my
kids to find me. Loud gunshot, line goes silent.
I sat on the line 30 minutes until the unit got on scene.
The crap still haunts me. I quit because of how poorly the
agency was run, not how taxing the job is, though it definitely
gave me a thick skin. Having a 5 second 911 call like
that is just horrifying. I always read through the
responses to see if I'll ever meet the person who took my
call. Thank you all for what you do
every day. I couldn't imagine being a 911
operator. Disclaimer not me but my
ex-wife. She was the one who took the
call about a 13 year old having hanged himself from a third
story balcony. The boy's mom called it and when
she came home from work and saw her kiddo dead hanging from the
lanai. Some things you don't forget.
This is one of them. She, my ex took a week off of
work and cried a lot. Our kids are 13 and 15.
Hope your ex is OK. I was on the third side of a
call as a firefighter responding to a report of a house fire in a
very rural area. It was about a 30 minute run for
us and we would be meeting up with another station coming from
the opposite direction at about the same time.
About 15 minutes into the drive dispatch came over the radio
saying that the call came from inside the house.
Upon arrival we roll up to multiple police cars and two
ambulances on scene, meaning someone knows something we
don't. The house is sealed up with
heavy black smoke puffing from every tiny opening.
This is a telltale sign that the complementalized gases are ready
to explode backdraft once oxygen is added to the Super heated
environment. It was mid January -20°C outside
and the roof was steeply pitched and made of steel that happened
to be covered in ice. Basically, we weren't
ventilating from above as we would prefer.
We took a front window and made entry through a side door, found
two bodies and got them out before the place erupted.
We dumped water into it for hours, but without proper
ventilation, we simply couldn't dissipate the heat fast enough
to prevent it from reigniting. We found out the next morning
that a dude had shot up his family and set the place on
fire. We had to go back later that day
and find the third body, who look more like the remains of
Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle after the stormtrooper attack.
She was in her 90s and the one who had called 911.
Not a dispatcher but I was a police officer in a rural area.
Work night shift mainly. One night I responded to a call
off ahead on motor vehicle accident.
Occupants trapped in their vehicle.
No further details. It was winter and the milepost
was a good 10-15 miles away and even running code 3, the
adrenaline dump doesn't get you there fast enough.
It wasn't snowing down in the valley but when I emerged up on
the flats I hit a wall of snow and ice covered roads at a 110
mile per hour. I was lucky in was able to slow
down before I became the next crash.
I was the first to arrive on scene 1 vehicle SUV on its side
and the other a truck was part way in the ditch but upright.
I ran straight to the SUV where I noticed a woman screaming with
a baby. They had managed to crawl out of
the vehicle with the help of other drivers who had stopped.
I noticed the driver was pinned under the dash and front Fender.
I'm partially hanging out of the window unresponsive.
Bystanders told me that there was a 12 year old girl trapped
inside the vehicle. The mother was screaming to the
girl inside. Mommy as hair baby.
I climbed on top of the rolled vehicle and opened a back door
so I could get access to the girl.
I climbed inside where she was laying head to head with the
driver. If you can imagine the chaos of
the interior of a wrecked vehicle.
I remember climbing over her, the stench of death in the to go
box of whatever they just ate scattered across the inside.
I told her to take my hand, everything would be OK.
I'll never forget yet, reaching down as her small bloody hand
extended up to take mine. All I could do was keep her
focused on me. The driver, her father, dead
just inches from us. I checked his pulse but there
was nothing. I comforted the girl while my
partner pried open the rear hatch so we could get her out.
Once she was out of the vehicle, I went back to the driver from
the outside drivers area. He was clearly gone, too pinned
to attempt CPR. His internal injuries had to be
severe. The woman, his wife, was
screaming and crying. She went over and bent down
yelling at him. You can't be gone, you can't be
gone, this isn't happening. I tried to comfort her and I put
my arm on her and walked her in the opposite direction.
