A recent tragedy involving a 5-year-old Michigan boy trying to save his mother by calling 911 underscores the delicate nature of a life-saving communications system that often succumbs to pranks, poorly trained operators and supervisors, understaffing, and confusion.
When the boy called 911 after his mother collapsed, he was chastised by an operator for playing on the phone and told to put an adult on the line or he would get in trouble.
The boy hung up and only hours later did he call again. Police finally responded only to find that the mother had died of heart problems that might have been survivable had medics responded to the first call.
Last year, a Michigan woman called 911 to say she had been shot in the head. The operator asked the caller if she was a mental patient and insisted that had she really been shot she wouldn’t be able to call. The woman, now a paraplegic, got help only after calling relatives in Minnesota who contacted Detroit police.
Both calls were treated as pranks when precious minutes could have made a difference. It’s a boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome – 911 operators get too many crank calls and must struggle to identify the true emergencies.
All states, including Colorado, have experienced problems with a system that fields millions of calls a year. In Colorado in 2004, an Elbert County man called to say he had been attacked by pit bulls, was trapped in a barn and feared that his wife outside the barn was in danger. Due to staff shortages, an inexperienced jail attendant helping answer 911 calls put the man on hold. More than an hour passed and the woman died in the dog attack.
Most of the Colorado problems have to do with the confusion wrought by nuisance calls and hang-up calls, not staff shortages or poor training. In some counties, more than 50 percent of 911 calls aren’t legitimate. The problems have grown with the increased use of cellphones, some of which have an automatic dialing feature that will call 911 if a specific key is depressed, often a 9 or a 1. Jefferson County 911 supervisor Cindy Cline recommends that people use their key lock; otherwise, if a phone is bumped or jostled it can call an emergency operator without the user’s knowledge. Cline said 911 operators have received calls from babies playing with phones and people in restaurants who accidentally banged the phone.
Since a 911 call is free on a cellphone, Cline said people also abuse the system, calling to order a tow truck, get transferred to other numbers, and all manner of favors.
Chris Olson, president of the Arapahoe County 911 Authority Board and director of the county’s safety services, said cellphones now make up more than half the calls to 911. Hangups are frustrating because if an operator is unable to contact the caller, the county’s policy is to dispatch police. While Olson believes most calls in his county are legitimate, most hangup calls are not.
Identifying possible prank calls is especially difficult.
The Detroit incident prompted several queries from concerned citizens seeking reassurance from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. “If properly trained, operators will ask certain questions to sort out the prank calls,” said CBI’s Lance Clem.
A year ago in Boulder, a 911 call came in that law enforcement figured was a prank. They responded anyway to find a 14-year-old girl inside her house with her dead father. The call was all too real. When in doubt, 911 operators should always err on the side of caution.
As for pranksters and nuisance callers, it’s essential that you leave the 911 system to those who need it.
