Strangest 9-1-1 Calls TWO HOUR COMPILATION Scary 911 Calls

911 operators overdid. What's the strangest serious emergency you've heard? I answered the phone and gave my usual 911 Do you need police, fire, or ambulance? And the person on the other end just started screaming. Bees. Bees. I assumed that the bees were neither mugging him nor on fire, so I put it through to ambulance because what the Frick even comma. I assumed that the bees were neither mugging him nor on fire, so I put it through to ambulance

because what the Frick even? And now there is coffee all over my desk and my supervisor is looking at me weirdly. Take your up vote. Had a dude who called in on Thanksgiving because my wife is chasing me around the house with a knife because I called her bird dry. Also had a guy shoot somebody while on the phone with me. Also had a guy get arrested while on the phone with me. I don't miss those days. The emergency itself wasn't

particularly strange. Vaginal bleeding during pregnancy, nor was the call mine. But in training I listened to a call that contained the following exchange. So she's bleeding now? Yep. Where is she bleeding from? From her bottom part? Which bottom part? Sir, I need you to be specific. Her rectum front part? Her weight? What? So is she bleeding from her rectum or from the front? God Dang it. She's bleeding from her pee hole. I think it's simple possible to

read that last line without a heavy Southern accent. 911, What's your emergency? There's a pig in the road. A big one. So where are you? At? The stoplight. It's the biggest Dang pig I have ever seen. Get someone here now. One stoplight town. The bar is near the intersection. How big is the pig? About the size of a Volkswagen. How much have you had to drink? I'm not freaking drunk. It's a giant pig the size of a small car.

What is wrong with you people? Officers show up to find a full grown hippo that had escaped from the local wild animal park. Big frickin pig eater. This was at 2:30 AM when the bars close. Lots of calls from elderly people hallucinating because of a UT. One woman had been following CPR instructions and when the crew arrived she was doing very gentle chest compressions on her slightly confused but very much alive cat.

We had a lady who would call all the time about people in her yard or on her house, usually doing nasty things, always a false alarm. This lady had been calling since way before I got my job, and even now after I've switched agencies, she's probably still calling. She's mental but not a danger to herself or others, so no real need to commit her involuntarily. Well one day we get a call from her about a man at her house

causing the troubles for her. It's my supervisor who had answered the call, finally got fed up and asked to speak to the man. To everyone's surprise, the woman handed the phone over to the man and there was someone there. It was her brother. He was there trying to get her committed. We ended up, I believe, asking him to leave the property because he couldn't have her committed against her will at that time. Just goes to show you that crazy

doesn't always mean wrong. A family member was working in an emergency room and said the following case came in about a month ago. A guy got high on PCP suddenly thinks hum I'm a bit hungry and would like to have some eggs. Proceeds to cut out one of his testicles and fry it in a frying pan. His girlfriend walks in while he's doing that and goes what the heck. At which point he's like oh whoops sorry and tries to put his fried testicle back in his scrotum.

Then he was in the hospital. I don't know the result but I can guess. This made my balls shrivel up into my body and I'm a female. Jesus. I've got one for you. The obligatory not 911 but it'll tie together. So I worked for an alarm monitoring company. I get an inbound call in the middle of the night from somewhere in Philadelphia. Guy on the line sounds real out of it. Drunk maybe? My first thought was it was someone calling in to cancel a false alarm.

Messed up voice was them waking from sleep. Not uncommon. Some alarms help start going off in my head. The guy isn't making a whole lot of sense and it's really hard to get basic information out of him. Eventually I pieced together that he's a gas station worker and he's been shot. For some reason he dialed the alarm company instead of 911. We weren't even his alarm company. There was probably an old sticker in the shop somewhere.

So I've got no info on this guy. Mind you, we don't have any magical reverse phone lookup system and our systems are locked down such that we can't access a web browser. Genius. I know. Pulled out my phone also not allowed. Managed to look up a gas station with the inbound number in Philly. Called 911 and got police and medical out there. No idea how it ultimately shook out. Stayed on the line keeping the guy conscious and talking until they got there, then

disconnected. My sister is an EMT in a small rural college town. Apparently there have been more than one calls about horses collapsing and hurting their rider, handler, broken arms, legs trapped under horse, et cetera. When she was new to it someone just described it as a collapsed horse and she thought that they were supposed to treat the horses condition. I'm close to an area where equestrian stuff is pretty

popular. When I was a medical student on trauma I was surprised we had like 4 horse related injuries on service at the same time. Apparently it isn't that unusual here. Heard this one the other day. Not from the perspective of an operator, but close. EMS responds to a call where a man reported having multiple potatoes stuck up his rectum colon. Not red potatoes, those big brown suckers.

The kicker? I was washing my potatoes in the shower when I slipped and fell and all the potatoes went up there. What? I wouldn't even try to say I fell on it. I know nobody would believe me and I'd look like a bigger idiot. I'd just own it and the dispatchers would probably make just a little less fun of me behind my back. My mom was a dispatcher for 20 plus years. The eeriest call she ever told me about was one that started off with no voice, only

breathing. She kept asking yes or no questions, working out a system to guess what was going on. Eventually he could talk a little bit and said the person who hurt him was still there. So the officers went in, guns drawn. He'd said the person was there, but hadn't specified that they were dead. Turns out the guy couldn't talk because his throat was sliced open, which he had done to himself to make it look like his wife, whom he had just murdered, had attacked him first.

I got dispatched for neck pain. Get there, find out a couple were having sex on a couch when the female heard a large pop in her head, followed by splitting headache and nausea. We transport and after a CT scan find that she somehow developed a tear in her arachnoid meningeal tissue. Serious crap, but humorous and odd. Roe. He almost literally fricked her brains out. Not sure if that makes him a legend or a monster lol. I once dispatched her helicopter

for a woman gored by a reindeer. Apparently there is a reindeer farm for tourists and she tried to kiss it. My pilot and flight crew laughed at the Moy and asked three times to repeat. I responded to a man in his Whitey tighties standing on the yellow lines in the middle of the road. Arrived on scene to find this to be true. The reason he was in the middle of the road was to practice his karate moves on cars. Dispatch was even having a hard time keeping from laughing.

The very first emergency call I took by myself during training. Trainer was hooked into my phone and could jump in whenever I answered a 911 while my trainer was trying to grab a cup of coffee from the machine. Long cords and as soon as the phone connected there was what sounded like an explosion and people screaming all over the place. Scared the Jesus out of my trainer who sprinted back to the desk thinking I had just picked up some huge disaster or

accident. Takes over the call, starts asking questions and it turns out what we heard was just rushing water from a hot water heater that ruptured and was spewing water all over these two girls apartment and they were freaking out not knowing what to do about it. Bonus story, had a similar call a few year later picked up to a bunch of people being loud sounding panicked talking about someone being locked in a car. Thought it was a child locked in

a car. A very high priority call for my agency due to being in Florida and a few recent deaths. So I put the call in his urgent while trying to get anyone on the phone to actually talk to me. But then I hear a door open and someone in the background scream it's out the chicken is free. Phone disconnects. Florida comma Florida say no more. The first call I took was from a blind elderly male. He called because he had found his son on the floor of a

bedroom. He was not responding so I had him tilt his head back and listen for a breath. Nothing. He said he was warm and he had talked with him less than 20 minutes prior. So I guided him through CPR compressions only because of the circumstances. He lived in a rural part of our county and we will know on Riggs. So we did this for about 12 minutes before help arrived on scene. EMS goes inside and immediately ask for people PD. This isn't unusual.

Sometimes loved ones can't or don't want to believe that it's too late. So we go through the motions until a train dies there. PD gets there and asks for a detective. This is also not unusual for younger deaths. 2 hours later and still there. It piques my curiosity. I called the first officer that arrived and found out that the poor man had been doing CPR on his now mostly headless son. He had been taking a nap and his son committed suicide with a shotgun.

It woke him up, but not quickly enough for it to register as a gunshot. When I had asked him to tilt his head back, he did so by using his chin, which was still there. I think it worked out for the best because he had support there when he learned the truth and it didn't make my job any tougher, but it definitely made for unusual start to my dispatch career. Obligatory not 911 operator.

I'm the son of the caller. My dad called 911 late one night to report hitting a six foot tall chicken while driving and running off into the ditch. He had just crashed his car and his voice was a bit shaky on the phone, so the operator asked him to repeat himself a couple of times and then promised to send someone to help. The first cop on scene got out of his car with a brief Elizar in hand.

By the time he got to the back of my dad's car, he was laughing hysterically over his radio telling people that it wasn't a DUI call. My dad actually did hit a six foot tall chicken. And that's the story about the night my dad and all the local cops learned about emu farming. I think I'd be panicking just as much. It's one thing to hit a normal animal, another to run over a Dang emu. Not me, but my dad works in an emergency room and one time he had to treat someone who had

been attacked by an owl. The owl was unconscious on the side of the road and she thought it was dead because she didn't want the children on the school bus to see the dead owl. She decided the best course of action would be to put the owl in the back of her car. Unfortunately, the owl wasn't dead. It woke up and attacked her like the deer and Tommy boy. OK so my friend is a former 911 operator and she told me that she got this call from what

sounded like an old man. B was telling her that it's been a while and that she should come back over. Like hey it's been so long I miss you. Do you still remember the address 123 St. Remember? She assumed that he was just senile or something. Turns out he had someone in his house and he didn't want them to know he was calling 911. We got a call from a woman having severe abdominal pains. Simple enough. We ask the normal questions. Are you feeling faint? Are you vomiting blood?

Stuff like that. Then we asked if it was traumatic or not. Well, she eventually tells us that she had a tampon stuck inside of her for more than 20 days and she thinks that might be why she's hurting. Thanks for telling me that second story. I'm going to go throw up now. Not me, but my cousin. She had this lady who would call regularly and often make up stories, most likely due to loneliness, but they still had

to send someone out every time. So one day when they got a call from her, they figured it would be another one of those calls. Cousin 911, what's your emergency? Her, there's a lion in my living room. Cousin, there's a lion in your living room. What's it doing? Her pauses to ask it what it was doing. I don't know, just standing there. Can you send someone over? Turned out there actually was a lion cub in her living room that had escaped from a circus or something nearby.

She's the real life boy who cried wolf story, except she still had a response in the end. Obligatory not a 911 operator, but my soon to be mother-in-law. She got a call that a guy and his roommate were doing drugs H and the caller's friend overdosed. So this absolute Mensa hooks up a couple wires to the inside of a toaster, turns the toaster on, and attaches the wires to his unconscious friend's testicles.

Honestly not sure if it successfully electrocuted the unconscious guy, but the caller definitely seemed to think it would wake his friend up. But my mother in law's response? So please don't do that again. At first I was thinking somehow he was going to miraculously use it as some sort of defibrillator to revive him, but the story turned quickly. I still give it a 10 stroke 10 woman screaming that her drug addict partner had been bitten by her vimar around a dog.

She was getting on about how he loved the dog and the dog was lovely normally but her partners finger was bleeding. When the crew got there they reported back to the control room that the man's arm had been degloved from the elbow down. Yikes, got a call from some girl saying someone stole my car. I ask if she saw what direction they went. She says they're heading down the street and starts telling me the stores they're passing. I ask if she's following them.

She says that she is in the car. I freak the freak out. She then says to whoever is driving, babe slow down this is crazy. Turned out she and her boyfriend were arguing. He started driving crazy since he was mad and she decided to call it another stolen vehicle. Another story, we get A to call that there's two loose dogs running around a major St. About 30 seconds later an officer comes over the radio to tell me that they just hit two dogs on the street. Same dogs.

That's just a couple of minor stories I could think of. I'll post more as I think of them. 911 operators should have a million crazy stories. I only did it for four months, was a 911 up for five years, had a female call screaming, he's stabbing me, he's stabbing me. She's get away from her husband who's going at her over and over with an ice pick. It becomes evidence to me that she's moving around the house in an attempt to get away. I'm telling her can you

barricade yourself? Can you get away from him? Can you get out of the house? She told me that she's trying and that interjects that her husband is blind. Now I'm really confused. She's not giving me much information, typical with Pat anarchy victims in the heat of a crime, and I'm trying to figure out how she can't get away from a blind person. She gets quiet and I can hear him saying all kinds of nasty things about her. Cops get there, secure the scene, and they fight her to a

trauma center. She lived still. We were all standing around after, so confused that this woman couldn't escape a blind man from stabbing her. Had lived with a blind person. They can't move with a confidence that would surprise the heck out of you when they need to in a highly familiar environment. Anyhow, 1 ultra calm cola girlfriend is having a fit me. Does she have any weapons? Him just the eggs throwing at me. Me What is she wearing him underwear? Two Took a call for a hostage

situation in a cab once. The driver was talking to me but trying not to make it obvious. Passenger implied a weapon and wanted him to drive to the middle of nowhere so that he could kill him and the lady in the front seat. Driver ended up crashing into another car to cause a distraction. 3 screaming lady collar. He's throwing the car thing at me. It was a hubcap. 4 He flushed my weed so I poured his beer out

and we bout to throw down. Five Guy found his pet cat's head sitting upright on the table on his front porch. Nobody called back. Later, someone had placed the body in his car. One reminds me of a call I dispatched for where the subject was hitting people with a sub from. One of my proudest moments was updating the units in route that their subject was armed with a sandwich. In the most serious tone

possible. Of course it was my call to 911, but something tells me they've relayed this story from their perspective a few times. I got hit from behind by one of my 220 LB Suffolk ram sheep. Never saw it coming. Knocked the snot out of me. Barely escaped as he was trying to finish me off. Once outside the fence I went into shock as all the adrenaline drained.