I told her we were doing everything we could.
She was mad, upset, confused. She yelled at me.
You aren't doing anything, you aren't helping him.
She was in shock and didn't want to believe her husband was gone.
I often remember that night and her voice.
I'm not ashamed to admit I have cried many times over that call.
I am thankful the children and the wife made it out alive as
well as the other driver who caused the accident.
I always wonder how that family has moved on and how the girl is
doing. For some reason this one just
sticks with me. Not a 911 operator.
I really wished I was so I could have helped the poor lady.
I used to work for a Canadian call center that took American
cellular calls. We were 611 or something on
their phone. Some poor lady hit my line.
I could hear her scream and cry for help.
I heard a man trying to break in the door to get to her and wood
splintering with each hit. All I could do was say, Mom, you
dialed 611, please, please dial 911.
It will work even if your service is cut off.
Do it now. 911. Then I hung up so she wouldn't
waste more time with me. That call really made me
appreciate 911 service workers. Hats off to you folks who can
handle that. Holy, we still don't know if she
called 911 in time. While working as an EMT I was
held at gunpoint and spent two hours trying to convince the guy
he still had a reason to live. He only took me in the paramedic
hostage so the police couldn't storm the place.
He just wanted someone there when he was going to kill
himself. When it was coming to an end it
seemed like he had calmed down and we were all going to walk
out of his house just fine. Then he just said I'm sorry and
he was gone. Just like that.
A man call and simply say there's a body in the backyard,
gunshot wound and hang up. Turns out shortly after the call
he actually made it his body. It still wits me out being the
last person to ever talk to that man.
I know nothing else about him and never will.
I've had quite a few. One that sticks with my was a
clinic calling for a month's old child having some breathing
trouble. I asked to speak to dad and her.
The baby crying in the background sent everyone out and
thought all was well. I hung up the phone and
continued on with my shift. The baby died hours later.
The parents weren't really able to care for the child to begin
with and they didn't believe in medical care.
That is up until their baby died.
It angers me that people who don't believe in medical care
can have children. Babies are so delicate they need
professionals involved. My dad was working at the
emergency call center but was not the one taking calls.
Looked at the monitor and saw his father's address with a
possible DOA. Not a great way to learn your
father has died. I work in law enforcement and
part of a further education in my line of work.
I got to visit the comms central.
During my visit I got to listening to what one of the
operators were doing for a good hour. 1st 30 minutes were minor
stuff like lost animals and a few people leaving information
about possible crimes. Then a so-called priority.
One call came in. All I could hear from the
caller's end was a woman screaming at the top of her
lungs that she's going to die and loud crashing noises in the
background. The operator tried to calm her
down but she was in such a state of distress that she wasn't
listening to him. This went on for 5 minutes and
then the banging stopped and she calmed down.
A minute passes then you can hear a chainsaw Rev up and a
giant cast before she screams out and then lets out a loud
gurgling noise. The call cut after that so we
had just the cops radio communication to go by but they
had arrived. The guy surrendered to them
instantly and then found the woman with her throat cut so
deeply from from the chainsaw her neck was exposed.
They had no chance of saving her.
Holy freaking crap. A woman called in to say her
house was on fire. She was trapped in the corner of
her living room and couldn't get out.
The stairway was filled with fire and smoke and there was
also fire coming in through her windows from the floor below.
She was screaming for help. She died on the phone.
I think four people died in the apartment building total.
I've heard plenty of chilling calls from the screams of people
finding their loved ones dead to injuries more gory than anything
out of the worst horror movies. One that I've personally taken
that stays with me is a lady who called and her first words were
my husband has a gun to his head.
