Avon and Somerset Police publish 999 (911 in US) calls from foolish people
Avon and Somerset Police are running the recordings of telephone calls from foolish (and probably drunken or drugged) people who want to report trivial problems, such as losing eyeglasses, wanting to know when the Internet started, or having sore feet.
The thing that surprises me is the politeness of the emergency line operators.
Avon and Somerset Police publish 999 (911 in US) calls from foolish people (via Arbroath)
the latest
latest episodes
And they say British are not polite... those officers are very patient indeed!
My other half takes 911 calls for a living and I've sat with him at his job with a headset a few times for several hours at a time.
It is amazing the kind of calls that come in. Questions for directions, times of events, look up a business phone number, etc.
There are also regulars. For example, there is an old lady who calls everyday and tells them what she is going to do for the day. For example "I'm leaving my house now, I'm going to church, then I'll stop at the grocery store for a few items and I will return home." She is a sweet elderly lonely woman and they just put up with it, they thank her for the update and move on.
I worked as a communications paramedic (ambulance and air ambulance dispatcher) for several years, after some years in the field. Because our service was second-tier in nature (calls were forwarded to us from a central 911 operator, who shunted the calls to ambulance, police or fire as required) we had relatively few "nuisance" calls.
That being said, I do remember one call where an elderly lady was wondering what to do because her husband had a deer-tick (a small insect-like blood-sucking parasite) attached to his scrotum. She wanted to know if she should burn it off with a match!!!
As professionals, we were always keenly aware that our calls were being recorded!
This is a very big problem here in Hawaii, with tourists calling 911 for weather and traffic info.
My solution suggestion is to turn the 911 number into the equivalent of a 976 number, i.e. $10 per minute to use, and give the operator the ability to clear the charge for 'legit' calls.
At that point, you could then offload the non-emergency calls to a secondary service that actually gives the caller the info they want (weather, show times, etc)
It would probably be the most profitable service of its kind.
Is there no expectation of privacy when you call an emergency number? Surely most legitimate callers would be calling about things that would be confidential for one reason or another - medical history, danger of retribution, domestic violence, etc. If nothing else, there'll be names, home addresses, and phone numbers of people who are vulnerable for one reason or another.
Now, granted, these particular people are probably being dimwits (I haven't listened yet). But, I am surprised that there wouldn't be a blanket presumption of confidentiality the very moment you dial 999/911.
911 calls are public record. The abuse potential of keeping them secret far exceeds the abuse potential of making them public.
if they're public record, how come they don't sell CDs of the more desperate calls?
DavidPFarrell @4: Great idea. I think some places are trying that.
Who says that they don't. In Southern California, celebrity 911 calls are a staple of infotainment TV.
@3
''...her husband had a deer-tick (a small insect-like blood-sucking parasite) attached to his scrotum.''
This happens. What I did was rapidly puff on a cigarette and then blew on the end, thereby creating a pointed ember, with which I GINGERLY poked the tick. A few screams later it was dead and discarded.
I got better.
did the mouth parts break off and fester? I thought the best way was a special slotted little spoon that you lever the bastards up with and then extract whole.
@DavidPFarrell: I was under the impression --can't remember why now-- that you could already be fined for placing a frivolous 911 call. I remember worrying about that when I called to report a fire and thinking they might be mad at me that it wasn't a big enough fire. (It was plenty big. I just have an Emergency Inferiority Complex, it seems.)
We were always taught to grab them by the mouth parts with tweezers and pull 'em off. I've had a few ticks myself, but none in such a sensitive spot. Never had too much trouble removing them, though I remember one digging into my upper arm pretty far.
I keep a very fine set of tweezers in my first aid kit, and it's probably the most-used item there. They're actually sold for electronics assembly (got mine at Digi-Key) but I'm sure there are medical versions. They're needle-sharp at the tips and are perfect for splinters, ingrown hairs, and so forth.
