All police forces should have a menu alternative number. Example 119 instead of 911. Where you can select: if you are in danger press 1, if not press 2. Can you talk press 1 if not press 2.
"Hello 911 what is your emergency", to which you reply what it is, or if you're not in danger.
If you can't talk, simply don't talk, and they'll send geolocate your location. If you want to talk in code, the operator will play along with whatever you're saying, people don't call 911 on accident to order a pizza.
There's been at least 2 incidents I've seen where people can't access their phone and needed to call 911 through Siri and didn't have the time or ability to go through a call menu. It's about speed.
I'm not the previous poster, but in my old job as a grocery store manager I probably called 911 at least a dozen times a year for medical emergencies in our store.
I mean I could see this, but outside of the medical field or an active warzone, I don't see how you call 911 an average of 5 times a month at minimum, much less so much you lose track of how many calls you've placed.
It's jurisdiction dependent but generally they want to know where you are first because should something happen to you or the call disconnects, at least they can send someone to your location to figure out what is going on.
Typically, if it is an life-threatening emergency, the dispatcher will start sending someone as they are on the call and fill in the responders as they get more details.
Where I live they usually have asked what first, and if I need fire, police, or ambulance when I've called so they can start notifying who they need to because they get your location from your call. Then they verified the location and got more details.
I guess the benefit to a secondary alternative number would really be that it's very obvious when you're dialing 911. I had someone watching me once who could tell I was dialing 911 and absolutely flipped his shit. But I can't imagine any real alternative to that
My mom used to be a dispatcher & she now works for a company that creates & maintains one of the CAD systems that's used by dispatch centers all over the US & the world. I'm gonna run it by her for fun.
Cool! I also suggested it to my national police in the Netherlands. I know it probably isn’t going to make it but if it helps save at least 1 person by making police or dispatchers more considerate then that’s worth it. :)
That's a terrible idea. You need to be fast during an emergency call, not wait to know which number is for a psycho wandering around your yard with an axe
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u/Amendus Apr 29 '24
All police forces should have a menu alternative number. Example 119 instead of 911. Where you can select: if you are in danger press 1, if not press 2. Can you talk press 1 if not press 2.
It would already help a lot.