Luckily she was able to give me her address before he walked
into the room and she told him she was on the phone with his
mom. I quickly had to shift to asking
questions in a yes or no fashion to get the officers the
information they needed. While trying to keep her looking
inconspicuous, he got suspicious that she was on the phone with
911 and said that he would pull the trigger if it was the
police. To her credit, she did a
fantastic job of staying relatively calm and quickly
giving me a yes or no in between keeping conversation with him to
keep him distracted. I sat and listened to them argue
about I'll give you the gun only if you give me the phone for a
while and then I could hear a struggle for the phone and the
line went dead. I sat there for a minute with an
overwhelming feeling of having no idea what happened next door
of him. Seeing that call could have
caused the death of either one or both of them.
You did a great job, very clever and adaptable.
I'll add another one. I was fairly new and got stuck
working the overnight after a full shift already around six,
AMI got a frantic call from a woman.
She stated she woke up to find her boyfriend passed out on the
couch. Went through the typical
questions with her. Yes he's a drug user.
No he is not breathing. I was about to give her medical
instructions when I heard her scream No baby, get out of the
room get out. I asked who it was and she told
me it was their six year old daughter.
Mum was in a state of shock before that but the remainder of
the call I spent listening to her whale while she waited for
someone to help. I've had almost the exact same
situation, except in this case a small child died of illness and
not an overdose. I'll never forget.
Or her mother screams either. OMG that poor mom, that poor
baby, poor you. My grandmother was a 911
operator in a small town in California back in the early
1980s. She was the only one on duty and
received a call from her good friend's husband.
He told my grandmother that he and his wife had fought and that
he had a gun to his head. She did her best to stall him
and talk him down, but he unfortunately pulled the trigger
before the police could get to him.
She then heard her friend screaming as she found his body.
911 operators overdid. What was the most vague call
you've ever received? No longer a dispatcher but was
for 15 years. I answered a 911 call from a
cell phone that only indicated A sector direction the call was
coming from in the tower that the call was bouncing off of.
Basically no valid location information.
Initially it sounded like a butt dial situation but I stayed on
the line a little longer trying to refresh the call for better
location information. As I was listening it sounds
like a loud deviant. Some muzzled noises in the
background so I stayed on longer than I would have.
I was finally able to narrow the location down to about 3
football fields and searched in house records for the phone
number. At this point there was still no
communication except in the background.
Then I heard what was one single clear call for help.
I couldn't tell if it was the TV or a person though.
I already entered A vague call to check the area and kept
updating officers with further info.
Eventually we narrowed it down to one Rd. that had one a house
surrounded by businesses. So officers went to the house,
found that there was a teenage boy and a little brother or
sister that were held tied up by parents.
I tried to search for the news report but can't recall enough
details. Thankfully I didn't give up one
the call too soon and the children were rescued.
Thank you. Just because a person calls
doesn't always mean they can talk.
You are a hero. It's hard to say, we get vague
calls all the time and people hardly answer when you call
back. Mostly send the police and
that's it. Luckily sometimes people will
say they shot him or something along those lines then hang up.
My favorite type of collar. You don't need the address, just
fricking send the cops already. But I work in bank security but
receive alert line calls from bank staff, which is essentially
the same as 911 operators would receive.
I had a call at midnight and it was this guy who started off by
saying is this a secure line? I think they're listening.
A yes Sir, this line is secure. OK.
I just can't be too careful. Listen, I think they're on to
me. Weird things are happening at
work. I'll get weird pop ups on my
computer, on all of the computers.
I don't know what to do I OK, So just take a breath and talk me
through what's going on. Strange things.
I don't know. I'm not sure.
Too many coincidences, they don't make sense.
I think my bosses are planning something, but I won't contact
the police. Why won't you contact the
police? I think they're involved and
they won't listen to me. Anyway.
Something's happening, but I don't know what it is yet.
Then I heard in the background. What the heck are you doing down
here? Come back to bed.
Give me the phone. He argued for a second and gave
over the phone. Hi, sorry about this.
I'm Frank's wife. I don't know what he's been
telling you, but he's just very stressed at the moment.
Don't worry about anything he's said.
