Re: 911 Operator Found Guilty Of Willful Neglect

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008, Larry Seltzer wrote:

> > > As non-US citizen I'm interested in to hear some comments about the
> local 911 culture.
>
> Of course she should have dispatched someone, even if she warned them
> she was suspicious of the call. OTOH, this is Detroit, and I wouldn't be
> surprised if they have a lot of prank calls.

Estimates range between 40% and 60% of 9-1-1 calls should not have been 
made as opposed the caller being mistaken about the incident. Sometimes 
(or often depending on the city finances) there are not enough police 
resources to respond to every call all the time, so calls are evaluated 
and ranked by the dispatchers, officers, and so on.

Most of the time the system works.  But sometimes humans don't.  You
will find the occasional story about a 9-1-1 dispatcher incorrectly
dismissing a call as a "prank," a responding policer officer finding an 
apparently "empty" house and missing a dying person on the premises, a 
9-1-1 call of an apparently abandoned baby stroller with a baby outside
a store left by a European tourist.

I suspect occasional mistakes happen in most countries with their
similar emergency services.

Do the emergency services in your country never make a mistake?

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