Please state the nature of your emergency
Channel 4 reports that some state senator wants to punish people who place "bogus" 911 calls with up to a year in jail.
Yow! But as a Boston resident, I no longer know what, exactly, would constitute a bogus 911 call. Where I grew up (some city south of here where Joe Torre will soon be out of a job), we learned in school that 911 was only for real emergencies: You see somebody lying on your stoop, bleeding from the head, you call 911, otherwise, fuhgeddaboudit. But here in Boston, police want you to call 911 for stuff that isn't an emergency - like that illegally parked car across the street.
OK, granted, even I can understand that dialing 911 on your cellie to complain about a traffic tieup is wrong. But maybe Boston Police could educate us about when to dial 911 and when to call the mayor's help line?
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BPD also wants us to use 911
BPD also wants us to use 911 for:
* loud parties; and
* off-leash dogs.
One reason for using 911 instead of calling the district station directly is that the former gets logged fully. The district station then can show how many calls they get when lobbying for funding in each year's budget. Or at least that's how someone in the know described it to me...
Loud parties
Except that 911 will only respond to loud parties if you're describing a situation where it's likely they'll find people violating fire codes, drinking underage, or behaving in an unruly manner. They won't respond to stuff like people sitting outside blasting music and shaking all the houses on the street if they don't appear to be drinking or fighting or anything. I've called code enforcement before for simple noise complaints that I don't reckon involve anything criminal, they refer me to 911. then 911 says they're not going to come and cite otherwise-law-abiding people for noise violations. Which seems appropriate, but means that the city has noise ordinances they don't enforce. The mayor's hotline isn't useful -- depending who answers, they refer you to code enforcement or 911.
So its not an emergency, but who do you call?
you can't punish people for misusing 911 until you give them an alternative, like the 311 system in use in other cities for exactly this problem.
Thanks for bringing this up.
Thanks for bringing this up. I first noticed Boston's crazy 911 policy over two years ago. An operator at the BPD's non-emergency number directed me to call 911 to file a vandalism report, then gave me serious attitude when I mentioned that I thought that number was for emergencies only.
Absurd
This is absurd. Boston should set up a 311 system, or alternatively, publish the phone number for the citywide dispatch center. Keep in mind that calling 911 from a cell phone in Boston will tie up the State Police because all 911 calls are routed through them.
I've had this problem in other communities. Concord used to insist that we call 911 to reach the fire department, since its business line wasn't always staffed. (I just checked their website and noticed that they're come to their senses and posted the dispatch number as an alternative to 911.) Meanwhile over in Waltham, I once called 911 to report an erratic driver who was passing on the right and running red lights. The operator told me that "911 is for people who are dying" and then hung up on me.
Hmmmm
BPD now has an emergency number 617 343 4911 that they suggest we call for both emergencies and illegally parked cars. I assume that if I use that number all the time, then I won't end up in jail because I dialed the wrong number.
Seems like cruel and unusual punishment for misusing the phone. I wonder what state district he/she is representing. Must be a place with high concentration of lead in the drinking water. That would explain the reason for such an asinine proposal (high concentration lead is often responsible for diminished metal development).
Thanks
Thanks, that is a good number to have; I just programmed it into my cellphone. It's a shame the BPD doesn't put it on their homepage (it's on their website, but only in 3 very obscure locations). Maybe they think we're too dumb to remember more than 3 digits :-)
It's a good number to have
... but 311 would be so much easier to remember :-)
When to call 911
When I was in 7th grade, our cool-but-anal science teacher had taken roll and was going through a stack of permission slips one by one and listing off each person whose was signed and filled out completely, thus would be going on the trip. He got to this one slip, slammed it down on the lecturn, and started shouting at a kid:
"Mr. Eddy, what makes you think you're going on the trip with your form filled out like this? You think this is funny? For 'emergency phone number' you've have written '911'"
[Class all laughs at him]
"Seriously people, these need to be filled out correctly for everyone's safety. All right, Mr. Eddy, where does your mother work?"
[very quietly] "She's... a 911 operator."
He got the biggest glare ever from this teacher, who ripped his permission slip in half and threw it away.
(She really was a 911 operator too; she came for career day once in elementary school.)