This story infuriates me to a point where I have trouble even finding the words. If a five-year-old boy calls 911 to get help for his collapsed mother, I don’t care if you’ve had 15 other crank calls that day, it is your duty and moral obligation to investigate it immediately. If that dispatcher had done her damn job instead of deciding he was playing games with the phone, maybe that poor little boy’s mother would still be alive. I hope the dispatcher thinks about that every single day. It upsets me to think that I could teach Hayley to call 911 for an emergency and that someone wouldn’t bother to take her seriously, possibly putting her, or our family in danger.
I hope she loses her job.
I was told (by 911 operators) that it was POLICY to call back and verify if they got disconnected or they couldn’t understand.
WTF?!?! AH 🙁 That poor family.
Andrea, yeah. When W called it a long time ago, just by playing around with the phone, they called back and wanted us to go through the whole house to make sure someone didn’t need their services.
Holy crap, how horrifying. That poor boy.
Unfortunately, I think the 911 biz is regulated by each individual county or locality or at the very least, each state. But for crying out loud.
I live in the Detroit area and believe it or not that lady still has her job. Not even a suspention so far. I am sad to say that I am not surprised by this – it’s the way the city of Detroit is run. Pretty soon they will be out of money – that should help a lot.
I was so upset when I heard about this. What I don’t understand is when he called back three hours later, it was a different operator and she was accusing him of playing games. I mean, hello? The first operator should have contacted the police to let them know she “thinks” it’s a prank call. At least someone would have gone out there.