He told me he was going to get water and I found him downstairs
calling you guys. I'll make sure he's OK.
Thanks. Bye.
I'm OK. Take care of him.
Bye. Was very surreal.
Sounds like Frank was having a delusion.
Some rambling followed by clear. There's a bomb on the train
followed by a click. Middle of the night when it's
supposed to be quiet and I was only working there for about a
month at that point as a railway police dispatcher.
Definitely got me from feeling groggy to fully panicked in half
a second. Pulled out the emergency
procedure guideline for bombs. Got started on all steps to
start shutting down the entire division as a precaution and
started pulling the call details.
Told my one colleague about the call so he could take over the
the other inbound calls. Started to pick up the phone to
call up other departments and the inbound phone rings again.
My colleague who was much older and experienced told me, hold
up, let me take this call. A few seconds pass and he
screams out, is this Jeremy? He waits a few seconds and slams
the phone down a Oh yeah, that's Jeremy.
He's actually a frequent caller who's institutionalized.
Sometimes he gets away and runs off to the nurse's station and
calls us. Happens every now and then.
Cross reference the phone number and log the call under Jeremy.
Not 911 but search and rescue radio in Alaska late 1 evening
in a winter Blizzard. I got the cold Coast Guard we
are going over. That's it.
I never heard from the ship again.
I did however find some other helpful souls and background
info. After being in the water almost
six hours in 34 F degree water, we pick them up.
All four lived. One of my most intense nights
ever. Former voluntary empty here.
We kept getting toned out one afternoon for stomach pain.
Took forever to get a volunteer crew together to respond to this
call. Turned out to be a middle
schooler with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
The kid that called 911 didn't want to tell the dispatcher that
he accidentally shot his friend with his dad's unsecured gun.
My mother used to be a 999 UK 911 operator.
She says the Vegas was heavy breathers as you couldn't tell
whether it was someone injured who couldn't speak or just a
pervert. I volunteered for the Samaritans
suicide helpline and the number of pervs who called to get their
jiggle and was truly astounding. Cheaper than the premium
hotlines I guess. 911 operator at a 40 officer department took
a 911 call. Female caller get police over
click. I attempted call back, no
answer, straight to voicemail. Looked up history with the phone
number in our report system and neighboring city had contact
with someone using that number just two months prior.
Neighboring city does a check at the home and finds a vehicle
that had gotten away from a police pursuit from our city
earlier in the night. We go to the location and
recover the vehicle while the local the department takes the
person identified as the driver into custody on their local
charges. Weird that it all stemmed from a
less than 3 second phone call. That's why they always at least
try to teach us in Poland that whenever you are calling
emergencies the first thing you say is the address.
No hello, no get XXX. Just say the address first just
in case something happens. 911 dispatcher in Virginia here.
As far as vague goes, probably when a passerby called about a
man sitting on a curb looking lonely.
No description of the mail and no legit location.
Caller I'm sitting at an intersection here in town and I
saw this guy. Me OK, Sir, Did the man appear
to be in distress or suspicious in any way?
Caller No, I don't think so, but he seemed really lonely.
Me. Do you want me to send a unit to
check his welfare? Caller Yes, please.
I mean, it may be nothing or he may be thinking about running
into traffic, and I think someone should talk to him.
Me Do you remember where you saw him?
Caller No one occurred near my family member's house.
Me Hum. OK.
What's that? Address?
Caller gives address. Me Any idea where in relation to
the house? Caller No.
All the streets here look the same.
I'm from out of town. Me.
Do you have a description of the mail?
Is he WBA what he is wearing? The caller?
No I didn't look at him really I just drove by and looked lonely.
Me bash his head against console.
All units be on the lookout for a male sitting.
He may look lonely. My parents were once a vague
call on my phone. I was driving them home from a
wedding because they were way too inebriated to drive.
At one point my BF texted me so I handed my dad my phone to text
him back. Somehow he managed to hit the
emergency services button then yes.
