Prometheus 6

911 systems choking on non-emergency calls
Pranksters, clueless callers block lines for legitimate crises
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
updated 6:30 p.m. ET, Tues., Aug. 5, 2008

Which of these is an emergency?

• A Subway sandwich shop in Florida leaves the mayo and mustard off a customer’s order.
• A Texas man can’t get a cab.
• A Tennessee man’s stepfather keeps nagging him to do the laundry.

To hear callers to 911 emergency lines tell it, all are.

Eddie Mitchell, a 911 dispatcher in Rancho Cordova, Calif., near Sacramento, likes to tell the story of the caller who demanded to know why the Transportation Department hadn’t mowed the grass. Another wanted to know how to use his cell phone.

“We’ve had people call in asking us to bring them milk,” Mitchell said.

Darrell DeBusk, a spokesman for the Knoxville, Tenn., police, can top that. “A few years ago. an individual called 911 wanting an officer to drive through McDonald’s and bring him a hamburger,” DeBusk said.

Those calls may be funny, but in cities large and small, police officials and system administrators warn that 911 systems are being choked with clueless, frivolous, even prank, calls.

In California, for example, as many as 45 percent of the more than 8 million cell phone calls to 911 each year are for non-emergencies, officials said; in Sacramento, it could be as high as 80 percent. Those calls block the lines for callers who really need urgent help.

“You’ve got a true emergency with somebody out there — that there’s a shooting or something — then those officers are not able to respond to that emergency call, because they’re taking care” of callers who abuse 911 lines, said Jennifer Wilson, who has worked in the 911 center in Knox County, Tenn., for 16 years.