Had to call 911. Overheard the EMT in the ambulance trying to clarify to the ER that the patient they were transported was not a victim of pedestrian versus track. The hospital thought I'd been hit by a Dodge Ram pickup. My friend in the told me how someone passed out on an escalator and his hand was running into the great where the top of the escalator meets the floor for half an hour before someone found him. His hand was pretty messed up from what I heard.

Thank you for giving me a reason not to sleep for weeks. That's one dream I don't need. One jogger found drunk male passed out in the bushes with his pants around his ankles. He was apparently robbed of his wallet, but the thief was considerate enough to leave a single debit card wedge between and sticking out of victim's buttocks. We called the poor bastard. Swipe ATM for weeks. Two couple having sex in hotel room.

Female falls off the bed and lands on a champagne flute, breaking it at the stem, puncturing through the side of her groin and hitting a femoral artery. She bled out and died. I was a zero operator, not 911, but many small towns didn't have 911 so I got quite a few emergency calls. I got a call from a 13 year old girl once that had just gotten home from school. She couldn't find her father, but there was an ominous note there that she had read to me. I had police on the way and told

her to wait outside for them. Rather. I heard her walking around her house, going from room to room opening doors looking for him. After about a minute she let out a blood curdling scream yelling he's here, he's here, he's here. He was hanging dead in the garage. Was a terrible call. I got a 15 minute break and had to get back on the board taking calls again. It's been almost 20 years and I can still hear her voice. Strangest call. Kid who felt experimenting and

lost an adult toy up his ass. Wasn't anything I could do but transport to the air and try not to laugh. Most serious call. Milk truck tea. Boned an Amish buggy going about 60 mph. The buggy was in the wrong. It annihilated the buggy and I don't remember for sure but I'm pretty sure the occupants inside did not survive. I remember they got flown to the air with massive trauma but it was like 2007 to 2009 ish being an EMT for over. 12 years now going on 13.

I feel old lol. Pretty sure I'm going to move back to volunteering soon. I sometimes drive in Amish country and they always scare the heck out of me. A friend of the family was potentially still is, a paramedic with the helicopter service here. I'm not sure if this was when he was a ground based or in the helicopter but he enjoyed this story. He was called out to a head trauma incident and arrived to find a man sitting in his living room acting very normal for a

call like that. So he asked what was wrong and the man said well I've got this here and turned to show a screwdriver buried to the hilts in his head. So the paramedic obviously said something along the lines of how that isn't good and the man said nap it's all right and began turning the screwdriver. They told him to stop.

I had a professor who exploded a cat with a shotgun in an attempt to get it out of a tree and another who made his partner pass out by having a girl show him her eyeball that hadn't popped out after a car accident. That first story made me cringe. Like now. 911 operators overdid. What was the most petty call you have ever received? Once got a call about a stolen matchbook from the caller's front porch. Ashtray and cigarettes were left untouched.

Caller was so worked up and concerned about a proud of that I sent an officer over. Matches were located in the garden where they had fallen over the railing. Caller immediately demanded the officer leave the property. No police were called in this case, but a relative of mine was 100% convinced the hotel maid had stolen a purse sized pack of tissues from her. The good 4 ply kind tissues were

later found under a towel. I don't know what it is about some people that their mind goes immediately to theft. Obligatory not a dispatcher, but my hometown received national attention when a woman rang 999 because her snowman had been stolen from her garden. An actual snowman, not a ceramic garden decoration. A facsimile of a man made out of

fallen snow. The word someone's nicked ma snowman haunt me. I like to imagine this happened towards the end of winter and the rest of the call was her frantically realizing that someone had stolen all the snow off the ground too. 911 operator here. Honestly, 90% of what we deal with is petty things that I would never think to call 911. Four people are calling. My brother threw a tube sock at me. My neighbor is mowing his lawn. He's doing it to annoy me. It's 11 AM on a Saturday morning.

My son brought his girlfriend over. I don't like her. Can you remove her from the house? Mom, Is she being threatening or violent in any way? No, I just don't like her. Those are some of the more memorable from the past week or so. Honestly, if it's something you're interested in, see if your local 911 dispatch center will allow you to sit with a dispatcher. It'll be enlightening to what we really have to deal with. Couple things the Sun and girlfriend situation.

Sun is a legal tenant resident and invited the girlfriend over. This complicates the whole trespassing thing. Owner of the property is usually irrelevant in all three situations. A good dispatcher will still put in a call for liability reasons. If any of those escalate, I need to show that I did everything I could. If the field decides they don't want to go, that's up to them, but a call for service should be put in for all of those. Regardless of how ridiculous it is.

A throne tube sock could still be considered assault. A lot of people seemed interested in sitting with a dispatcher in a 911 centre. Many centres will allow this, some won't. If it's something you're interested, call your local Police Department and just ask. You can say you're interested in what goes on and would like to sit with a dispatcher. Different departments have

different procedures for this. Likely they'll get you in touch with someone who will take your information and find out what day's times work best. A simple background check will usually be performed, mainly to see if you have any active warrants or anything else that might be of concern. Once that's done, they'll tell you when you can come in, tell you where to go and what to do when you get there.

Most dispatchers enjoy having the public sit with them because it doesn't happen too often and they like showing people what the job is really like for the son and girlfriend thing the parents should be doing. You know, parenting, not making the police do it. Kick them out if you don't like them. Not dispatch, but EMT. Worst call in this regard we ever had. My partner and I show up in the morning to find out we have a trainee on our shift. First ride out during his EMT

school. Cool, nice kid. About two hours later we get paid out for prostate problems. No further information. All right, fun. We show up at an assisted care facility, not full nursing home, think more apartments that have a nurse on staff make contact with patient. I send the student to do vitals while I start questioning him. Is he having pain, discomfort, more urine output, less urine output, funny feelings on urination, discharges, anything all negative.

Finally I tell him I need some help. Why does he think he is having prostate problems? Well it's Saturday morning and he just watched a medical show that mentioned it's important that men his age get their prostate checked once a year and it had been about 15 months since he had a prostate exam and he called his primary care physician and couldn't get an appointment until Monday

morning. In over five years of EMS, this is one of like 3 patients I ever tried to talk out of going to the hospital but he wanted transport so we did. We radio the hospital ahead when bringing in a patient. This is the only time I ever said in front of the patient I'm sorry for what I am about to tell you. We get to the hospital and as we are moving the patient into a bed, this older male nurse storms into the room and starts laying into me. Why?

He thought I was joking when I called in the report. When I assured him that it was legit, he turned to the patient. I can't remember his exact words, but it was something like this. You actually called a mother fricking ambulance to bring your sorry butt into the emergency room for a fricking prostate exam that you couldn't wait two days for. The patient looked stunned but nodded. The nurse turned to the tech

that had entered the room. Get this freaking butthole a prostate exam and get him the Frick out of my app. He then slammed down clipboard he was holding on the counter. As we were cleaning the ambulance, my trainee looked at me. Is it always like this? He asked, hope dying in his eyes. I clapped him on the shoulder. Welcome to EMS County 911. Where's your emergency? My neighbor is mowing his yard in pajamas, and I don't think that's very necessary.

Excuse me, Mom. Is he threatening you or harming you? No, but he's nearly nude mowing his yard. Can you get a cop here to tell him to put clothes on? How about I'll let an officer give you a call about it, Mom? Sure, that'll be fine. I'm tired of seeing old, shirtless men mowing their yards early morning. My number is blah, blah, blah. OK, I'll give this to the officer directly. Hangs up me on the radio. County 911 to North County 939.

Go ahead. Have some telephone traffic regarding a shirtless old man mowing his yard. Subjects requesting you to give her a call. Sensible laugh over radio. Sure thing. I am ready to copy. Give him her number 5 minutes later. 939 to county 911. Go ahead. It's going to be a civil matter. She told me she's going to start knowing how yard naked I'll be. 10-8 me in tears of laughter. 10 four 1432. Our CAD is being updated and this happened when I couldn't send texts over the CAD software

itself. Otherwise I would have just thrown the comment and the narrative and he could have read it. Fun times that. That's amazing lol. Not a 911 operator but I do mapping for 911. An operator had a call once from someone that was extremely concerned that emergency services wouldn't be able to find his house if he ever needed them. Not a reason to call the emergency number, but still a valid concern.

The call gets kicked over to me and I'm on the phone with him going through a checklist to verify the location of his address. I asked him a few times what prompted his concerns about emergency services not being able to find his house and he just Mumbles something like I just know they won't. I eventually get things worked out, his address is in our system and in the correct location and I assure him that we will be able to find his

house. There's a few seconds of silence on his end, then he says, well, if the police know where I live and can get here, why the Frick couldn't Pizza Hut find my house last night? He hung up before I could respond. That's actually surprisingly rational. I remember hearing an audio recording on TV when David Cameron was still Prime Minister of the UK, but some old woman actually phoned 999 to ask the police operator to tell David Cameron he was doing a great

job. The understandably irritated operator told the woman that the line was for emergency use only, to which the old woman responded by asking the operation if she could get her a contact number for the Prime Minister. The British ones wind me up rather than make me laugh 'cause I can imagine the thick sod that I'd probably call that would be the one that got me fired. Actually, they let me resign, but it's essentially the same thing in this case.

A woman called in a man walking down the street in her neighborhood, not being loud or suspicious or disruptive in any way, just walking along the sidewalk. Mom, what exactly is the problem then? If he's just walking down the street? Well, he just shouldn't be walking here. They have no business in our neighborhood. So she called the police on 911 and not the non-emergency line because a black man was minding his own business walking down the street. But she just kept saying he

shouldn't be walking here. And eventually I snapped back with would you feel better if he was running? It's one of those moments where you immediately think, Dang now I have to find a new job. I work at an A&E. We received a patient who arrived by ambulance because of a bite on his foot which he suspected might come from a venomous spider, scorpion, etcetera. We live in a country where there are no venomous spiders or

scorpions. Upon arrival, he realized that he'd have to wait for a doctor to attend to him as he wasn't exactly prioritized in fridge. So he left. Roe such emergency. Obligatory not a 911 operator. I'm a doctor and I once had to see someone in A&E who called an ambulance because he had a paper cut. 911 emergency. Yes. I can't route to my favorite restaurant to make dinner reservations. Call them and tell them we need seating for eight at mom.

That's not something we do. Then what good are you? LPT 911 is for dinner reservations. A friend who is dispatch 4911 had a call about someone's pain and possible appendix bursting. VMS police fire truck and everyone came. The person who called apparently stood up and let out a huge fart, at which point their pain stopped. After 10 minutes of vitals, questions, ETC. All emergency vehicles left in person refused to go to hospital.

This made me laugh, although I didn't just take my kid recently to urgent care because I was convinced he had appendicitis. Ended up he was constipated. Apparently Constipation and gas can be incredibly painful. Obligatory not a 911 operator but I called the police on my brother when I was 8 because he kept hitting me. Hung up when it rang the first

time BC we both panicked. Neither of us realized cops can trace where a call came from until a cop showed up at our house and asked to search our house to make sure we weren't in any danger. He asked why we called and my brother was like she was trying to call her friend and the

number is really close. Apparently that's common enough that I learned in school that if you dial 911 on accident, you should stay on the line and explain that instead of just hanging up. A teacher of mine was a former paramedic. She said she got called out to an apartment for a medical emergency shortness of breath. Turns out the guy wanted help plowing up an air mattress.

She said it was 2:00 AM and she was too tired to be angry, so she blew up his air mattress while her partner made a coffee run. To be fair, he was short of breath, just not in a way anyone could predict. I'm not a 911 operator, but I have a story that fits here. Several years ago, shortly after I had moved into my current house, my neighbor at the time would get mad at me for letting

my dog crap in his yard. Now, my dog only goes out in the front yard when I'm with him, and I keep him contained in my yard. Sometimes he sneaks a squad when I'm tending the garden, but I usually catch him in the act and use a leaf or something to toss the turd back into my yard. However, my backyard is fenced off by a wooden privacy fence which was in disrepair, so I figured my neighbor was complaining about my dog slipping through somewhere and pooping in their backyard. Fair enough.

So I go through and repair all the gaps I can find with new boards and all is well. Next day I come home from work and my neighbor is complaining about dog turds in his yard again. I suggest it must be someone else's dog. He suggests I go Frick myself. Whatever, I've done my due diligence, I'm done with their dog shit. I want to say it was about 2-3 days later that a cop knocked at my front door holding a glad bag my neighbor had given him with a huge dog turd in it.

And I mean HUGE. Almost 2 inches in deonator. The officer explains that my neighbor was filing a nuisance complaint against me because I'll let my dog crap in his front yard and had been so kind as to provide this bag of evidence of my dog's wrongdoings. He had barely finished his introduction when my 11 lbs Pomeranian finally woke up from his nap and came bounding to the front door to be petted by the owner of this new voice.

I said something along the lines of officer if my dog left that I don't think he would be able to walk right now. He laughed, petted my dog, and wished me a good day. Meanwhile, my neighbor's bull mastiff is raising heck in their backyard. TLDR neighbor blamed their dog's pews on my dog. Despite that the offending turds were roughly the same size and weight as my dog. Almost all of them. Honestly, the worst are the people who won't parent their freaking kids.