So they pick up and I hear dad go.
Other than he hangs up so he gives the phone to my mom and
emergency services called back. I hear her say very loudly hello
no I'm fine. And I being what?
Coerced? No, at this point I've pulled
over and wrestled the phone from her and then explained the
situation. I felt so bad for the operator.
Not to sound insensitive in this very serious thread, but I can
only imagine the operator hearing a clearly drunk caller
followed by a faint mom MO. Mom, give me my forgive my phone
back. Mom got one where a lady
reported that her neighbors were running an illegal Taco stand.
I have no idea what made it illegal.
Neither did she. The officers went and cleared
immediately. It was a party.
They were giving away free tacos.
Had a woman on the line who was locked in a bedroom after
getting into a physical fight with her boyfriend but had no
idea where she was and she was incredibly difficult to
understand. I asked her if she was in a home
or apartment. She said apt.
I told her to look out the window and tell me what she saw.
She said a red car and a blue car.
Not much help there so I asked her how many stories the
apartment complex had and she said three.
This was obviously not a lot to go on, so I finally asked what
the last thing she remembers remember seeing before they
pulled into the apartment complex and she said a target.
I knew there was a target just outside our jurisdiction and a
couple of three story apartments near there, but one in
particular that we got called out to regularly so I dispatched
police. Meanwhile, the boyfriend was
beating down the door, literally and was about to get in, so I
knew it was urgent that we find her immediately.
I hoped with all my heart that I sent police to the right place.
When my officers pulled on scene, they reported seeing a
red and a blue castle, so I knew we were close, but we still
didn't know which apartment. The boyfriend was about to burst
in the room, so she hid under the bed and when he finally
broke down the door I told her to run toward the front door and
to scream as loud as she could. Which we're not really supposed
to do because if they get hurt after you give them an order, it
can leave the PD libel. But she was frozen and needed
help and we needed to find her, or at least maybe someone would
hear her scream and call us with an address.
He came into the room, she slid out from under the bed and ran
to the front door. Screaming burst outside and my
officers were right there. Turned out the reason she was so
difficult to understand was because the bastard had knocked
out her teeth. I'm so glad you managed to help
her. My step dad's fire station once
got a call asking whether you should throw salt or sugar on a
fire to put it out. I'm not sure if the call was
transferred or they'd called the station directly.
He asked why and they responded that her and her husband
disagreed on it. He asked if they had a fire and
they said well yes, but they were just wondering which to
use. He asked where and they said oh
we're just behind the station to the east.
He looked over and could see flames rolling out of their
kitchen window. No, I don't need you to put it
out, I just want to know which of these to use because driving
that thing over here is really expensive.
Guy called 911 and said there was a bomber tower.
Local Walmart, very small town. So we advised our offices and
went through the standard procedure of advising Walmart
and having them clear out, close the store.
In the meantime we called the phone company and did some
tracking on the phone. Guy was fired from Walmart that
day and was picked up for making a terroristic threat.
Fricked his life up doing that. Calling in is so much easier.
We get a slimmed down transcript of the call takers conversation
on our computers when the call gets dispatched.
A ton of them are just caller requests, ambulance to X
location, no further information.
Which is fine because at least then they usually send a cop car
along with us in case something sketchy is going on.
Incorrect information is often way worse than no information
because if it incorrectly comes over as something behind they
send us alone and we can end up alone on on a scene that we
should have police assistance on.
Last week I had a fall from standing height leg injury, turn
out to be a shooting with a huge crowd of sketchy people on scene
and not long before that we had an abdominal pain turn out to be
a guy who got stabbed in the abdomen.
The abdominal pain dude wasn't lying, just not specific enough
to save his life if the stabber was still there.
Not me but my friends dad in a 999 emergency operator and he
picked up a call. The caller just said help and
hung up. By the time he sent the police
the house fire had nearly burned the whole thing down.
Oh no, in the Army and work as a dispatcher on post.
