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9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal

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Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal

#21

Post by lionhearted »

True story:

I'm in Boston, near Copley Square. Go into the Citizen's Bank ATM which is inside a glass alcove with a security door that you need to swip your ATM card to get into. While I'm getting money, a crazy, twitching homeless guy starts banging on the door. His eyes have something wrong with them, he's shaking and twitching, looks out of his mind.

I look round for another way out, there isn't, I've got to go through the door. So I open it, and go to step out. He goes to block my way and grab my arm, and says loudly, "Gimmie a dollar! Gimmie a dollar!!!"

I shake him off me, and get away from there.

Now, I'm a pretty big, strong guy. Not exactly an easy mark - and this guy had no qualms about it. I figure he must've, absolutely must've been on some kind of stimulants.

So I call 911 on my cell phone. Explain what happened, detailed the look in his eyes and that I think he might on some kind of drugs, and that I'm worried if a smaller person or older person went into there and the guy did his crazy act. I was calm about it, and tried to impart the sense of urgency I was getting at the same time. The 911 lady transfers me to someone else, and I tell the story again. This person tells me I'm talking to the wrong department and gives me another number. I hang up and call that police precinct. A guy answers, I explain the story, and the call is disconnected - and not on my end, I always had perfect reception around Copley.

I call back and and they tell me, once again, I'm talking to the wrong place, say they'll transfer me, and the call drops again. And again, not on this end.

A bit annoyed and disheartened at this point, I called my Mom who I was going to have dinner with that night, and said, yes, I'll be at dinner, by the way, there was this crazy guy and the police don't seem to care, even though I'm pretty sure something bad could happen to someone. Best case, some people are getting scared/intimidated. Worst case? Who knows. The guy was out of his frigging mind. And again, I'm a pretty big, strong looking guy.

My Mom says forget it, you tried. That didn't sit well with me, but I let it go and hopped on the Green line to head to dinner. That still doesn't sit with me to this day - what if something had happened? What the hell else could I have done? Go look for an uniformed officer nearby and tell him personally? (I took a quick look, didn't see anyone). Go confront the guy myself? (Seems like a bad idea) That whole event just sat poorly with me - my intuition tells me, "this is a bad situation and needs to be dealt with", I try going through the authorities, and get a lot of run-around, transfers, and disconnected twice. I still don't feel good about that to this day - and I'm left wondering if I could have handled that differently and what the hell all the people I spoke to were thinking.

Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal

#22

Post by tdm911 »

sachinag wrote: post #5
mediaman wrote: post #4

Isn't this a major opportunity for a centralized, scaled outsource provider to deliver 911 service to municipalities who sign up for it at a lower cost and better rate of service than would otherwise be possible? Imagine an advanced call center with 500 employees. The center can afford sophisticated technology such as geographic point identification of the call, bucketing multiple calls about the same incident, maybe…

You really don't want people in a large call center out in the middle of nowhere who are unaware of local landmarks and surroundings answering 9-1-1 calls. It's a huge public safety issue where you're dealing with distraught people and the operator has to make sense of various small bits of information quickly.

There was a case in Sydney, Australia recently which highlighted this. A school boy was lost in bushland and called 000 (Australian 911)and they asked that he give them a street address to which they could send an ambulance. As he was in the middle of the bush, there was no streets or signs etc. Local knowledge may not have saved him, but it would have made locating him significantly easier rather than just reading from a script and asking for a street name. Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25373564-...

Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal

#23

Post by vaksel »

lionhearted wrote: post #21

True story: I'm in Boston, near Copley Square. Go into the Citizen's Bank ATM which is inside a glass alcove with a security door that you need to swip your ATM card to get into. While I'm getting money, a crazy, twitching homeless guy starts banging on the door. His eyes have something wrong with them, he's shaking and twitching, looks out of his mind. I look round for another way out, there isn't, I've got to go th…

Should have called back and told them the bank was getting robbed by a crazy looking homeless person.

Would have had the entire police department there right away

Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal

#24

Post by electromagnetic »

sachinag wrote: post #5
mediaman wrote: post #4

Isn't this a major opportunity for a centralized, scaled outsource provider to deliver 911 service to municipalities who sign up for it at a lower cost and better rate of service than would otherwise be possible? Imagine an advanced call center with 500 employees. The center can afford sophisticated technology such as geographic point identification of the call, bucketing multiple calls about the same incident, maybe…

You really don't want people in a large call center out in the middle of nowhere who are unaware of local landmarks and surroundings answering 9-1-1 calls. It's a huge public safety issue where you're dealing with distraught people and the operator has to make sense of various small bits of information quickly.

I don't really want to deal with someone in Delhi when they can't understand that my no-fee bank account isn't supposed to be charged fees. Hence no-fee. Yet when they finally understand, they tell me 'oh, we can't deal with that, you'll have to go into your local branch'.

I really don't want to call 9-1-1 and be told 'oh, we can't deal with that, you'll have to go into your local branch' when I say my grandma is having a stroke.

Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal

#25

Post by philwelch »

vaksel wrote: post #23
lionhearted wrote: post #21

True story: I'm in Boston, near Copley Square. Go into the Citizen's Bank ATM which is inside a glass alcove with a security door that you need to swip your ATM card to get into. While I'm getting money, a crazy, twitching homeless guy starts banging on the door. His eyes have something wrong with them, he's shaking and twitching, looks out of his mind. I look round for another way out, there isn't, I've got to go th…

Should have called back and told them the bank was getting robbed by a crazy looking homeless person. Would have had the entire police department there right away

And lionhearted would have been fined for reporting a false emergency. Meanwhile, crazy homeless guy gets off scot free.

Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal

#26

Post by zngtk4 »

sachinag wrote: post #5
mediaman wrote: post #4

Isn't this a major opportunity for a centralized, scaled outsource provider to deliver 911 service to municipalities who sign up for it at a lower cost and better rate of service than would otherwise be possible? Imagine an advanced call center with 500 employees. The center can afford sophisticated technology such as geographic point identification of the call, bucketing multiple calls about the same incident, maybe…

You really don't want people in a large call center out in the middle of nowhere who are unaware of local landmarks and surroundings answering 9-1-1 calls. It's a huge public safety issue where you're dealing with distraught people and the operator has to make sense of various small bits of information quickly.

But it would be a good backup -- it's far better than busy signal (which I have gotten on two different occasions of calling 911).
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