The worst was probably when some see called because his kid wouldn't go to his room. There was also this guy who called regularly because of kids playing on 4 Wheelers. They were in a rural area with adult supervision, all the proper safety equipment, nowhere near the guy's house, and were breaking literally no laws. He called all the time even after being advised to stop. Honestly I hate that he was never fined or executed for it. Let's see, we also get a lot of

vicious person calls. It's always just a bunch of kids hanging out. The 2 black people in our area or the two Sikhs though the callers would say Muslims. Honestly, people are stupid. The job would have been infinitely easier if we could tell people that their call is freaking retarded and if they would actually be punished for it. Execution might be a bit

extreme. Not exactly 911 as this was in Australia so it was 000. However, I spoke to some ambulance officers once and asked a similar question. Their response was well we once attended someone's house who called us because they had a nightmare. Had a good chuckle at that one. Something like this happened yesterday in the Netherlands. Someone called 112 because his kitchen was on fire. Turned out it was just a bad

dream. Not a 911 operator, but rather a firefighter listening to police band. Heard a conversation between dispatch D and an officer Oh. D Unit 1, be advised that we have a report of a girl riding a bike barefoot down the road at 100 mph Oh. Please confirm. Did you say 100 mph? D? Yes. Caller is afraid she is going to get a tow caught in the spokes. Oh, I'd be more afraid of her legs falling off at that speed, but will try to make contact. D trying not to laugh.

Will mark you in route. I want to see this. I wasn't a 911 operator but I was a receptionist for a law firm once. We once had a lady call and wanted legal advice on suing her paramedics. We asked what happened and she explained they broke her ribs as they resuscitated her. We tried to explain that it is common to break ribs while preforming CPR. She did not care. In lieu of payment, the court rules that the plaintiff's heart will be stopped.

Got a call once from a man about a noise complaint. Pretty standard stuff at first but then a priority call came out in the unit on the weight of the noise complaint. Was pulled off to respond to the burglary in projects IE Badger is still there. About 10 minutes later we get a call from the same guy ranting and raving about why we aren't there yet. I tell him it's because a higher priority event has occurred that needed multiple deputies to

respond. He says he doesn't give a crap in that his call should be responded to first because he called first. He then proceeds to call back every 5 minutes for the next 30 minutes or so until our watch commander that night keys up on the channel to say she'll be en route to the noise complaint. About 5 minutes after she arrives on scene she keys up again with one in custody for abuse of 911 released with a notice to appear jail. Ride some people. By that I mean most people.

Also, I like parentheses. Definitely understand. Emergency call taker here. Every weekend Subaru men in noise complaints. For some reason I get some kind of joy out of telling people police won't be attending for a long time before it's the weekend and they're heck busy. So in the military we had a call on base from a lady who said her dog was missing. I was like did you or anyone begin looking? She said no. I just paused for a second. She then says I'm the

commander's wife. Flash fire to 15 minutes later. Half of the police patrols are running around base looking for a poodle that went from zero to the biggest case of bulls ever really Dang fast. Got a 911 call from a person because their fire extinguisher hadn't been checked that month. Wasn't too happy about that one. I once had a 911 call that was a drowning death of a four year old.

The very next 911 call I answered was a woman yelling hysterically because she wanted to sign up for the rewards card program at the grocery store and it said her number was already and used. Someone stole my identity. I think I probably would have lost my crap at the lady on the

second call. Yeah, like Ginger Scourge said, it's hard to compare the pettiness and banality of most of the 'cause we deal with what is more petty, A 32 year old male who wants medics for toe pain, someone calling to get the batteries changed on their smoke detector, or a neighbor dispute over tree leaves. Who can say? One of my favorites was over dog poop. Neighbor one let their dog crap in Neighbor 2's yard. Neighbor 2 went and picked it up and placed it in Neighbor one's

yard. At this point Neighbor one called us to report watching this happen, then against the best advice I could muster went outside to confront. Then I got to listen to them both yell at each other, threaten each other, and continue the hot potato, the turd back and forth across their property line until police arrived. Another gem a few years back was a guy who stabbed his own mother with a fork for eating his Hot pocket he had microwave and felt entitled to.

A guy who stabbed his own mother with a fork for eating his Hot Pocket he had microwaved. Let's be real though, you don't eat something that someone else microwaved. That's just wrong. I have a story that is not petty, nor am IA 911 operator, but years ago my family once made what must have been the most ridiculous emergency call on Christmas Day. Our large dog fell and got his testicle stuck on the radiator. Luckily it was not on.

We thought they would have to pry him out but the level headed firefighters were able to help slide out his swollen bean without without any tools. It was the craziest Christmas we ever had in the weirdest call the operator and fire department ever received on Christmas. Friend in the fire department says they are still telling that story today. I have been on thousands of non memorable calls in my 37 years

in EMS. My most memorable though was a guy called 911 and said he couldn't walk all of a sudden and felt weak. I was dispatched as a stroke. Got there and started talking to the guy, he had Jokic. I think I may be one of these. I called 911 because there was a dazed bat in my yard flopping around in the middle of the day and I was concerned it was rabid and didn't want the dog getting at it. They gave me the non-emergency number and a cop came over, scooped him up and gently placed

him in the woods nearby. I know I could have done the same thing, but I didn't want to get attacked or sick and the officer was more than happy to help. Calling the cops was my last line of defense, but I had to due to the following. My town has no animal control branch of law enforcement. I was unable to find anything for neighboring towns either. All the third party animal control services were either unresponsive or wanted an

expensive premium. The non-emergency line number wasn't displayed on my town's website. Not a 911 operator, but I remember a story that happened in Germany. Wife called 911 because her husband wouldn't stop watching pee. The cops explained they couldn't do anything but recommended a marriage counselor. Not the operator, but I have a relevant story. I was in the awaiting room with

a particularly bad kidney stone. I had already been there three hours and the waiting room wasn't really that full. I had already gone through Tridge so I was wondering what the Frick. I go up to the receptionist type person and ask her how much longer it will be. She responds with Ohio. You were next. But someone came in by ambulance with a sore throat. An ambulance for a freaking sore throat. It was at that moment I lost faith in humanity.

Luckily I was called in about 10 minutes later and 10 minutes after that I had my sweet sweet die lauded. We have several regulars who abuse 999. One of them goes through phases of calling countless times in a day, never speaking, but you can hear she's there listening to us trying to get a response from her.

Thing is, when we go and arrest her she admits an interview that she knows it's wrong and could be preventing us from responding to an emergency but still does it again a few days later. Another calls police because he has mental health issues and doesn't like calling NHS 111 non-emergency medical line and thinks police are nice but then abuses us down the phone and refuses to accept any help or advice we offer.

He's actually started calling 101 now rather than 999 as he thinks it'll keep him out of trouble. I had a woman the other night who called 999 and opened with OK two things which is never a good start. Proceeded to complain about a drunk man lying in the middle of the road shouting at people. I was actually aware of this

already. It was an elderly male who slipped and broken his hip and had been calling out for help for an hour before someone called us and we got an officer ambulance out there so that pee me off that she hadn't bothered helping him or calling earlier. Then she complained about someone parking in her parking space. Shut that one down pretty quickly.

Most annoying is the ones that start with it's not an emergency, but they always know there's a non-emergency line but can't be bothered to wait to be spoken to. 911 stroke 999 call operators of Riddick. How do you tell the difference between a distress call where someone may be trying to contact the police without alerting an attacker or just an accidental call gone off in someones pocket? How often do accidental calls, discrete distress calls happen?

I used to take 911 calls in Norway. Number is 112 for police here though. And one time I answered but there was complete silence on the other side. I tried to get some sort of response but nothing. After a couple of seconds though, I heard clicking on the very soft kind. It was hard to understand what was going on, but I understood that something was wrong. That was when I heard that the clicking was actually someone tapping their nails on the phone

to make SOS with Morse code. Immediately got a police car to the address and surely enough there was an armed robbery going on where the mother of the house had managed to hide in a closet right by the one of the robbers. There were two of them that was holding the rest of the family hostage. It truly could have ended very bad if she didn't remember or was too afraid to call. Sorry about any bad English. Why do all the sorry for bad English comments have good

English? Accidental 911 calls happen all the time. The majority of offenders are offices that have to dial 9 to get an outside line, then dial 1 before the area code. But dials on cell phones. Kids that have an old cell phone that still has a battery and they hit the emergency call button. Any cell phone can dial an emergency call even if it is not

activated. Our local policy here is that any 911 call, even if someone gets on the phone to say sorry, the police have to respond to check it out. I did 911 call taking dispatching for 13 years. Sometimes you just get a feeling. Most computer aided dispatching programs have features that tell you if you've received calls from a particular number, address person in the past along with the type of call history.

So if I look over call history and see domestic issues, then they are getting a cop no matter what they tell me. But if I'm talking to a little baby and hear the mother walk in the room and take the phone and she says everything's OK with no call history, then I tell my Sergeant and let him be the final decision on whether or not there will be a police response. I felt pretty comfortable with my intuition.

We handled a call one night where my partner thought she heard a little sniffle on the line. When she answered it was just barely audible and then the line was disconnected. System gave us a general GPS location so we got police started. Then we researched the number and got an exact address. As the officer got to the house he peeked in the front window and saw slight movement over the stairs. He kicked into the door and found the woman hanging. He cut her down and saved her life.

She had called 911 so that officers would find her instead of her family. She later told the officer that as soon as she saw him turn on her St., she strung herself up and my partner not paid attention. OR and continue searching for an exact address. That woman would probably be dead. That's incredible. I guess that intuition is a big part of the job. Thanks. A friend of mine drunkenly decided it was a good idea to call 911 on my phone while we were at a bar.

I quickly hung up, but they called back from a normal phone number when I answered to apologize. They asked me a lot of yes or no questions, assuming it was to protect me if someone were telling me what to say. I are you safe? Could you tell us if you were in any danger? But they didn't show up once I confirmed that I was OK. I've also dialed 911 by accident once from a home tell that required dialing 9 before the

number. That time I spoke to them tell them I was OK but they showed up at our hotel room 10 minutes later to check everything out. I used to be a 911 operator dispatcher. That is what we had to do, Ask them if they are able to tell us if they were in danger. We also still had to send an officer to them anyway. It seems a bit overkill but better safe than sorry. Not the same, but I do phone systems. We were doing a large install for a multi building campus.

Their old system was such an old pose that 911 either didn't work and some buildings always run out of a different building so the address was wrong, etcetera. I took a significant amount of time setting everything up properly and working with the local PDMS to make sure that if any of the local fire EMS police slash 911 were called, they got the correct caller. It along with the exact right building. You might ask how do you test this?

Well in this case, because this was my project, I spent overtime two days 88 going to at least half of the phones in the building dialing 911. Due to what these buildings did the 50% phones and testing every building was of high importance. Hello 911 this is from calling to test. Can you please give me the location which this call resolves to? As you might imagine that line lasted all of three calls. After that it was me. Yo 911 same or address me thanks.

Click all day. 2 days straight, 40 plus buildings, hundreds of phones. Not one mistake. Client said. And did you test the fire depth? No, and I'm not going to. I'm confident it works. After two days of testing, I called back, thanked them profusely for putting up with me, and sent 2 pizzas over to them. I was a 911 operator for two years in a very small town and I dealt with both of these

situations. More often than not, it was children who would call over and over thinking that it was hilarious to hang up in our ears. That is until we sent the cops to their house and would be able to hear the children get spankings. Then one incident happened where a girl called and put the phone in her pocket and I could hear her crying as her boyfriend beat her and threatened to shoot her and I had to get officers to the scene without the boyfriend knowing.

The girl got out of the room with him long enough to unlock the bedroom window for the officers to enter through. Very scary, but very rewarding when the girl was able to thank me face to face row. It must get annoying getting kids and idiots who don't know how to lock their phones, but things like this I suppose make up for it. I was jumping on a trampoline with my eldest son once and he was bouncing me and I was screaming because I couldn't get up. Turns out I accidentally dialed

911 from my pocket. The police showed up and asked if there was a girl screaming at this address. I had to explain, rather embarrassed, that it was me. I'm a 28 year old man. Let that sink in. It is very very difficult to tell when this is genuine and it is something I worried about as a 999 call handler. I got a call once from a woman who had collapsed in a church. She was talking normally one minute and the next I could hear her whispering the words help, help.

Then she would go back to answering my questions normally and again whisper down the phone. Help me, help me. We are trained to ask them to tap the phone if in danger, but English wasn't her first language. The phone cuts out and we advised a crew who went out. Turns out she was talking to a friend and needed her to help translate the call. However, there was another case here where a woman did exactly

this. It was a pocket dial and all you could hear was a man asking about a woman and directions or something similar. Anyway, the call handler ended the call and it turns out she had been kidnapped and murdered eventually. It was horrible and it was something I honestly feared missing. The short answer is you don't. Almost without exception, you will be getting a quick visit from the police.

It's not a big deal and no one gets in trouble or anything, but there's no way to tell that you are actually safe unless an officer lays eyes on you. Despite what you read on Reddit, most police officers are really nice folks. They would rather respond to 100 butt dials than show up late to a domestic turned homicide. They would rather respond to 100 butt dials then show up late to a domestic turned homicide. This a million times over. Absolutely devastating.

