Something interesting about 911? When we have 911 calls waiting to be answered, an LED board at the front of the room makes a lovely buzzing/dinging noise at us. We call it the dinger and it is fantastic! Take a high stress job and add "the most annoying sound in the world" a la Dumb and Dumber...well, I'm sure you can picture it.

The dinger works well, because all we can think about is getting it to shut the hell up. It sure motivates us to get off the phone and onto the next call!

So with the dinger in mind, here is a real life experience from last night.

"911, what are you reporting?"

"This isn't an emergency, but..." (yes, she's one of those...and the dinger is going off) "I was looking for information on traffic accidents and that sort of thing."

Ok, this is a call we take quite frequently. People worried about a loved one who never showed up for their lunch date or doctors appointment will often call and ask if there have been any car accidents in the area. As time consuming as these calls can be, I do try to help these people out. Believe it or not, I do have a heart and I know what it is like to be worried about someone. So I will try to get a license plate number or a name and run it through our system to see if it hits on anything. The information I'm allowed to give out is very very limited, but I have been known to tell people "You need to call the jail.", if I find their loved one has been arrested for DUI, etc. Usually I don't find anything at all, and the people feel a little better that I don't have a report of anyone in a red honda accord spontaneously combusting in front of 7-11.

Back to the call...I ask the woman what kind of information she's looking for. And I don't have to make this stuff up, here's what she told me. (Keep in mind that awesome buzzing, dinging noise is going off. That noise settles into the back of my neck and shoulders and creeps up to my jaw and head...do you remember those Excederin commercials? "I've got a head THIS BIG!"? Yeah. That.)

"Well, I was at (rural intersection) this morning, and I saw a group of young people there. It looked like they were setting up a memorial, so there must have been a bad accident there. Someone probably died."

Now I am getting anxious. I do remember reading over the major incidents from the past few days, and there was, in fact, a fatality accident there. I really hope I don't have a relative of the deceased on the phone. I start to try to look up the call, and keep my breathing steady. I cannot tell her that her loved one is dead, that has to be handled by a sergeant. So I sure don't want my voice to give it away.

Then she says "Well, I just want to know what happened. I looked in this morning's paper, and I can't find anything about it. It must have been pretty bad if someone died and all. I was wondering if you could tell me what happened and how many people died?"

So I realize. This woman is just curious. An immeasurably worse version of those people who slow down when they drive by car wrecks. This lady missed all the action, which qualifies as an emergency in her mind. So she calls 911. To ask what happened. To satisfy her curiosity. While someone's grandma can't breathe. Or a drunk man walks down the street smashing car windows. Sorry, can't get to that dinger! I gotta answer this lady's questions because the write up isn't in the paper yet, and she is just dying to know!

Well, lady...you may not be the only one dying of your curiosity.

I've taken these types of calls before. But normally people are polite enough to call in on non emergency. They want to know why police are in their neighborhoods and if they should be worried, etc. Believe me, if the police are ever in your neighborhood and you have cause to be concerned, they will let you know. You'll get a knock on the door at 3 am and the officer will say "We're in the area hunting for an escaped ax murderer. He's going door to door killing people, so don't answer your door. Oh, yeah..and he's dressed like a police officer." Or something like that. You don't need to call 911 and ask us what's going on. If it doesn't concern you, we can't tell you anything anyway. Privacy laws and all that.

I don't know what my caller last night expected. Did she think I was going to pour a cup of coffee, settle down in my chair and get to gossiping like we were old friends? Some of the family members don't even know what happened yet, and she's well aware it hasn't hit the papers. Why on earth did she think I'd run my mouth to her? If you want to know the details before anyone else, you can come work at 911. Otherwise you aren't getting anything from us.

I had to try to keep my cool and be polite when I told my caller I wasn't authorized to release any info. But then she said "So you mean, I just have to wait for it to come out in the paper?" I let that question sit there for a few seconds to soak in (dinger dinger dinger) and said, "yes, yes you do." and then I hung up on her. Passive aggressive, I know. But if I was allowed to say what I really think, I'd be out of a job in under an hour.