What is your emergency? Silence but sounds of breathing
on the phone. Hello Mail.
I need you to send special forces to my house because my
mom took something and ice acting herself.
So what is your address and number?
We actually have a computer that tells us, but we double check in
case of faulty system mail. I can't give you that
information. Special forces is coming for us,
Sir. Tell me about your mother.
In what way is she not acting herself?
Yourself male. You already know.
You can see it on your computers can't you?
Where is my mom? Mind you the male sounds to be
in adulthood and very slow slurred speech.
So you just said she wasn't acting herself so how do you
even know that? But ask me where she is male.
Boo. Male special forces already
know. Hangs up.
I tried to call back but no response.
The caller wasn't even on post. Not an operator but an EMT.
Major respect for our operators as they have to get stories
fourth or fifth hand and pieced together a narrative for us on
the ground. I got a call for a sick person.
No other details except maybe an age.
Arrived to find this guy very very dead in his backyard.
Judging by the state of his body, probably died 4 six hours
earlier. When I was actually a 911
operator, we had a mentally ill guy call in about once or twice
a month because he thought that his neighbors were putting
poison gas through his vents. However, when he would call he
would say they're doing it again and then hang up.
The first time I received the call I had no clue what was
happening, but since it was a fairly common occurrence the
officers knew what was up. A guy that lives in a very rural
part of the county called once and said the KKK was going to
kill him and then hung up. It's very sad because when the
sheriff's depth got out there, there was the cross burning on
his lawn. As a former operator, I can say
the more details you give, the better the agency can help you
in a general sense. However, I do know that people
are not always in a spot to give those details.
I've made a vague phone call before.
Once I was going into shock from a bee sting.
I didn't know I was allergic until that moment.
I attempted to call 911 and all I could manage was it up.
Hello. The operator asked me several
pertinent questions but I couldn't remember my name or
where I was. So after a few seconds of the
operator asking if I was OK, I just hung up because I didn't
know what to say. They called back and I went
through the same process. I was scared because I knew I
was in danger, but my brain didn't know how to communicate
that. Luckily, the person whose house
I was at gave me some Benadryl and made the call for me.
She saved my life. Not 911 operator but firefighter
got sent out to a major car accident.
However, the info the caller gave was that it was on the
highway anywhere between our town and a town 15 kilometers
away. We had three brigades respond
and each searched 1/3 of the highway with no accidents to be
seen. Dispatch called the original
caller back but they said they couldn't provide more info as
they're out of the area now. Former Medicare call from a
nursing home that said patient in wheelchair located in the
lobby with breathing difficulties shortly before
getting on scene. Turns into a full arrest and
upon my patient contact, patient had been dead for at least a
couple hours. Went from innocuous to dead guy
in the lobby of the nursing home real quick.
I'm a 911 operator but a Co worker took the call.
Went something like this. 911 where is your emergency comma?
Caller provides address and then bang.
The guy shot himself in the head behind the barn and wanted first
responders to find him before his family did.
She said she stayed on the line and listened to him gurgle and
struggle to breathe for a few minutes until EMS arrived.
Jesus Christ that's awful to have the mental fortitude to
stay on the line with him while he's bleeding out his
incredible. I'm sure she is pretty scarred
from that experience. Some girl calls saying her car
was stolen. I'm asking questions.
I ask which direction she last saw it headed.
She says we are passing Northern Blvd. now.
WTF. I ask if she's in the car and
she says yes. Stolen car call is now a
kidnapping call. I'm asking her more questions.
Police are scrambling. I then hearsay.
Slow down baby, you're scaring me.
Kidnapping call has now DF escalated to an angry
girlfriend. Call police, still find them and
make sure everything is okay. I just laugh at the idea of him
sitting there quietly while she describes to the police which
direction they are headed. Only but a good buddy is a
police officer and guard radio to look for a shirtless Hispanic
man in a blue pickup truck. Not that vague, but after
chasing him for over an hour and involving 30 police cars over
three different jurisdictions, it was a guy with no drivers
license and not the guy they were looking for.