I used to be an EMT in the catch or dispatch when someone would dial 911 and it wasn't clear what was going on. Were dispatched as a sick person and they'd send us the ambulance and a police cruiser. So when we were waiting at the station for a call and got sick person it was always an exciting ride over not knowing what it would actually be. 90% of the time it was boring or nothing, but there's always that 10%. 911

dispatcher here. When I first started the job I had no idea what the heck I was doing. I had an experienced officer sitting the desk with me for three months. I was the only dispatcher on. After a while you get to feeling talking to people. You understand tones or stress in someone's voice. You also understand when someone is being a prick and fricking around. Either way you are going to get a knock on your door if you are pranking 911.

Also, I let my officers know you are screwing around and they make sure to give you a nice talking to. Any other questions that I can answer I gladly will. I have been a dispatcher for almost 2 years now as well as police fire. I will answer the best I can hopefully. The site's so stuffed away in these 2713 comments. Here's my time to shine. So back when I was 16 or so I had this stupid two sided phone.

One side was all touchscreen with two buttons and the other side was a tiny screen with the number pad. Anyways, I am at a friend's house and he suggests we go hang out with his neighbors. All right, no prob. We head over there we are all sitting in the kitchen when the neighbor guy says oh hey let me show you guys this cool new thing I got. Little did I know my friend was in on the whole deal. So a couple minutes passes by and my my friend says hey chop chop medafica look.

I ever so slightly turn my head to my left and I'm face to face with a snake. I have never screamed jumped up around so fast in my life. I lock myself in the bathroom thinking I'm safe while these butt holes one up me and start shoving the snake under the door. Commence more screaming and me begging them to stop while simultaneously trying to hoist myself onto the sink.

I managed to butt dial the emergency call option on my phone so the operator picks up unbeknownst to me and hears me screaming bloody murder saying stop please for the love of God stop please Siri. Finally they stop at which point my phone rings and I hear Mom I have units dispatched to you are you in a safe location? So after calming down and explaining what was going on the dispatcher asks. All persons in the house stand outside and wait for units to

arrive. We are outside and we see a helicopter and we are all saying I wonder what they are looking for. Units arrive, check me out, see Snake. All the while this helicopter is in the yeah. So I ask what the helicopter is looking for. The officer is like Oh yes there's something in 10 codes over his radio and the helicopter bee lines out of the area. I've never felt so stupid in my entire life. TL doctor friends scared me with Snake but dialed 911.

Dispatcher heard my bloody murder scream. Send helicopter and units out to see Snake and make sure I'm OK. I was on the road with my local PD as a crash investigator so I was on the same radio channels because I was often the first only person besides rescue if needed to show up to a crash. We had hang ups get called out but they would always include a number so the first thing they would do is call it back from

the 911 station. If that didn't get an answer, they would put out a call with a specific signal code, like A10 code that was just a call and hang up with no dialogue. If it seemed like a pocket call or the phone was hidden, but they could make out background sounds, they would describe them to the officer. There's a fight or someone crying or something loud in the background. The call center has call history built into the call receiving system. So let's say this happened four

times in the last 10 minutes. That would be relayed to the responding officer. If it happened 10 times in the last year, that would too, because it's probably a messed up alarm system or something. So it's case by case. Ex dispatcher here. This type of call was common. We simply could not tell if the person is in distress and acting or if nothing is really happening like they are claiming. So we would always send out

deputies. It's very common to send deputies out in one of these situations only to be called out to the same location later in the night for an incident as it escalated after they left. From my perspective, as long as I could hear something on the other end, I would listen and take notes for what is going on as possible. If I couldn't anything on the other end, I would stay with the

call as long as possible. I also had situations where the person called and pretended to be talking to their sister or something else. I'd have to ask all of my questions with yes or no answers. Are you in danger? Can you get away to somewhere safe? Does the other person have a weapon? Do they have a stick or bat? Do they have a knife? Do they have a gun? Is the person a male? Is the person a female? Are you related to this person? You get the idea.

It was like a mini mystery piercing together what happened until the deputies arrived. Then you'd hear a deputy's voice in the background. Usually they didn't even say goodbye, much less thank you. When people are petrified they forget their manners. I'm sure they appreciated it.

Don't take it personally. I currently work as an emergency call handler in the UK. During a standard shift we end up with a number of silent calls or calls that have dropped before the operator has passed them to us. When calling 999 in the UK you firstly go through to a BT operator where they will ask you what service you want. They will then pass you to US police. If you request more than one service that includes the police, then you will always be put through to us first.

We can then call either fire or ambulance. When you have a silent call you will always try to call them back. While this is happening you tag the Intel team to start completing checks on the number, such as whether they have called before and possibly gave an address. If you call from a landline then the operator will know your address. If you call from a mobile we will be given approximate

location details. Red flags would be previous calls linked to domestic violence, Intel objects relating to child neglect, or issues in the home. If we have an exact address, such as when people call from a landline, we will always attend. If it's a mobile with no previous calls or Intel, then we will call 3 times and then close pending further calls. If anyone has any other questions relating to the job, fire away. Tip for American tourists visiting Stuttgart.

If you dial 911 there, you end up at Porsche headquarters, not the police. Police is 110 in Germany, not sure about everywhere. Where I grew up, any ambiguous 911 call, including silence on the other end involved sending a police car, an ambulance, and a fire truck just in case, even if they are 99% sure it's a prank or accident. Hopefully this is similar everywhere, though probably less

practical in large cities. It may have been stopped to have police, an emergency medical service, and a fire department involved in every 911 back in the day, but now it's just send a police car and check out if there is a real emergency. It would cost too much money to send out all three services on every 911 calls. I usually listen, if it doesn't seem bad just attempt a call back. If they answer I get an address and send a cop.

If not they get a voicemail saying they need to give us a call back on the non-emergency line. If it seems suspicious then I'll take a couple extra steps in locating an owner to the phone but other than that you can't do much more. One call I had was I heard like a woman yelling and then the line went dead. After that I called back and spoke to a male who said he lived in the woods. So we searched the area of the pink from 911 and get nothing. Then we ping the dudes cell

phone and find him in his house. He did have one and everything appeared normal and we haven't had a body show up since. Fingers crossed. Also check out our slash 911 dispatchers where we have weekly discussions and also allow for these types of questions all the time. I am late to the party, but I was a 911 dispatcher. It relied on a lot of intuition. Honestly. Dispatching really requires you to trust your instincts and they

get scarily accurate. When I was training, I learned from a lady who won a national award for her work. We had a call where the female caller said she was in a car accident and hit a tree but was now at home. She sounded more afraid and upset than most car accident victims so we pressed For more information. The caller got more up set so we started asking yes, no questions. Are you hurt? Yes. Are you alone number? Is your husband with you? Yes.

Did he hurt you? Yes. Domestic violence calls are highly dangerous for officers, so it was really important to figure this out and dispatch multiple officers when we wouldn't have for just a traffic accident. We sent two or three officers. It turned out that the caller had been assaulted by her husband and he was trying to pass it off as injuries from a car accident. That job is hard as heck, but

very rewarding. Another gut feeling helped me take part in the rescue of a kidnapped child from an Amber Alert. It's one of my proudest moments. UK 999 operator here. I work in the center which takes the 999 call initially. The caller then tells us which emergency service they need and we connect them to that service for us. We have very strict procedures to follow if the caller won't speak or it seems to be a butt

dial. The mantra we follow is if in any doubt, connect and let the police deal with it. Back in college there was a guy who was constantly scamming people by saying his car broke down and he needed money for fix a flat but would pay you back then disappear knowing a few people who had been scammed. He tried it on me one night. I said sure but my cash is in my car parked down the block let's walk to it. I then say Oh my girlfriend is calling me one second I pull my phone out and dial 911.

The answer and I say oh hey honey I'm all right, but if you need me you should really come to intersection. The dispatcher kept asking if this was an emergency and again I'd say yeah you should really come here if you need me. This went on for about 5 minutes until I eventually said how have you not picked up on this by now? The 911 dispatcher then hung up on me and the dude ran away. Not only was I shocked she couldn't get the hint, but that

she would hang up on a person. About a year ago someone in our company had the wonderful idea of creating an internal safety hotline and they had lots of expensive handouts printed up with the number on it. All kinds of themes around it and the number was drum roll please X 9911. I was the poor killjoy who had to break the bad news to them. Did try to suggest 01189998819991197253 as an alternative. 911 dispatcher here.

As a general protocol, we ask callers who do not respond after the call is answered to tap twice on the phone if they're in distress. In most cases, whether they do or not, we send an officer their way just to be safe. Accidental calls happen all the time, 810 times a day on an average day. Discrete distress calls are not so common, maybe one a week and 90% of the time it's a domestic violence call where the the victim doesn't want his her attacker to know they've called 911.

This will probably get buried with a great story about my wife then. Girlfriend comes home with me from college for first Thanksgiving with my family. When we get to my parents house my parents make sure she gets to a phone to call her folks and let them know we're here safe. While at college you had to dial 9 to get an external number, then dial the whole number including the one before the area code reflects. Probably she does this and realizes after dialing 9/1 she didn't need to.

Well apparently where my parents live they can monitor for attempted 911 calls. She's still on the phone with her mom when the cop shows up and takes a look around the house and sees my brothers, myself, and my dad tapping the keg for the weekend. We offered him a beer after having a good laugh. Obviously he declined. Also offered him some Turkey the following day. Thanksgiving, but he was fortunately off to spend time with his family. My wife is still mortified about

calling the cops on my parents. We still laugh about it every Thanksgiving. Hey, dangerous in 2004's wife, you going to call the cops this year? Good times. About 10 years ago or so, a body was found behind the dumpster of a convenience store. It had been there a few weeks. They checked 911 calls from the outside pay phone from around the estimated time of death. A young man had called, said he was getting hassled by some

guys. Then his voice changes dramatically, sounds almost like a little boy and he's saying stuff like Oh no Oh my God why they never sent any cops and he was getting stabbed while on the phone. When I heard it played on the news it made me crazy. Just remembering it makes me sad. One time I was driving home from a concert down the back roads and saw a car off the road in a ditch with airbags deployed. I stopped the car, got out and dialed 911.

Before I could talk to the dispatcher a gun was pointed at me and a guy said you get in your freaking car and drive away. Do not call for help. I'm drunk and I got this under control. So I hung up the phone, got in my car, and drove off. Minutes later the 911 operator called back and asked if I was OK. I explained the situation and told them I was leaving the scene out of fear for my life, but would wait in a nearby public place if I needed to be

questioned. I waited about 1/2 hour in a Kroger parking lot for the cops to talk to me.

They never did. I don't know if anything came from it. People should know that many communities in the United States are utilizing a database service called Smart 911, which allows you to log onto the site and proactively add information about your household that will pop up on the dispatcher's screen if and when you ever have to make a call to 911. This might include medical stuff like a person has seizures, number of family members, security codes for the front gate, etcetera.

It's especially helpful with people with just cell phones or VoIP so it can give a clear address attached to your phone number. In my community, Snohomish County, Washington, it literally was launched today and seems like a great service. A friend of mine discreetly called 911 when a man with a gun got into his car at a gas station and made him drive somewhere he was going to rob. When the call went through, he started talking loudly. Put down the gun and let's talk this out.

We're on the corner of Main and State Street. Isn't there somewhere I can drop you off? The idiot on the other end couldn't figure it out and began to loudly say hello. You H did you dial on accident? So this line is for emergencies only. Needless to say, this agitated the man with the gun. How he managed to talk the guy into letting him drop him off is

beyond my understanding. He did work at a crisis center so this wasn't the first time he's had to deal with descalating a situation, but still, he is lucky to be alive after that massive freak up on the part of the 911 operator. 911 stroke 999 call operators of. How do you tell the difference between a distress call where someone may be trying to contact the police without alerting an attacker or just an accidental call gone off in someones pocket? How often do accidental calls,

discrete distress calls happen? I'm not a 999 stroke 911 dispatcher. I arrived at work one morning before anyone else, as is normal. The phone starts ringing so I answer it. It's a lady who works one the 999 switchboard and tells me that they'd had a call from this number and wanted to check everything was OK. I explained that has just arrived at work and that there's no one else here but me. She asked if I was sure because a lady had called 999, screamed

down the phone and then hung. I just about crap my pants. They send a copper around and found everything to be normal. We never found out what had gone on. Long time lurker, first time poster. Not a call operator but I had a situation happen with me so I had been out of work for a while and been looking but no luck. I was at an AA meeting one Friday night and was outside talking to some friends. Guy walks up and asks if any of

us are looking for work. I pop up and start discussing with him what the job would be. Limo driver? Dope. I'm up for it. So we arrange a meeting the next day at 4. Now the next day I start to realize I know nothing about this guy other than that he is supposedly sober. I did meet him at an AA the meeting.

So I also have a Galaxy S5 as a phone and playing around with it one day led me to an emergency setting where if you push the lock home button three times it will take a picture with the front and back camera and send a message to your emergency contacts with an approximate GPS location. I had told my sponsee mom and roommate about this and about my arrangement for the night and if they get a message to call the

cops. Fast forward, I meet up with the guy, everything's fine, phones in my back pocket and I'm driving this late 90s Cadillac stretch. The car was also when out of nowhere I feel my phone vibrating off the hook. I have the security partition up so I pull my phone out about 30 minutes prior and my buttness have set the emergency setting off twice and all my emergency contacts are freaking out in a group text.

