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Originally Posted by xepherys
Again, I don't believe it's a decision she's paid to make. What she's paid to do is to take calls to the 911 system, and dispatch the appropriate emergency response unit (police, fire, medic). There should NEVER be a time when someone trusted with this type of responsibility should make a decision NOT to take it seriously.
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There is absolutely NO tolerable excuse for an emergency dispatcher to make a judgement call at all, ever. Their job is to DISPATCH someone, not judge the situation. Even is it isn't law, and even if some companies do not have policies that prevent this, this is a perfect case to make those things happen. If you can't trust 911 to respond to an emergency, the whole system is pretty much shot to hell.
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Xepherys, I guess that's where you and I just can't agree. She's a trained professional with years of experience. I would assume that some of that training is how to weed out prank calls. From what I understand, 911 centers get thousands of those a year. Some cities/call centers have guidelines that a cop is sent to check on every single one unless the caller admits to a prank or a misdial (and some places even a misdial). If a city doesn't have the resources to spare to do this, then it falls to the 911 operator to decide which calls are legitimate and which aren't. Again, I would think that this is part of their training, and this lady apparently had years of experience with no similar mistakes noted, so one would think that she takes this particular part of job as seriously as it deserves. If the city can't spare the resources to check on every call (and I'll bet that other cities the size of Detroit don't make similar checks either), then who would you have that decision fall to? Would you rather have a city police department basically paralyzed because some family decided to make 1,000 prank calls to 911?
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http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060408/1029054.asp
The 911 operator's job is to do much more than just act as a dispatcher, especially in a place like Detroit. She can't send the entire police force over to the west side of town because of a bunch of prank calls. That would leave the east side devoid of police protection. Regardless of what you think, this is a decision that the city entrusted her to make. Unfortunately for everyone involved, she made the wrong one and a woman is dead because of it (maybe). These are the facts of life in Detroit aparently. I guess the alternative is for the police force to staff up to be able to answer any and all prank calls. Where's that money going to come from?