"baby daddy" used as a pronoun today "I, you, he, she, it, baby daddy, we, you, they, baby daddies--maybe they didn't have a direct translation for that in the Latin.
That woman was trying to report a disturbance that her brother was trying to avoid, but the way she described it, I had no idea who was fighting who, or who wanted to fight who.
"My brother's girlfriend's brother and baby daddy are trying to hurt my brother. They in a car that her brother's mom's or wait, his car was, it was her mom's car. Anyways...it's a white saturn."
This RP (reporting party) also used the word "ain'tin" as in, "There ain'tin nothin' I can do about it?" Sometimes you just wish there were minimum intelligence standards for dialing 9-1-1. I've heard 4 year olds save lives on the phone, but they were intellectual giants compared to this woman.
Later in the day a woman wanted the police to come and ask someone to turn down their stereo. It was being played too loudly, and the station to which it was tuned had "illicit" [sic] lyrics. The caller asked the person to turn it down but they refused.
The caller was afraid that if she pushed any harder to get the person to change the station to something a little less offensive, a fight would start.
Who would do that? Who would play music laced with obscenities so loud that it could cause this kind, little old lady, just home from church, no doubt, to have to say something? And then tell her to go away and that the channel wouldn't be changed as long as they were outside doing the yard work today?
Who would do that?
The caller's 20 yo daughter who lives in her own house. That's who. My RP was calling to report a noise disturbance coming from her own house.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
911 Education
Last Friday I had the pleasure of helping teach a 911 Program for kindergarten students. The program was an hour long. We introduced ourselves to the students, and then started a 15 min video with puppets talking about the things you'll need to know when you call 911. After the video we'd go back over the two most important things that the 6 year-olds would need to know if they ever had to call 911.
1) Your location: for the kids we tell them to learn their address because that is the place from which they are most likely to call 911. Mom or Dad suffer an accident and can't get to the phone or tragically some kind of disturbance occurs in the home and a parent or care taker is incapacitated. Six-year-olds generally don't leave the house unaccompanied, so it is unlikely that they'd have to figure out an address of some place other than their own house.
Also, if we know the address where help is needed, we can send police, fire, and medical all at once even if we don't know the exact nature of the emergency. We will get help there.
If, however, we can't figure out where they are, well, help might not get there. So the address is the most important thing to be able to give the 911 operator.
Technology does help some. Land line phones are usually loaded into a database that is connected to the 911 system so that your address is retrievable by the operator if needs be. Sometimes, these can be input incorrectly, or old address records could be attached to the new phone number you just got, and help could be sent to the wrong address.
Cell phones, do not show an address to which they are connected, and it takes several extra steps, and several extra minutes for dispatchers to hunt down the provider, call them and ask them for the subscribers' home address (assuming the emergency is happening there--usually we just go to the house hoping they are there, and if not, hoping that someone there knows where the person having the emergency might be) Most phones have gps location or systems that use the towers to triangulate the locations of the phone so if the line is open long enough, and it is still on, we can sometimes get the location of the phone by asking the phone system to transmit it's location.
In extreme cases, we can "ping" a phone. This means to use the towers that a cell phone is connecting to (even when it is not making a call) to ask for the phone's location. This only works if the phone is turned on. And it goes through the cell service provider which takes lots of time. Personally, I know of at least 1 case where a person threatening suicide actually committed suicide while dispatchers were dealing with cumbersome processes of faxing requests to and from the cell provider to get the phone's location.
2) Your Phone Number: Sometimes, in the middle of a call, the call can be dropped. Either the phone is dropped or unplugged or in the case of cell phones, signals are lost and the dispatchers connection to the scene is lost. Hopefully, we've gotten the address first and help is already on the way. But in the case of in-progress calls, we like to stay on the line to relay further information to the responding officers or medical, or fire personnel. If we have your phone number, we can always call you back to get more information.
I say this because most of the 6 year-olds we were teaching were able to, after just 30 minutes, tell me what the two most important pieces of information for the 911 operator were, and if they didn't know their own address or phone number, were able to express that they would tell their parent(s) to teach them those things.
So today I get a call from a 16 year-old. NOT a 6 yo, a 16 year old, who didn't know his own address. At the end of the call, I did ask him his age, and I hope that he picked up on the the incredulous tone to my voice because I did my best to let it come through.
1) Your location: for the kids we tell them to learn their address because that is the place from which they are most likely to call 911. Mom or Dad suffer an accident and can't get to the phone or tragically some kind of disturbance occurs in the home and a parent or care taker is incapacitated. Six-year-olds generally don't leave the house unaccompanied, so it is unlikely that they'd have to figure out an address of some place other than their own house.
Also, if we know the address where help is needed, we can send police, fire, and medical all at once even if we don't know the exact nature of the emergency. We will get help there.
If, however, we can't figure out where they are, well, help might not get there. So the address is the most important thing to be able to give the 911 operator.
Technology does help some. Land line phones are usually loaded into a database that is connected to the 911 system so that your address is retrievable by the operator if needs be. Sometimes, these can be input incorrectly, or old address records could be attached to the new phone number you just got, and help could be sent to the wrong address.
Cell phones, do not show an address to which they are connected, and it takes several extra steps, and several extra minutes for dispatchers to hunt down the provider, call them and ask them for the subscribers' home address (assuming the emergency is happening there--usually we just go to the house hoping they are there, and if not, hoping that someone there knows where the person having the emergency might be) Most phones have gps location or systems that use the towers to triangulate the locations of the phone so if the line is open long enough, and it is still on, we can sometimes get the location of the phone by asking the phone system to transmit it's location.
In extreme cases, we can "ping" a phone. This means to use the towers that a cell phone is connecting to (even when it is not making a call) to ask for the phone's location. This only works if the phone is turned on. And it goes through the cell service provider which takes lots of time. Personally, I know of at least 1 case where a person threatening suicide actually committed suicide while dispatchers were dealing with cumbersome processes of faxing requests to and from the cell provider to get the phone's location.
2) Your Phone Number: Sometimes, in the middle of a call, the call can be dropped. Either the phone is dropped or unplugged or in the case of cell phones, signals are lost and the dispatchers connection to the scene is lost. Hopefully, we've gotten the address first and help is already on the way. But in the case of in-progress calls, we like to stay on the line to relay further information to the responding officers or medical, or fire personnel. If we have your phone number, we can always call you back to get more information.
I say this because most of the 6 year-olds we were teaching were able to, after just 30 minutes, tell me what the two most important pieces of information for the 911 operator were, and if they didn't know their own address or phone number, were able to express that they would tell their parent(s) to teach them those things.
So today I get a call from a 16 year-old. NOT a 6 yo, a 16 year old, who didn't know his own address. At the end of the call, I did ask him his age, and I hope that he picked up on the the incredulous tone to my voice because I did my best to let it come through.
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