My heart drops. I immediately start to respond to the text when I get a call from an unknown number. It's the local sheriff. My sponsee had called the cops and reported me as kidnapped. I had to convince them that everything was cool and that I really was safe and not tied up in a basement or deliverance style. So that's my story and that's why I don't keep the emergency setting on my phone anymore. Paramedic here.

Depending on what the dispatchers hear, they'll also send EMS and fire in addition to the police. EMS won't bill you for above dial, but my fire department will bill the caller $500.00 for a false alarm. If you don't pay then they add it onto your or your landlord's property taxes. This is why I don't pre program 911 into my phone or have a phone with an emergency button. My friend once called the cops about a shooting outside her

apartment. The operator just told her it was probably a firecracker and hung up without there being any follow up. But for Katrina, the NOPD did the test. They went around different neighborhoods and discharge blanks, hundreds of them to see how long it took people to call 911. No one ever called. I work for a large bank and manage the process that used to send huge numbers of automated

fax confirmations. Some clients would request that we stop sending the fax with the usual crap tools at our disposal. The easiest way to do that was to just change the number to some random non working number. So we used 1,111,111,111. What could possibly go wrong? Well you have to dial 9 to get an external line.

So the automatics system dials 9111 and wouldn't you know that goes to 911. So basically we launched an old school DOS attack on 911. The state police were about to shut down the power supply to the entire building before IT could finally terminate the process. Little did they know the fax server was located in another state. Surprisingly, I learned that 911 accepts faxes and had to go to the dispatch center to collect

those that got through. I also learned you don't need to dial 9 to get an outside sideline 4911 instinct. You just get this feeling something isn't right. Have the spatched cops or medics just cause of a gut feeling. Has worked out a few times where it helped the person. You may be wrong 9 times out of 10 but that one time you follow through it can save a life. Also looking a call history for address or phone number helps. That has always been helpful.

Not a 911 operator, but I worked for an audio video surveillance company for a while where we occasionally had to dispatch police and other emergency personnel when required. I once received a panic button alarm activation from a hotel in California. Our standard protocol was to pull up the live video feed and call the location if a panic

button had been triggered. I pulled up the feed and called the hotel twice and didn't receive an answer and no one including workers appeared to be in the lobby but this was suspicious. There is at least one desk attendant at all times. I had a Co worker go ahead and dispatch police for a standard walkthrough. While I was reviewing the last 10 minutes or so of video footage. What I saw was one of the most heartbreaking and tragic events I've ever witnessed.

I saw the woman carrying a young sleeping child, probably aged two or three, from floor to floor of the hotel. At times I would see her walking up the stairs and at others I'd see her getting out of the elevators. This woman was obviously distressed and was crying, but I couldn't see any reason for her to be upset. The hotel itself was a large square and there was a section in the middle of each side where there were large balcony areas

for smoking. The woman eventually took the elevator up to the 6th floor and walked out onto the balcony, where she proceeded to throw her sleeping child down into the courtyard area below. She then wrapped one end of an extension cord around her neck and the other onto the balcony railing and then flung herself as hard as she could over the

edge. The cord broke and she ended up falling onto a balcony 2 stories down, dead from a broken neck for a couple that had been now told a balcony, saw her fall and went inside to tell the desk attendant. The couple ran outside to see what the woman had thrown over the balcony before herself and the desk clerk pressed the panic button so we would dispatch police. In the time it took about 10 seconds for us to respond. The couple had found the child and picked it up.

The attendant saw what they were holding and fainted behind the desk, making it impossible for us to see. I'm so thankful for the 911 operators and police officers who handle situations like these on a daily basis. I only worked in security for a few months but it made me realize how freaking courageous these people are. I'm not a 911 call operator, but I just want to commend 911 operators of being as calm as they are when an actual distress

call comes to them. Speaking from experience, my parents got into an argument which then escalated to a fight once my dad struck my mom and my mom started to defend herself and I immediately picked up the phone and called 911 out of terror that my father would potentially badly hurt or even kill my mom. My voice was trembling and I kept stammering 'cause I was so afraid. The 911 operator was just trying to keep me as calm as possible,

and for that I'm thankful. You guys have definitely a seriously hard job and I want to thank you for your work. As cliche as it may sound, this moment in my life changed me a little bit. I accidentally did the emergency call when my phone was locked. I think I cancelled and they called back. I quickly apologized and told them it was a pocket dial. They seem relieved, not mad or anything. I've done it twice on my phone.

They appreciate it much better if you follow through with the initial call instead of having up. Both times I said it was an accident and there was no emergency in that I was in no danger and they thanked me and no trouble was had. I know I'm way late. The current dispatcher here working now. Actually on a typical day around 40% -, 60% of the 911 calls you answer tend to be pocket dials and contrary to what you see on TV, very rarely do people try to discreetly call 911.

We are trained to handle situations where they do, but in the two years experience I have so far I haven't had it happen and haven't been told any stories by my fellow dispatchers of them experience experiencing it. To answer your question, if people do discreetly call us and don't speak directly to us, it is generally a bad thing. TV has taught society that 911 can quickly and accurately triangulate your location if you call from a cell phone.

We can't. With a new generation of 911 systems we can get roughly a 100 yard radius of where your phone is. But if you are in an apartment or crowded urban street, good luck finding that. Always give your location and if that is the only thing you can give, that way we know where to go. You learn to recognize pocket vials very quickly. They are either just switching sounds or a whole lot of buttons

being pressed. Oftentimes we get calls from children playing with disconnected but still powered phones. All phones can call 911 even if they aren't hooked up to a provider, and those are the most difficult since they often call numerous times and we have no idea where the phone actually is. When you only have five people working at that time, that constant 911 call can get very frustrating. I've commented this before. I once received an emergency

call from a bulldog. The dog had knocked the phone over and dialed 9 every time it moved. It was sleeping on the phone and it sounded like someone who was choking. Emergency services were sent out, the dog was fine, was a hotel clerk, and was robbed at gunpoint. They tied my hands together and my feet together. Once they left I was able to call 911. I told them what happened and asked them to hurry for I was tied up. The dumbass 911 operator laughed at me.

This is a really crap answer but in all honestly I think it's something that just comes with experience. I can usually tell in the 1st 5 seconds of a call how it's going to play out. But Uofc get the occasional one in someone's pocket where you I'm sure and we will devour to do everything we can to make sure all is well with the caller. As for how from prank calls happen from adults, very rarely. Like genuine prank, absolutely

nothing happening. Maybe only one or two a month tend to get regulars who come in and last a few days. During school holidays we get numerous a day kids just messing about. Often the operator will confirm it was children on the line without they sounded like they weren't genuine. I keep reading comments about how people repeatedly but dial 911. You're tying up the line for someone who may need it. The first time it happens. You should take steps to ensure

it doesn't happen again. I don't think it's something to be taken lightly. If somebody calls in and hangs up, they are called back. A few attempts are made. You cannot assume something is distressful by just hearing it. A kid playing and screaming on a deactivated cell phone, which cannot be called back, may sound like a female screaming. Who is going to put money on making that distinction? People in distress often are whispering. You can hear screaming or crashing in the background and

use your gut. Sometimes when you run the number, it has a history of domestic disturbances and then the cops it will go. If it's a landline, there's an address, which makes it easier. Cell phones also have records which can take some time to pull from the record. You have a name, an address, and can run any known history of cause or violence or whatever. If you call 911 by accident,

stay on the phone. Don't just hang up and screen the calls because then you're wasting police resources, but stay on the line and clearly say something like yes I called 911 by mistake, it was in my pocket. That way the operator knows that nobody who was in danger would be so blatant to say that kind of crap. Even still they will ask follow up questions like is there any reason why you wouldn't be able to talk right now? Then again nothing is absolute.

Sometimes a female will call and say oh sorry wrong number and you'll hear a male voice. Then you ask who they're with. They say oh nobody, it was an accident and then you know something's going on if they are not admitting there's somebody else there. There is no real way of knowing if a call is accidental or being made discreetly without being

able to talk to the caller. A silent cut off 999 call can never be filtered and ignored based on any technique, which is why our unit will always be dispatched to it. If a location is known, the background noise will be a big giveaway in most cases. If it quite clearly is a pocket dial, you may be able to exhaust non-emergency responses in the first instance, but a mobile phone has an unknown location.

Without someone to speak to, there is only so much you can do. Ordinarily, you will have a unit attend home address if that information is available to you by way of a link from the number whom dialed. However, for the reasons just stated, A discreet genuine emergency 999 call without being able to communicate with the caller presents a difficulty. You can dispatch a unit of a

home address if known. Otherwise you are completely dependent on cues based on what the caller is saying, what those in the background are saying, or if other noises can be heard inside outside busy area in a vehicle. Indicator clickers are noisy as heck on a phone call. If you can speak to a caller, they may still be being discreet. I want a taxi please. Could quite easily be seen as a hoax accidental call.

But the caller really does want the police, which is why you should vet such a call with closed questions. Do you know you have have called the police? Do you require the police? Is it an emergency? Are you injured? Are you at risk of harm? Are you at your home address? Tell them their own home address if you know it all. Yes, no questions. One thing I will say to you, all accidental 999 dials happen. Never ever ever ever just hang up.

Ever explain it was an accident. Be prepared to get asked some question to validate the authenticity of what you are saying, primarily to ensure you are not under duress. See closed questions prior. A cut off 999 call is an absolute nightmare, especially from a mobile phone, especially one with no linked address person data.

The inconvenience of 10 seconds to verify an accidental call is a whole load better than thinking someone is being attacked, killed, raped, and tried to summon assistants but could not. How often do they happen? Silent cut off 999 S happen frequently. Generally, they turn out to just be accidental. Most 999 calls do not warrant a 999 call. A small percent of the total of taken 999 S are genuine. I used to have a cell number that was X91-1 XXX.

My friend tried to call me one day and he missed the first number on his phone and didn't know it. The unfortunate part is that the guy that answered his mistaken 911 call sounded just like me. My friend thinks it's me screwing with him and so he starts playing along saying that a bunch of men are trying to get into his house to rape him and a

bunch of other messed up crap. Of course the guy on the phone thinks this is strange so he's trying to get more info, but my friend my friend thinks it's still me messing with him and starts in on the guy again. He told me later when he got out of jail that he realized his mistake about 5 seconds before the cops kicked in his front door and hauled him off.

He also said the worst part of the whole thing wasn't the fines or the jail time, but standing in a courtroom full of people in front of the judge having the phone call plate and trying to explain his jokes. This man is a doctor now. We both still have 6 senses of humor though. When I was a kid, there was a cat up in a tree.

Yes, like in the movies. I decided to be the responsible one and call 911. As the 911 dispatcher started to talk, my dad yelled at me to hang up the phone and not bother the people who were there for emergencies. A few seconds later, the dispatcher called our phone again and my dad answered this time, but the dispatcher wouldn't have it. She yelled at my dad that they didn't want to speak to him after he told them it was a misunder understanding but that they wanted to speak to the

little girl. So I got on the phone and told them that there was the cat up in the tree. The 911 dispatcher was nice and told me that help was on the way. I guess it was a slow day since 2 fire trucks, one ambulance and a police car came to our house for a cat. The firemen came out in their huge uniforms all ready for the unexpected. They got on the ladder and tried to grab the cat, but the cat just jumped and landed safely on the ground anyway.

My parents were yelled at by the police again, saying that they should teach me when it's necessary to use 911. I was given a pat on the back and congratulated for being an outstanding citizen. After all that was said and done, the cat was back on the tree again. An hour later, my dad warned me not to call 911 back for the cat. My mom and grandma used to have me practice calling 911 on my plastic toy phone. They would wait in one room to come rescue me and I would go in

the other room to call. The first time though, I burst into panic tears. My mom ran into comfort me, thinking I was scared of the pretend emergency. I managed to sob out. I can't find the other one. I once was making out with my girlfriend at the time and my phone went off. We were going at it hot and heavy, but I took a moment to check my phone caller. It wasn't something I recognized so I answered this number. Contacted emergency services. Is there an emergency?

I stammered. I apologize. I must have been dialed 911 while making out with my girlfriend. I'm very sorry. The dispatcher didn't seem angry and we didn't have officers show up or check on us so I'm not sure what I said that saved us from that headache. After I hung up I explained the situation to my GF and we continued our session. TLDR almost but dialed an emergency freeway in 1994.

We were watching the OJ Simpson slow speed Bronco chase live on TV. Unknown to us, our toddler was playing with the phone and he hit the 911 speed dial. The dispatcher heard an open line and sent a patrol car. 2 cops rang our door and asked if we were OK. We let them look around. I found the phone and hung it up. Then the cops joined us as we watched OJ on the TV until he reached his house.

When I was 4I purposefully dialed 911 because my granddad was a police officer and I thought that was how you called them. 911 operators overdid. What's the most blood chilling emergency call you've heard? Mother calling stating her baby is choking on a coin. Can hear the commotion in the back and couldn't do anything. The kid was choking and dying. Don't know what else happened after.

Oh God, I swallowed a nickel when I was like 4 and my dad just grabbed me by the ankle and proceeded to beat me on my back repeatedly until it fell out. No idea how that managed to work. My sister is a 911 operator. She would call my parents whenever she was upset after a cold day at work. One of the worst ones she told us about was an 8 year old boy calling from his bedroom because the kitchen and hallway were on fire outside his room.