Not sure if this counts but my friend's dad used to be a cop
and he got this radioed into him from a colleague.
Injured woman in my town name need backup, nothing else.
He tried responding back and got nothing.
He eventually got into contact with him a few days later and I
get a woman had faked an injury and ended up attacking the
officer. I was a caller here but I was
sickened on a multitude of drugs my doc had prescribed me.
A woman came to my and my partner's house saying someone
in the alley needed help and she was too scared to step in.
I called 911 as my partner headed up to see what he could
do. I followed shortly after.
The woman who knocked quickly vanished.
I asked for police, but was absolutely no help to the 911
operator. Me, I need the police.
Someone's hurt. 911 Who's hurt? Me?
I don't know. Oh, I hear yelling. 911 Who's
yelling? Me.
I don't know. 911 What are they saying?
Me, I don't know. 911 Is it a man or a woman?
Me, Gosh, I don't know. It just kept going with me,
always answering, I don't know, over and over.
The police had no idea what they were walking into when they
arrived, but it was a kid and that victim who'd escaped by
jumping out of his own SUV that they'd taken him in and
hightailing in into the alley to hide get help.
He came back to our house six weeks later with a box of
chocolates to thank us for helping him.
I don't know is still a valid answer for us.
And I've taken I don't know any day over a why are you asking me
all these questions? Or worse, the caller hanging up.
Thanks for staying on the line and trying your best.
Not me, but heard of a case where a domestic violence victim
called emergency and it went somewhat like this. 911, what's
your emergency? Hi, I'd like to order pizza.
You realize you've called emergency?
Yes. Can I get a super supreme?
911? Operator realizes what's going
on. Are you under duress and unable
to speak? But you need police help.
Yes, that's right. My address is X.
How long until the pizza arrives?
10 minutes. The pizza didn't show but cops
did and the abusive boyfriend was separated from his knife.
I think that was on ATV ad about domestic violence awareness.
I remember hearing the same one. That crap got to me.
Not an operator, but many dispatch systems force you to
file the call under a category. I can't tell you how many times
I've been sent to the sick person.
Probably the most confusing calls to deal with were the ones
from cars auto dialling when they detected a collision.
They only came through on certain call terminals set up to
also receive the GPS data from the vehicle, but would otherwise
come through like any other 999 call.
You'd essentially be placed in a conversation with a probably
half concussed person very confused as to why their car
dashboard was now talking to them.
Many people didn't even know their car had the feature built
in. I was the vague call once, but
apparently not that vague since they figured it out in a damned
hurry. I was 3.
I had just learned about 911. I vaguely remember wanting to
test it to make sure it worked. I called, breathed for a few
seconds, giggled, and hung up. Feeling that perhaps, I mean, I
might have done something wrong. I ran and hid behind the couch.
In hindsight, this may have been a particularly boneheaded move,
even for a three-year old. Because one, the couch was in
the middle of an open floor plan, and two, both my parents
were sitting on the couch at the time.
It was the equivalent of a cartoon fat person trying to
hide behind a tree if they were trying to hide from someone
right on the other side of the tree.
And also, you know, I kind of lived there.
They'd find me eventually. At this point, the phone rings
as my mom tells the story. The dispatcher was quite
straightforward. Dispatcher, Hello, this is 911
returning your call. What is your emergency?
Mom? Blank confusion.
Dispatcher, do you by any chance have any small children in your
residence? Mom slowly turns around like a
possessed person to make direct eye contact with me.
Yes, yes we do. I will speak.
Speak with him. It was not a pleasant
conversation. Not a 911 operator, but I recite
the call from a hidden number. The man on the other side said
it was rape and hung up on me. Yet I wouldn't be able to sleep
that night. Me, a 911 dispatcher.
