911 Abuse have Cincinnati Police urging the use of 211

[LEH]

I firmly believe there is a need for a COMMON non-emergency number. There have been times I've called 911 to report what isn't (at the time anyway) an emergency, but I didn't have the 'local' non-emergency number. It has the capability to become one if action isn't taken.

Example in case is going through an intersection where the lights are malfunctioning. No accidents, no injuries, but the potential is there. Police may need to respond for traffic control until the lights are fixed.

Is that a true life threatening emergency? No if EVERYONE follows the rules of the road when the approach and uncontrolled intersection. But we all know that no one knows the rules of the road.

As to witnessing an accident, I'd call rather than ASS-U-ME others are or have called. Now if I see an accident and people are out of their vehicles and talking on their cell phones, I don't call. HOPEFULLY they have already called the police (but maybe they are just continuing talking to who ever they were at the time of the accident, never even thinking of the calling the police).

Our local area does not have a 311 or 211 service. I wish they did.

It took a long time for people to get used to dialing 9-1-1 (I recall hearing an emergency responder tell me why it was changed from 911 to 9-1-1. Too many reports of people not dialing because the couldn't fine the ELEVEN key on the phone. Maybe some truth, but start of a good urban myth). Implementing a non-emergency number and the same one nationally would be very beneficial.

Then we'd have three numbers to keep in mind.

9-1-1 Emergencies
#77 The number our State Police want us to use on the interstates.
?-1-1 the common NON Emergency number.

 

[lugoffman]

Charlotte NC has the same problem , but now they got it to when you call 911 it ask you to press 1 for emergency 2 for fire and so forth and so on by the time you get through that stuff somthing bad could really happen. one year I was working on a car, for a friend of mine , and someone took my car right out of the yard and when I called 911 , and while I was calling 911 a officer drove right by the car and I could not get through to the 911 operator fast enough to get the officer to turn around and get the person. It took three days to get my car back. I think they really need a better system but everyone is so used to the 911 system thats all they know it will be hard for us to use a different system. But I think tring somthing new could work for us all .

 

[DaveNF2G]

It took a long time for people to get used to dialing 9-1-1 (I recall hearing an emergency responder tell me why it was changed from 911 to 9-1-1. Too many reports of people not dialing because the couldn't fine the ELEVEN key on the phone. Maybe some truth, but start of a good urban myth).

According to the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), the correct way to indicate the number in print is 9-1-1.

 

[MaxMan1986]

(I recall hearing an emergency responder tell me why it was changed from 911 to 9-1-1. Too many reports of people not dialing because the couldn't fine the ELEVEN key on the phone. Maybe some truth, but start of a good urban myth).

I also remember hearing that a computer company had to change "press any key" to "press the enter key" because so many people couldn't figure out where the "any" key was.

 

[JT-112]

FYI - where I live, I've been told specifically and repeatedly that 911 is to be used for BOTH emergency and non-emergency calls.

Yes, you read that right.

No, I didn't get that wrong.

I've even gone out of my way to find the local number of the PD to complain about a barking dog. Whoooosh, transferred to 911 in a jiffy - "Where's your emergency?"

As long as some 911 centers hold themselves out as the end-all be-all point of contact to local government, you'll have this confusion. The 911 message has unfortunately become diluted, which is why 311 has come into play. Now 211? Way to go, sigh...

 

[DaveNF2G]

The problem is not so much abuse of 9-1-1 per se as it is stupid, lazy people who have no clue how to find anything out for themselves. I can see some logic in calling 9-1-1 to ask for directions. The dispatchers are supposed to know where everything is. But there is absolutely no justification for dialing 9-1-1 when you need to know how long to bake a turkey.

The same phenomenon happens all over RR.com when people ask questions without first looking around to see that their question has already been discussed in a forum or is answered in the Wiki.

 

[crashcrew]

I can see some logic in calling 9-1-1 to ask for directions. .

You're joking, I hope :roll:

 

[MaxMan1986]

You're joking, I hope :roll:

He said that he can see some logic in it. He didn't say he would condone actually doing it.

 

[ocguard]

Charlotte NC has the same problem , but now they got it to when you call 911 it ask you to press 1 for emergency 2 for fire and so forth and so on by the time you get through that stuff somthing bad could really happen.

According to the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), the correct way to indicate the number in print is 9-1-1.

I believe that NENA prohibits interactive voice response on 9-1-1 lines. In mosts states, the 9-1-1 line MUST ring directly to a live operator (unless all operators are busy, then it must ring to a generic ring over announcement).

But seriously, if all these idiots actually got the message not to call 911 for stupid stuff, alot of 911 operators would be out of the job!

And while we're on the topic of emergency versus non-emergency calls, I think that a malfunctioning traffic signal should be more emergent than an automatic fire alarm, as, statistically, I imagine that the traffic signal malfunction is far more likely to result in an actual emergency.