She notified fire department, but knowing the location was rural and it would take them 10 plus minutes to get there, she began to try and give instructions on what he needed to do to get out. Starting with finding an object to break the window so he could climb out.

But between having to calm him down, get the information, keep him calm, and get him to listen to her instructions, he ended up burning to death on the phone with her a couple minutes before help showed up. From that day on I realized how difficult and strenuous this job actually isn't, that I would never be able to do it. There's a lot of things in this thread that I find horrifying, but somehow this gets to me more

than anything else. Carjacking where woman was dragged out of the car but her three kids weren't. Got car and kids back 45 minutes later after Chase X town but little girl had been assaulted. Suspect told her he'd kill her little brothers if she screamed. That breaks my fucking heart. I had a phone call from a distressed father. His son had gone missing and had left a note saying he loved his family but couldn't go on living anymore.

The call prior to this one was from the railway manager telling me that a train driver had just hit a human. I had already dispatched A patrilka to the area and I had already heard the report and it was horrible. My colleague in the patrilka was on the verge of breakdown describing the scene. Border pets lay strewn everywhere and then it was found. Now knowing this, I put 2 and two together and knew that I was talking to her father who had all hopes of finding his son

alive again. The son had done similar things before. The father told me that his wife, the dead man's mother, was out looking for the son. I had a radio running in the background so that I could pick up info from the Sioux citizen and as I was telling the father that the police would help in the search for the lost son, I heard the most bonacillin scream that I ever heard. The mother had arrived at the tracks and I could hear the horrified wailing at what she saw.

It was horrible and I had such a hard time holding back tears and keeping my tone straight and civil. The father thanks me for the help and I could hang up. The call was not allowed to give the father the news and frankly it is just not something to deliver in a phone call. Their son was dead and gone. The father had to be kept in the dark until my patrol could give him the news and the mother was utterly heartbroken, Her desperate wailing on that radio.

It knots my stomach to this day. My mom has heard everything. She's taken calls about children being abused, rapes and murders. Nothing gets to her quite like suicide. She's still shaken about one man in particular, four years after taking his call. A man called into the most calm, stoic voice. Said I'm going to kill myself. Mom started her normal approach to this and tried to ask him not to do it, ask him what was wrong.

He interrupted her immediately and said without emotion, there's nothing you can do. I made my decision a week ago. I'm going to kill myself today. Gave his location, said my wife will be home in an hour. I'll be in my bedroom. He hung up the phone. Mom repeatedly called his number back, but there was never any answer. With each call, she wondered if he did it yet, if he could hear his phone ring as he was doing it. He died that day. When the police arrived, he was

long gone. His wife arrived right on time, and the police had to explain to her what happened. It was all perfectly planned. It's as if my mom was speaking to someone, one who was already dead. He was so far gone when he called her there was nothing she could do. It took her a long time to come to terms with that. Been dispatching for eight years. I work in a very rough area. Taken a lot of messed up calls, shootings, suicides and whatnot.

Nothing is worse than SIDS having to calm down a parent that just found their baby unexpectedly deceased. Get them to tell you their address and give them CPR instructions that you both know won't help is probably the hardiest thing to handle. Having two kids of my own, it's moments like this. I pull out my phone, look at their photos and text home to make sure they're OK. The one that stuck with me was a 911.

Hang up starts out as an abandoned call, As in a call where the caller hung up before we could answer. Call back and when I get an answer they calmly explain that their cousin had called and that there was no emergency. Right before she hangs up I hear cry of help in the background. To be absolutely certain, I have the operator next to me listen to the recording and confirm that there was a cry for help in

the background. Unfortunately, this was a call that came from a cell phone, so automatic location information is not a given and despite an attempt to call back and get wireless phase two information, it is unsuccessful. So I call the phone companies corporate security team which is responsible for assisting us in such cases.

It's unfortunate that it takes something like half an hour to get through the necessary authentication steps that they are able to give us an address for the subscriber and the last available GPS location. In this case, the two locations were close together. The GPS coordinates came back near a Creek behind the school, the addresser house about 1/2 mile away. A typical response for a 911 hang up is one officer who will casually drive through the area

with the windows down. If anyone needs help, they can approach them more. The officer will hear any signs of an emergency. This one got through a road patrol unit, the student resource officer for the school, the GPS coordinates came back near and the watch commander. They were out in the area for about an hour looking. Tried knocking on the subscribers address door and went out on foot down to the Creek but found nothing. Maybe it was never really anything.

Maybe the person who answered the phone was telling the truth, I'll never know. I'm sorry, that sounds awful to live wonder about. I was a dispatcher for about four years in a rural county. The worst call I got was a hunting accident. A guy took his six year old son out hunting with him and gave the kid a loaded rifle to carry with him. The kid, while trying to get through tamarack bushes, grabbed the weapon by the barrel and

dragged it behind him. The weapon got caught on a branch and discharged into the kids head. The father called 911, got me and didn't know where he was at as he wasn't familiar with the area and it wasn't his land. All he could tell was that they had passed a lake or pond on a dirt Rd. There are several dirt roads with ponds and I was able to narrow it down to six roads with the location data from the cell towers. This was the early 2000s and triangulation in rural areas

sucked. Not sure how much better it is now and his information. I dispatched every deputy I had on duty, all two of them, the one city cop I had on duty, and both our ambulances and fire trucks to the areas State Patrol, also a city tested with the search.

It took us over 20 minutes to find them and the whole time the father wept uncontrollably, screaming please don't be dead over and over again through the instructions I gave him from the flip chart to check his vitals, try to stop the bleeding, et cetera. My instructions only lasted about 5 minutes and I had given him all the info I was trained

to give. The remaining 15 felt like an eternity and from what the father told me and what I was told by the deputies after, he was pretty much dead immediately after the accident, the EMT still went through with their routines and loaded the kid in the ambulance because none of them felt comfortable doing otherwise. I'm the situation. This was my first shift back after the birth of my son so I think that's why it sticks with me. Two off the top of my head.

Car crash where the caller says hey this guy is bleeding from his head, you guys need to hurry up. Can you put pressure on it to stop the bleeding now? I don't want to get involved. The guy died trying to talk to an 18 year old son calling because his dad was just shot in the head randomly by their drunk roommate. Mum comes downstairs to see what the commotion is. Total chaos. First guy in your story is a Dong. It didn't happen to me but a Co worker. I used to work for a company

like life alert. The person who rang in was quadriplegic and there was a house fire. The fire truck didn't make it in time. They said the screams messed him up so much that he couldn't take another call and move to iti still get chills thinking about it. That is just horrifying. Suicides are the worst and way more common than people might think. A few days before Christmas 2017, we got a call from a father who woke up and found his 15 year old daughter hanging in the basement.

To make matters worse, officers revived her, but the loss of oxygen left her brain dead. Her parents ultimately had to decide to take her off life support. Like losing your child twice. A good friend of mine did something similar. Hung himself from a tree, told his childhood friend where to find him right before and ended up brain dead. Whenever I feel it all suicidal I just think about how selfish it would be to put my family

through all that. I was a caller in this case but when I was 12 I woke up to my dad, single parent, making strange sounds. I walked into his room to find him sat at his computer, eyes open, blood trickling down his chin, non responsive. One of the most horrifying experiences of my life. Immediately called 999 and British operator was a champ and did the great job of keeping me calm until ambulance arrived. Paramedics managed to wake him

and took him to hospital. Turns out he'd had a seizure. The blood was from where he bit his tongue. He continued to have seizures for a few years after that. Caused a lot of permanent mental issues such as memory loss. Turns out quitting alcohol cold Turkey after being a moderately heavy alcoholic for years will Frick you up. Alcohol withdrawal is a bee for anyone wondering.

Alcohol is one of few things an addict should never under any circumstance quit cold Turkey. Always seek medical assistance to do so. Almost 8 years I have heard a lot. Kid hiding under the bed while daddy punches mommy. I saved a man from suicide and possibly from killing others in the process. Lots of others. Had a van hit a guy on a motorcycle. He went through the windshield and out the back window. Thanks for doing your work.

Not a 911 operator, but when I worked for the District Attorney we had a case of domestic violence where the perpetrator was holding a baby only a few weeks old and threatening to twist his freaking head off if his wife didn't come back home. The mother screams as she begged and pleaded for him not to hurt. The baby stayed with me for a long time. Eventually the police arrived, baby was returned to mother and

the perpetrator went to prison. Even though I knew the outcome after the fact, we were evaluating the tape for evidence, listening to the. The tape was difficult. A happy ending. Finally. Not the dispatcher, but the caller. My younger sisters bedroom door was locked and she hadn't responded to my mom yelling from downstairs to do chores. Maybe an hour later my dad got some tools to unlock the door

from my room. I heard as he finally got it open and went in. I heard a crash and thought he'd fallen and he immediately yelled for my mom. My brother came out of his room to see what was going on and my mom came in a towel, having just gotten out of the shower in her room. My parents started screaming her name over and over. My mom screamed to call 911.

I emerged from my room, really it was like 10 seconds since the beginning, walked by the doorway without looking in and said I'll do it. I walked downstairs and out the front door because their screams filled the house. I called 911 and when a woman answered I said I need an ambulance. I could still hear my parents hysterical screaming. She asked the reason for needing an ambulance and I said my sister was unconscious in her bedroom. She asked if I knew why how and

I didn't. I hadn't even looked in the bedroom when I walked by. I learned later my dad had tried to revive her with CPR. The operator asked for a cross street and I hesitated. I wasn't sure what cross street meant, though my guess would have been correct. My brother came outside and I handed the phone to him, hoping he could answer more clearly. I felt guilty for not having all the answers, not using the landline, not looking in the bedroom to even see what was wrong with her to better

describe to the operator. I thought maybe if I hadn't hesitated about the cross street, help could have arrived earlier and my sister would have lived. Now I know that isn't true, but it bothered me a long time. A movie called Life in a Day came out out in 2011. It is about people all around the world living their life on a specific day. By coincidence, it is the exact day my sister died. It was comforting in a way to see what other people were doing that day.

They were having a good day and the world didn't stop. This is awful. You can't give yourself grief from not knowing how to handle a horrible situation like this though. My sister is a 911 dispatcher. She went on leave after this. A man called in saying he had shot his daughter and her six kids age infant to 11. He said that when police arrived he would kill himself. Dispatch arrived and he killed himself in front of them. Police found the daughter Outback.

They think she was leading him away from the house and kids. Kids were throughout the house. They had tried to hide. The 11 year old was with the baby. No one knows why and it was a small town. It hit everyone in the community pretty hard. Something similar happened with the family. My parents knew the dad had disappeared for something like 2 months before he was found living at a campground.

Well he went home and a few months later there is a call to 911 from the dad saying he was reporting a murder suicide at his address, hung up and killed himself. My mom has been a police dispatcher 30 years and I worked as one for the same large metropolitan agency. About 12 years ago when I was 18 for three years, I took a call from a person who witnessed A horrifying MVA. The driver was trapped in the car and it was on fire. She was a larger woman and managed to unbuckle herself, but

the door was jumped shut. I listened to her screaming as she burned alive while the witness wailed and tried to pull her from the window. She did not survive. I have let a suicidal man call and say I just don't want my kids to find me. Loud gunshot, line goes silent. I sat on the line 30 minutes until the unit got on scene. The crap still haunts me. I quit because of how poorly the agency was run, not how taxing the job is, though it definitely

gave me a thick skin. Having a 5 second 911 call like that is just horrifying. I always read through the responses to see if I'll ever meet the person who took my call. Thank you all for what you do every day. I couldn't imagine being a 911 operator. Disclaimer not me but my ex-wife. She was the one who took the call about a 13 year old having hanged himself from a third story balcony. The boy's mom called it and when she came home from work and saw her kiddo dead hanging from the

lanai. Some things you don't forget. This is one of them. She, my ex took a week off of work and cried a lot. Our kids are 13 and 15. Hope your ex is OK. I was on the third side of a call as a firefighter responding to a report of a house fire in a very rural area. It was about a 30 minute run for us and we would be meeting up with another station coming from the opposite direction at about the same time.

About 15 minutes into the drive dispatch came over the radio saying that the call came from inside the house. Upon arrival we roll up to multiple police cars and two ambulances on scene, meaning someone knows something we don't. The house is sealed up with heavy black smoke puffing from every tiny opening. This is a telltale sign that the complementalized gases are ready to explode backdraft once oxygen is added to the Super heated

environment. It was mid January -20°C outside and the roof was steeply pitched and made of steel that happened to be covered in ice. Basically, we weren't ventilating from above as we would prefer. We took a front window and made entry through a side door, found two bodies and got them out before the place erupted. We dumped water into it for hours, but without proper ventilation, we simply couldn't dissipate the heat fast enough

to prevent it from reigniting. We found out the next morning that a dude had shot up his family and set the place on fire. We had to go back later that day and find the third body, who look more like the remains of Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle after the stormtrooper attack. She was in her 90s and the one who had called 911. Not a dispatcher but I was a police officer in a rural area. Work night shift mainly. One night I responded to a call off ahead on motor vehicle accident.

Occupants trapped in their vehicle. No further details. It was winter and the milepost was a good 10-15 miles away and even running code 3, the adrenaline dump doesn't get you there fast enough. It wasn't snowing down in the valley but when I emerged up on the flats I hit a wall of snow and ice covered roads at a 110 mile per hour. I was lucky in was able to slow down before I became the next crash.