What's your location? Caller says name of town.
Me. OK, but where are you?
C My room. M All right, but where is that?
C My house not 911 but funny AF. From one of my friends that is a
Ranger they received a call from a guy who got lost in the
mountains. They asked him can you tell us
where you are? He said next to a tree.
He was not kidding. Weird parties asking a lost
person where they are them qualify as too vague to be
useful to anyone. People will start talking while
the phone is still ringing and I'll answer in the middle of a
story. When you ask people what address
they're at, you can get things like the name of the city, the
corner store, sue, a city of any other random generic name they
decide for that part of the city, and my favorite, my home
and at my friend so and so's house.
Like that helps at all. Other fun ones include calling
'cause they were assaulted by a roommate, lover, relative and
all they'll do is yell to hurry up without ever telling you
where the Frick they are or their apartment number if you do
manage to figure it out and they don't know the last name of this
person, just some vague crap like Henry.
They also can't give you any details of what color or type of
clothing this person has on and if you ask if they are white,
black, Hispanic, they'll say yeah it's not a yes or no
question. Then you have the I'm on the
Interstate and they can't tell you which direction they're
going and give you locations that are physically impossible
like east bound on I-95. And it's somewhere between these
two mile markers that are 20 miles apart for a reckless
driver. They saw 1020 freaking minutes
ago. It's red.
Don't know if it's a truck Savo sedan.
Didn't look at the license plate, but it's super important
we stop them. Oh and they pointed a gun at the
caller. I was once written up for a call
about prostitution, predominantly black neighborhood
at a corner store. He's at H that's it.
Wouldn't give me any physical discrete at all and got pee when
I asked how he knew. I asked what she was doing
exactly to make him think that. He hangs up and calls the
chief's office before the call is even cleared.
Yep. I had to send a cop out to
essentially Harris. All the black women outside the
store minding their own business.
I'm called to the office and written up for doing my job.
Most people assume you know every building ever erected or
demolished. No, I don't know where the old
Kmart is. Just tell me you're at the
freaking. Best Buy.
It's been Best Buy for over 9 freaking years.
Today's winner was a 911 call and she's very mellow and half
paying attention to the phone even though she called me.
Caller I. You're looking for Melvin.
Generic, but name 911. Is this someone there with you?
What address are you at? Caller?
No. You're looking for Melvin.
He got warrants and I know where he at. 911, Fine.
What's Melvin's middle name or birthday?
Cole now angry. I don't know.
You're the one after him, not me. 911 is Melvin wanted for
something he did in our city. Caller No.
He did it 2 cities over 911. Okay, is Melvin here in our city
cooler? No, he's somewhere in about 7
states away. What the Frick?
I-95, like most odd numbered highways, runs NS not east West.
I had a person with a heavy Hispanic accent call from a 911
phone saying they were lost in the forest and very cold.
They said they had been using the city lights to find their
way but the snow was blocking it out and they were scared and
then they disconnected. Not a dispatcher but an EMT
responding to a call that goes over as anything really vague
can suck. Best example for me so far.
We get dispatched for the sick person.
Guy just doesn't feel good. Not enough details to give us
more to save the details. He was apparently having an
aortic dissection. Usually when somebody has one of
these they aren't found alive. He actually lived through it,
although all said had something like a 15% chance of survival
from A to discharge from rehab. Guy has an Angel or the devil
himself watching his back there. Suspicious person calls.
As in they can't say why he's suspicious, just something about
him. Is he looking into houses?
No Is he checking door handles on cars?
No. Then what's suspicious about
him? You just have a bad feeling.
I wasn't a 911 operator but I was a clerk in a military
emergency room and this probably fits the spirit of the question.
I got a call around 23 AM where person just shouted send an
ambulance now and hung up before I could say anything.
I had no contact with local emergency services.
I actually had no contact with the military emergency services
either. Basically I just shrugged and
told my nurses that something crazy this way comes.