@10
Were the screams yours or the tick's?
the other method is to use a toothpick and a human hair; you gently slide the toothpick under the abdomen and twist a few wraps of the hair just under the join between mouth parts and head proper, thereby securing it to the toothpick, then you ever so carefully put a drop of boiled water on the wound-site and hold the little bastard's head under until it agrees to tell you everything!!!
who's going to do the obligatory Lyme's Disease PSA?
Or put a fat drop of oil on its head, and it will come up spluttering in a minute or two. I had a lot of ticks as a child. They were worse than the leeches.
I guess it kind of hunched up when its ass was on fire and withdrew. I did it that way because a goddamn no-good sadistic T/Sgt said if it were simply pulled off the barbs would be embedded and get infected. Fifty years later I think he was a lying son of a bitch! It was either that, he said, or pour whiskey on my balls. I was young, but I wasn't that young.
Don't ever pour whiskey on your balls.
Ticks don't scream.
I'm pretty sure any story that begins "This one time, I had a tick on my scrotum..." is the definition of TMI.
A hot match head or cigarette end dabbed on the tick causes it to briefly retract it's mouth parts. If you're fast enough to pull it out before it recovers you can get it out without leaving the head buried inside. If you're not fast enough or pull it off without burning it then it will break off and leave the head behind to fester.
Smothering the little bloodsucker with oil and waiting for him to come up for air works nicely too, with no chance of leaving the head behind.
You can also buy an effective tick removal tool from here:
http://tinyurl.com/ticktool
..it's small, inexpensive and doesn't need the complications of oil or running the risk of burns if you miss.
My parent's dog picks up ticks and then we get them too. I just pull them off by pinching them as close to the head as I can with my finger nails or tweezers and then twisting when I yank. Sometimes you lose a bit of skin but we've never had an infection. I would recomend cleaning it really well after.
#19, sez,
'I'm pretty sure any story that begins "This one time, I had a tick on my scrotum..." is the definition of TMI.'
Balls.
There used to be a bank in my hometown that had a number you could call for time and weather, after a short commercial, of course. I'm sure banks could use a cheap way to build goodwill.
I worked for a vet for a number of years and we just used a hemostat and pulled the ticks straight back. Tweezers work too, but the flat surface of the hemos gives you a good grip without popping them (ew). Then look at the bugger and make sure you got it all. They can hold tight, but not that tight; I've never lost a head. :) We kept a pill bottle half full of alcohol to dump them in - helped us keep track of how bad the season was.
i think 911 operators should have the capability of patching 'informational' nuisance calls through to a reference librarian. with voip, one could pick an english-speaking librarian anywhere in the world that was open for business hours.
no drunks though, please! we have plenty of our own!
I think if I were the guy behind the desk, my first inclination would be to tell the lady that the Internet was started in the early nineteenth century.
#25 Seconded.
There seems to be a push for people to call 911 on this side of the pond even if the situation is remotely "emergency like" - i.e. some guy shitfaced stumbling around in your neighborhood.
Seems the folks in the police stations / hospitals really don't expect incoming calls anymore. I can understand stuff like "4' rock on the road" or "dipshit racing up and down the street at 120" as being a 911 call, but does a drunk guy on a relatively low traffic street really qualify?
Wow. The fact that you can buy a special implement for levering ticks off your balls has brightened my day. Someone, somewhere, is the proud holder of the ball-tick removing spoon patent...
I do like how things only run in one direction.
999 calls has to be explained to US americans, while it is presumed that the rest of the world implicitly understands that 911 doesn't refer to Sept 11th.
Could this be that US Americans can not seem to conceive of a world beyond their own shores?
Lol, I live in "avon and somerset". I'd be surprised if many americans can understand the thick south western accents :)
Cheap shot, Error404. US media saturates the English-speaking world, so for good or ill, most of us do know about 911, the number.
911 is also the emergency number in Canada.
Incidentally, US media saturates the world so heavily that other countries sometimes have problems with the locals insisting that their emergency number is ALSO 911, despite it being some other three digit combination.