I was the first to arrive on scene 1 vehicle SUV on its side and the other a truck was part way in the ditch but upright. I ran straight to the SUV where I noticed a woman screaming with a baby. They had managed to crawl out of the vehicle with the help of other drivers who had stopped. I noticed the driver was pinned under the dash and front Fender. I'm partially hanging out of the window unresponsive. Bystanders told me that there was a 12 year old girl trapped

inside the vehicle. The mother was screaming to the girl inside. Mommy as hair baby. I climbed on top of the rolled vehicle and opened a back door so I could get access to the girl. I climbed inside where she was laying head to head with the driver. If you can imagine the chaos of the interior of a wrecked vehicle. I remember climbing over her, the stench of death in the to go box of whatever they just ate scattered across the inside. I told her to take my hand, everything would be OK.

I'll never forget yet, reaching down as her small bloody hand extended up to take mine. All I could do was keep her focused on me. The driver, her father, dead just inches from us. I checked his pulse but there was nothing. I comforted the girl while my partner pried open the rear hatch so we could get her out. Once she was out of the vehicle, I went back to the driver from the outside drivers area. He was clearly gone, too pinned to attempt CPR. His internal injuries had to be

severe. The woman, his wife, was screaming and crying. She went over and bent down yelling at him. You can't be gone, you can't be gone, this isn't happening. I tried to comfort her and I put my arm on her and walked her in the opposite direction. I told her we were doing everything we could. She was mad, upset, confused. She yelled at me. You aren't doing anything, you aren't helping him. She was in shock and didn't want to believe her husband was gone.

I often remember that night and her voice. I'm not ashamed to admit I have cried many times over that call. I am thankful the children and the wife made it out alive as well as the other driver who caused the accident. I always wonder how that family has moved on and how the girl is doing. For some reason this one just sticks with me. Not a 911 operator. I really wished I was so I could have helped the poor lady. I used to work for a Canadian call center that took American

cellular calls. We were 611 or something on their phone. Some poor lady hit my line. I could hear her scream and cry for help. I heard a man trying to break in the door to get to her and wood splintering with each hit. All I could do was say, Mom, you dialed 611, please, please dial 911. It will work even if your service is cut off. Do it now. 911. Then I hung up so she wouldn't waste more time with me. That call really made me

appreciate 911 service workers. Hats off to you folks who can handle that. Holy, we still don't know if she called 911 in time. While working as an EMT I was held at gunpoint and spent two hours trying to convince the guy he still had a reason to live. He only took me in the paramedic hostage so the police couldn't storm the place. He just wanted someone there when he was going to kill himself. When it was coming to an end it seemed like he had calmed down and we were all going to walk

out of his house just fine. Then he just said I'm sorry and he was gone. Just like that. A man call and simply say there's a body in the backyard, gunshot wound and hang up. Turns out shortly after the call he actually made it his body. It still wits me out being the last person to ever talk to that man. I know nothing else about him and never will. I've had quite a few. One that sticks with my was a clinic calling for a month's old child having some breathing

trouble. I asked to speak to dad and her. The baby crying in the background sent everyone out and thought all was well. I hung up the phone and continued on with my shift. The baby died hours later. The parents weren't really able to care for the child to begin with and they didn't believe in medical care. That is up until their baby died. It angers me that people who don't believe in medical care can have children. Babies are so delicate they need

professionals involved. My dad was working at the emergency call center but was not the one taking calls. Looked at the monitor and saw his father's address with a possible DOA. Not a great way to learn your father has died. I work in law enforcement and part of a further education in my line of work. I got to visit the comms central. During my visit I got to listening to what one of the

operators were doing for a good hour. 1st 30 minutes were minor stuff like lost animals and a few people leaving information about possible crimes. Then a so-called priority. One call came in. All I could hear from the caller's end was a woman screaming at the top of her lungs that she's going to die and loud crashing noises in the background. The operator tried to calm her down but she was in such a state of distress that she wasn't

listening to him. This went on for 5 minutes and then the banging stopped and she calmed down. A minute passes then you can hear a chainsaw Rev up and a giant cast before she screams out and then lets out a loud gurgling noise. The call cut after that so we had just the cops radio communication to go by but they had arrived. The guy surrendered to them instantly and then found the woman with her throat cut so deeply from from the chainsaw her neck was exposed.

They had no chance of saving her. Holy freaking crap. A woman called in to say her house was on fire. She was trapped in the corner of her living room and couldn't get out. The stairway was filled with fire and smoke and there was also fire coming in through her windows from the floor below. She was screaming for help. She died on the phone. I think four people died in the apartment building total.

I've heard plenty of chilling calls from the screams of people finding their loved ones dead to injuries more gory than anything out of the worst horror movies. One that I've personally taken that stays with me is a lady who called and her first words were my husband has a gun to his head. Luckily she was able to give me her address before he walked into the room and she told him she was on the phone with his

mom. I quickly had to shift to asking questions in a yes or no fashion to get the officers the information they needed. While trying to keep her looking inconspicuous, he got suspicious that she was on the phone with 911 and said that he would pull the trigger if it was the police. To her credit, she did a fantastic job of staying relatively calm and quickly giving me a yes or no in between keeping conversation with him to

keep him distracted. I sat and listened to them argue about I'll give you the gun only if you give me the phone for a while and then I could hear a struggle for the phone and the line went dead. I sat there for a minute with an overwhelming feeling of having no idea what happened next door of him. Seeing that call could have caused the death of either one or both of them. You did a great job, very clever and adaptable.

I'll add another one. I was fairly new and got stuck working the overnight after a full shift already around six, AMI got a frantic call from a woman. She stated she woke up to find her boyfriend passed out on the couch. Went through the typical questions with her. Yes he's a drug user. No he is not breathing. I was about to give her medical instructions when I heard her scream No baby, get out of the room get out. I asked who it was and she told me it was their six year old daughter.

Mum was in a state of shock before that but the remainder of the call I spent listening to her whale while she waited for someone to help. I've had almost the exact same situation, except in this case a small child died of illness and not an overdose. I'll never forget. Or her mother screams either. OMG that poor mom, that poor baby, poor you. My grandmother was a 911 operator in a small town in California back in the early

1980s. She was the only one on duty and received a call from her good friend's husband. He told my grandmother that he and his wife had fought and that he had a gun to his head. She did her best to stall him and talk him down, but he unfortunately pulled the trigger before the police could get to him. She then heard her friend screaming as she found his body. 911 operators overdid. What was the most vague call you've ever received? No longer a dispatcher but was

for 15 years. I answered a 911 call from a cell phone that only indicated A sector direction the call was coming from in the tower that the call was bouncing off of. Basically no valid location information. Initially it sounded like a butt dial situation but I stayed on the line a little longer trying to refresh the call for better location information. As I was listening it sounds like a loud deviant. Some muzzled noises in the background so I stayed on longer than I would have.

I was finally able to narrow the location down to about 3 football fields and searched in house records for the phone number. At this point there was still no communication except in the background. Then I heard what was one single clear call for help. I couldn't tell if it was the TV or a person though. I already entered A vague call to check the area and kept updating officers with further info. Eventually we narrowed it down to one Rd. that had one a house

surrounded by businesses. So officers went to the house, found that there was a teenage boy and a little brother or sister that were held tied up by parents. I tried to search for the news report but can't recall enough details. Thankfully I didn't give up one the call too soon and the children were rescued. Thank you. Just because a person calls doesn't always mean they can talk. You are a hero. It's hard to say, we get vague calls all the time and people hardly answer when you call

back. Mostly send the police and that's it. Luckily sometimes people will say they shot him or something along those lines then hang up. My favorite type of collar. You don't need the address, just fricking send the cops already. But I work in bank security but receive alert line calls from bank staff, which is essentially the same as 911 operators would receive. I had a call at midnight and it was this guy who started off by saying is this a secure line? I think they're listening.

A yes Sir, this line is secure. OK. I just can't be too careful. Listen, I think they're on to me. Weird things are happening at work. I'll get weird pop ups on my computer, on all of the computers. I don't know what to do I OK, So just take a breath and talk me through what's going on. Strange things. I don't know. I'm not sure. Too many coincidences, they don't make sense. I think my bosses are planning something, but I won't contact the police. Why won't you contact the

police? I think they're involved and they won't listen to me. Anyway. Something's happening, but I don't know what it is yet. Then I heard in the background. What the heck are you doing down here? Come back to bed. Give me the phone. He argued for a second and gave over the phone. Hi, sorry about this. I'm Frank's wife. I don't know what he's been telling you, but he's just very stressed at the moment. Don't worry about anything he's said.

He told me he was going to get water and I found him downstairs calling you guys. I'll make sure he's OK. Thanks. Bye. I'm OK. Take care of him. Bye. Was very surreal. Sounds like Frank was having a delusion. Some rambling followed by clear. There's a bomb on the train followed by a click. Middle of the night when it's supposed to be quiet and I was only working there for about a month at that point as a railway police dispatcher.

Definitely got me from feeling groggy to fully panicked in half a second. Pulled out the emergency procedure guideline for bombs. Got started on all steps to start shutting down the entire division as a precaution and started pulling the call details. Told my one colleague about the call so he could take over the the other inbound calls. Started to pick up the phone to call up other departments and the inbound phone rings again.

My colleague who was much older and experienced told me, hold up, let me take this call. A few seconds pass and he screams out, is this Jeremy? He waits a few seconds and slams the phone down a Oh yeah, that's Jeremy. He's actually a frequent caller who's institutionalized. Sometimes he gets away and runs off to the nurse's station and calls us. Happens every now and then. Cross reference the phone number and log the call under Jeremy.

Not 911 but search and rescue radio in Alaska late 1 evening in a winter Blizzard. I got the cold Coast Guard we are going over. That's it. I never heard from the ship again. I did however find some other helpful souls and background info. After being in the water almost six hours in 34 F degree water, we pick them up. All four lived. One of my most intense nights ever. Former voluntary empty here. We kept getting toned out one afternoon for stomach pain.

Took forever to get a volunteer crew together to respond to this call. Turned out to be a middle schooler with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The kid that called 911 didn't want to tell the dispatcher that he accidentally shot his friend with his dad's unsecured gun. My mother used to be a 999 UK 911 operator. She says the Vegas was heavy breathers as you couldn't tell whether it was someone injured who couldn't speak or just a

pervert. I volunteered for the Samaritans suicide helpline and the number of pervs who called to get their jiggle and was truly astounding. Cheaper than the premium hotlines I guess. 911 operator at a 40 officer department took a 911 call. Female caller get police over click. I attempted call back, no answer, straight to voicemail. Looked up history with the phone number in our report system and neighboring city had contact with someone using that number just two months prior.

Neighboring city does a check at the home and finds a vehicle that had gotten away from a police pursuit from our city earlier in the night. We go to the location and recover the vehicle while the local the department takes the person identified as the driver into custody on their local charges. Weird that it all stemmed from a

less than 3 second phone call. That's why they always at least try to teach us in Poland that whenever you are calling emergencies the first thing you say is the address. No hello, no get XXX. Just say the address first just in case something happens. 911 dispatcher in Virginia here. As far as vague goes, probably when a passerby called about a man sitting on a curb looking lonely. No description of the mail and no legit location. Caller I'm sitting at an intersection here in town and I

saw this guy. Me OK, Sir, Did the man appear to be in distress or suspicious in any way? Caller No, I don't think so, but he seemed really lonely. Me. Do you want me to send a unit to check his welfare? Caller Yes, please. I mean, it may be nothing or he may be thinking about running into traffic, and I think someone should talk to him. Me Do you remember where you saw him? Caller No one occurred near my family member's house. Me Hum. OK. What's that? Address?

Caller gives address. Me Any idea where in relation to the house? Caller No. All the streets here look the same. I'm from out of town. Me. Do you have a description of the mail? Is he WBA what he is wearing? The caller? No I didn't look at him really I just drove by and looked lonely. Me bash his head against console. All units be on the lookout for a male sitting. He may look lonely. My parents were once a vague

call on my phone. I was driving them home from a wedding because they were way too inebriated to drive. At one point my BF texted me so I handed my dad my phone to text him back. Somehow he managed to hit the emergency services button then yes. So they pick up and I hear dad go. Other than he hangs up so he gives the phone to my mom and emergency services called back. I hear her say very loudly hello no I'm fine. And I being what?

Coerced? No, at this point I've pulled over and wrestled the phone from her and then explained the situation. I felt so bad for the operator. Not to sound insensitive in this very serious thread, but I can only imagine the operator hearing a clearly drunk caller followed by a faint mom MO. Mom, give me my forgive my phone back. Mom got one where a lady reported that her neighbors were running an illegal Taco stand. I have no idea what made it illegal.

Neither did she. The officers went and cleared immediately. It was a party. They were giving away free tacos. Had a woman on the line who was locked in a bedroom after getting into a physical fight with her boyfriend but had no idea where she was and she was incredibly difficult to understand. I asked her if she was in a home or apartment. She said apt. I told her to look out the window and tell me what she saw. She said a red car and a blue car.

Not much help there so I asked her how many stories the apartment complex had and she said three. This was obviously not a lot to go on, so I finally asked what the last thing she remembers remember seeing before they pulled into the apartment complex and she said a target. I knew there was a target just outside our jurisdiction and a couple of three story apartments near there, but one in particular that we got called out to regularly so I dispatched

police. Meanwhile, the boyfriend was beating down the door, literally and was about to get in, so I knew it was urgent that we find her immediately. I hoped with all my heart that I sent police to the right place. When my officers pulled on scene, they reported seeing a red and a blue castle, so I knew we were close, but we still

didn't know which apartment. The boyfriend was about to burst in the room, so she hid under the bed and when he finally broke down the door I told her to run toward the front door and to scream as loud as she could. Which we're not really supposed to do because if they get hurt after you give them an order, it can leave the PD libel. But she was frozen and needed help and we needed to find her, or at least maybe someone would hear her scream and call us with an address.

He came into the room, she slid out from under the bed and ran to the front door. Screaming burst outside and my officers were right there. Turned out the reason she was so difficult to understand was because the bastard had knocked out her teeth. I'm so glad you managed to help her. My step dad's fire station once got a call asking whether you should throw salt or sugar on a fire to put it out. I'm not sure if the call was transferred or they'd called the station directly.

He asked why and they responded that her and her husband disagreed on it. He asked if they had a fire and they said well yes, but they were just wondering which to use. He asked where and they said oh we're just behind the station to the east. He looked over and could see flames rolling out of their kitchen window. No, I don't need you to put it out, I just want to know which of these to use because driving that thing over here is really expensive.

Guy called 911 and said there was a bomber tower. Local Walmart, very small town. So we advised our offices and went through the standard procedure of advising Walmart and having them clear out, close the store. In the meantime we called the phone company and did some tracking on the phone. Guy was fired from Walmart that day and was picked up for making a terroristic threat. Fricked his life up doing that. Calling in is so much easier.

We get a slimmed down transcript of the call takers conversation on our computers when the call gets dispatched. A ton of them are just caller requests, ambulance to X location, no further information. Which is fine because at least then they usually send a cop car along with us in case something sketchy is going on.

Incorrect information is often way worse than no information because if it incorrectly comes over as something behind they send us alone and we can end up alone on on a scene that we should have police assistance on. Last week I had a fall from standing height leg injury, turn out to be a shooting with a huge crowd of sketchy people on scene and not long before that we had an abdominal pain turn out to be a guy who got stabbed in the abdomen.

The abdominal pain dude wasn't lying, just not specific enough to save his life if the stabber was still there. Not me but my friends dad in a 999 emergency operator and he picked up a call. The caller just said help and hung up. By the time he sent the police the house fire had nearly burned the whole thing down. Oh no, in the Army and work as a dispatcher on post. What is your emergency? Silence but sounds of breathing on the phone. Hello Mail.

I need you to send special forces to my house because my mom took something and ice acting herself. So what is your address and number? We actually have a computer that tells us, but we double check in case of faulty system mail. I can't give you that information. Special forces is coming for us, Sir. Tell me about your mother. In what way is she not acting herself? Yourself male. You already know. You can see it on your computers can't you?

Where is my mom? Mind you the male sounds to be in adulthood and very slow slurred speech. So you just said she wasn't acting herself so how do you even know that? But ask me where she is male. Boo. Male special forces already know. Hangs up. I tried to call back but no response. The caller wasn't even on post. Not an operator but an EMT. Major respect for our operators as they have to get stories fourth or fifth hand and pieced together a narrative for us on

the ground. I got a call for a sick person. No other details except maybe an age. Arrived to find this guy very very dead in his backyard. Judging by the state of his body, probably died 4 six hours earlier. When I was actually a 911 operator, we had a mentally ill guy call in about once or twice a month because he thought that his neighbors were putting poison gas through his vents. However, when he would call he would say they're doing it again and then hang up.

The first time I received the call I had no clue what was happening, but since it was a fairly common occurrence the officers knew what was up. A guy that lives in a very rural part of the county called once and said the KKK was going to kill him and then hung up. It's very sad because when the sheriff's depth got out there, there was the cross burning on his lawn. As a former operator, I can say the more details you give, the better the agency can help you

in a general sense. However, I do know that people are not always in a spot to give those details. I've made a vague phone call before. Once I was going into shock from a bee sting. I didn't know I was allergic until that moment. I attempted to call 911 and all I could manage was it up. Hello. The operator asked me several pertinent questions but I couldn't remember my name or where I was. So after a few seconds of the operator asking if I was OK, I just hung up because I didn't

know what to say. They called back and I went through the same process. I was scared because I knew I was in danger, but my brain didn't know how to communicate that. Luckily, the person whose house I was at gave me some Benadryl and made the call for me. She saved my life. Not 911 operator but firefighter got sent out to a major car accident. However, the info the caller gave was that it was on the highway anywhere between our town and a town 15 kilometers

away. We had three brigades respond and each searched 1/3 of the highway with no accidents to be seen. Dispatch called the original caller back but they said they couldn't provide more info as they're out of the area now. Former Medicare call from a nursing home that said patient in wheelchair located in the lobby with breathing difficulties shortly before getting on scene. Turns into a full arrest and upon my patient contact, patient had been dead for at least a

couple hours. Went from innocuous to dead guy in the lobby of the nursing home real quick. I'm a 911 operator but a Co worker took the call. Went something like this. 911 where is your emergency comma? Caller provides address and then bang. The guy shot himself in the head behind the barn and wanted first responders to find him before his family did. She said she stayed on the line and listened to him gurgle and struggle to breathe for a few minutes until EMS arrived.

Jesus Christ that's awful to have the mental fortitude to stay on the line with him while he's bleeding out his incredible. I'm sure she is pretty scarred from that experience. Some girl calls saying her car was stolen. I'm asking questions. I ask which direction she last saw it headed. She says we are passing Northern Blvd. now. WTF. I ask if she's in the car and she says yes. Stolen car call is now a kidnapping call. I'm asking her more questions.

Police are scrambling. I then hearsay. Slow down baby, you're scaring me. Kidnapping call has now DF escalated to an angry girlfriend. Call police, still find them and make sure everything is okay. I just laugh at the idea of him sitting there quietly while she describes to the police which direction they are headed. Only but a good buddy is a police officer and guard radio to look for a shirtless Hispanic

man in a blue pickup truck. Not that vague, but after chasing him for over an hour and involving 30 police cars over three different jurisdictions, it was a guy with no drivers license and not the guy they were looking for. Not sure if this counts but my friend's dad used to be a cop and he got this radioed into him from a colleague. Injured woman in my town name need backup, nothing else. He tried responding back and got nothing.

He eventually got into contact with him a few days later and I get a woman had faked an injury and ended up attacking the officer. I was a caller here but I was sickened on a multitude of drugs my doc had prescribed me. A woman came to my and my partner's house saying someone in the alley needed help and she was too scared to step in. I called 911 as my partner headed up to see what he could do. I followed shortly after. The woman who knocked quickly vanished.

I asked for police, but was absolutely no help to the 911 operator. Me, I need the police. Someone's hurt. 911 Who's hurt? Me? I don't know. Oh, I hear yelling. 911 Who's yelling? Me. I don't know. 911 What are they saying? Me, I don't know. 911 Is it a man or a woman? Me, Gosh, I don't know. It just kept going with me, always answering, I don't know, over and over.

The police had no idea what they were walking into when they arrived, but it was a kid and that victim who'd escaped by jumping out of his own SUV that they'd taken him in and hightailing in into the alley to hide get help. He came back to our house six weeks later with a box of chocolates to thank us for helping him. I don't know is still a valid answer for us. And I've taken I don't know any day over a why are you asking me all these questions? Or worse, the caller hanging up.

Thanks for staying on the line and trying your best. Not me, but heard of a case where a domestic violence victim called emergency and it went somewhat like this. 911, what's your emergency? Hi, I'd like to order pizza. You realize you've called emergency? Yes. Can I get a super supreme? 911? Operator realizes what's going on. Are you under duress and unable to speak? But you need police help. Yes, that's right. My address is X. How long until the pizza arrives?

10 minutes. The pizza didn't show but cops did and the abusive boyfriend was separated from his knife. I think that was on ATV ad about domestic violence awareness. I remember hearing the same one. That crap got to me. Not an operator, but many dispatch systems force you to file the call under a category. I can't tell you how many times I've been sent to the sick person. Probably the most confusing calls to deal with were the ones from cars auto dialling when they detected a collision.

They only came through on certain call terminals set up to also receive the GPS data from the vehicle, but would otherwise come through like any other 999 call. You'd essentially be placed in a conversation with a probably half concussed person very confused as to why their car dashboard was now talking to them. Many people didn't even know their car had the feature built in. I was the vague call once, but apparently not that vague since they figured it out in a damned

hurry. I was 3. I had just learned about 911. I vaguely remember wanting to test it to make sure it worked. I called, breathed for a few seconds, giggled, and hung up. Feeling that perhaps, I mean, I might have done something wrong. I ran and hid behind the couch. In hindsight, this may have been a particularly boneheaded move, even for a three-year old. Because one, the couch was in the middle of an open floor plan, and two, both my parents were sitting on the couch at the time.

It was the equivalent of a cartoon fat person trying to hide behind a tree if they were trying to hide from someone right on the other side of the tree. And also, you know, I kind of lived there. They'd find me eventually. At this point, the phone rings as my mom tells the story. The dispatcher was quite straightforward. Dispatcher, Hello, this is 911 returning your call. What is your emergency? Mom? Blank confusion. Dispatcher, do you by any chance have any small children in your

residence? Mom slowly turns around like a possessed person to make direct eye contact with me. Yes, yes we do. I will speak. Speak with him. It was not a pleasant conversation. Not a 911 operator, but I recite the call from a hidden number. The man on the other side said it was rape and hung up on me. Yet I wouldn't be able to sleep that night. Me, a 911 dispatcher. What's your location? Caller says name of town. Me. OK, but where are you? C My room. M All right, but where is that?

C My house not 911 but funny AF. From one of my friends that is a Ranger they received a call from a guy who got lost in the mountains. They asked him can you tell us where you are? He said next to a tree. He was not kidding. Weird parties asking a lost person where they are them qualify as too vague to be useful to anyone. People will start talking while the phone is still ringing and I'll answer in the middle of a

story. When you ask people what address they're at, you can get things like the name of the city, the corner store, sue, a city of any other random generic name they decide for that part of the city, and my favorite, my home and at my friend so and so's house.

Like that helps at all. Other fun ones include calling 'cause they were assaulted by a roommate, lover, relative and all they'll do is yell to hurry up without ever telling you where the Frick they are or their apartment number if you do manage to figure it out and they don't know the last name of this person, just some vague crap like Henry.

They also can't give you any details of what color or type of clothing this person has on and if you ask if they are white, black, Hispanic, they'll say yeah it's not a yes or no question. Then you have the I'm on the Interstate and they can't tell you which direction they're going and give you locations that are physically impossible like east bound on I-95. And it's somewhere between these two mile markers that are 20 miles apart for a reckless driver. They saw 1020 freaking minutes

ago. It's red. Don't know if it's a truck Savo sedan. Didn't look at the license plate, but it's super important we stop them. Oh and they pointed a gun at the caller. I was once written up for a call about prostitution, predominantly black neighborhood at a corner store. He's at H that's it. Wouldn't give me any physical discrete at all and got pee when I asked how he knew. I asked what she was doing

exactly to make him think that. He hangs up and calls the chief's office before the call is even cleared. Yep. I had to send a cop out to essentially Harris. All the black women outside the store minding their own business. I'm called to the office and written up for doing my job. Most people assume you know every building ever erected or demolished. No, I don't know where the old Kmart is. Just tell me you're at the freaking. Best Buy. It's been Best Buy for over 9 freaking years.

Today's winner was a 911 call and she's very mellow and half paying attention to the phone even though she called me. Caller I. You're looking for Melvin. Generic, but name 911. Is this someone there with you? What address are you at? Caller? No. You're looking for Melvin. He got warrants and I know where he at. 911, Fine. What's Melvin's middle name or birthday? Cole now angry. I don't know. You're the one after him, not me. 911 is Melvin wanted for

something he did in our city. Caller No. He did it 2 cities over 911. Okay, is Melvin here in our city cooler? No, he's somewhere in about 7 states away. What the Frick? I-95, like most odd numbered highways, runs NS not east West. I had a person with a heavy Hispanic accent call from a 911 phone saying they were lost in the forest and very cold. They said they had been using the city lights to find their way but the snow was blocking it out and they were scared and

then they disconnected. Not a dispatcher but an EMT responding to a call that goes over as anything really vague can suck. Best example for me so far. We get dispatched for the sick person. Guy just doesn't feel good. Not enough details to give us more to save the details. He was apparently having an aortic dissection. Usually when somebody has one of these they aren't found alive. He actually lived through it, although all said had something like a 15% chance of survival

from A to discharge from rehab. Guy has an Angel or the devil himself watching his back there. Suspicious person calls. As in they can't say why he's suspicious, just something about him. Is he looking into houses? No Is he checking door handles on cars? No. Then what's suspicious about him? You just have a bad feeling. I wasn't a 911 operator but I was a clerk in a military emergency room and this probably fits the spirit of the question.

I got a call around 23 AM where person just shouted send an ambulance now and hung up before I could say anything. I had no contact with local emergency services. I actually had no contact with the military emergency services either. Basically I just shrugged and told my nurses that something crazy this way comes.