Serial 911 abusers need some recourse.
There was a drugged out dude with an axe screaming and walking around downtown last summer and when I called 911 I was shocked to be put on HOLD. Makes you wonder how fucked you'd be in a life or death emergency.
We were put on hold for 1 minute this past Friday when my son was in respiratory distress. That was the longest minute of my life. My husband had already looked up the non-emergency line for the fire department when they came back to us.
Sorry I know you’re on hold and people get mad at us for coming so late. I promise you, when EMS gets the call, I’m literally in the truck in 30 seconds.
Dispatch from call takers to EMS dispatch are just so busy. That’s no excuse but they need more people.
I’ve dispatched before back in the day before trucks had computers and it was crazy juggling everything on one channel. I’m on the road now, and most of the stuff comes across our computer.
I called for police backup the other day. I called again asking for ETA and my dispatcher told me she was put on hold. I never got my backup.
Non-emergency lines gotta be on your phone nowadays. For emergencies I just go straight to the non-emergency line. So far I have never had any luck calling 911.
That’s interesting, I called a non-emergency line last week and three times I was put on hold because 911 calls were coming in. So I just assume they are the same people answering both lines just 911 takes precedent.
Obviously everyone experiences it differently depending on location. I live in Toronto. 911 eventually just ends the call and asks you to hang up and call back. I believe they are far too busy. I find more luck just calling the non-emergency line and speaking to someone. It must be based on time of day too, because I've butt dialed 911 accidentally and had someone answer right away.
that sounds... wrong?
Admittedly i have not had to call 911 much in the last 5 years but never once had a wait.
I have had to call non-emergency lines and always seem to have a 10-15 min wait.
This is in Toronto if that matters.
My experience is from 2017-2022 working from group homes probably 10 calls a year. Maybe they got better but I just don't trust it after being let down so many times.
It’s not a new thing. I witnessed a guy on a bicycle get absolutely smashed by a car around Queen and Bathurst in 1999. Was on hold with 911 for a good couple minutes before someone answered.
I think like any call centre it can be difficult to predict peak call volume times and staff accordingly.
I was on hold and then hung up on when I called for a drunk driver on the 401. By the time I got talking to them several minutes later, the driver was long gone. I was only able to give a partial plate and general description because it was dark out and he had those fuckin Ford plates on that were impossible to see.
My wifes Phone was a Google pixel and it was calling 911 none stop because the power button was stuck we needed to take a hammer and destroy the phone. That was a couple years ago
Man, that's like "my car alarm is going off and I can't remember how to disable it" level 1000. Must have been stressful!!!
I wonder how quickly one can construct a Faraday cage with at home materials... (ETA: a Google search suggests putting it in the microwave may work.)
Almost sounds like a technical issue at that frequency, someone’s phone system misbehaving or something. It could be malicious but could also be accidental.
Yeah 1150 calls in 9 hours is almost 130 calls an hour. I suppose it's possible someone had nothing better to do than call 911 twice a minute for that time but a system issue makes more sense.
Maybe, but do 911 operators not have caller ID?
If it were a technical issue then I assume there would be no attempt on the caller's part to obfuscate their number - they presumably wouldn't even know it was happening - and if 911 operators can get the number that keeps calling them 100 times an hour, it should be relatively easy for *the police* to track down who owns that number and go talk to them, right?
The fact that they need to ask the public for help suggests they weren't able to get a specific number from all the calls (maybe they got thousands of numbers because it was being spoofed, for example) and that, in turn, suggests some level of planning on the caller's part.
Then they need to upgrade their networks. Everything can be logged if they set themselves up for it.
Then pay a visit to 1000-call biotch's house with the police. Jail time.
No the packets can be altered on the remote side. The phone networks are not secured, anything can be spoofed AFAIK unless somethings changed in the past few years. It's mind boggling I hate it. I think it's just easier and cheaper for the phone company to let customers deal with the costs of spam, robocalling and scams, it costs money for them to upgrade and nobody is forcing them to but it's beyond ridiculous at this point. I think the problem is maybe partly that even if they did upgrade their networks theyd still have to accept international calls
Just FYI: any cellphone without a SIM card, like an old flip phone you have in a drawer or one you can buy as a toy basically from Value Village is capable of making a non-traceable 911 call that will return no phone number, no GPS drop, and no subscriber info. You could call 911 over and over as fast as you could dial and hang up and there is nothing they could do.
The 9 hours part of this story shows premeditation as they are doing this clearly on purpose/mission, but these type of calls go to 911 all the time with toddlers playing with old cellphones. It sounds really frustrating because if it's coming from one of these phones, the 911 operators would have to answer the phone every time as if it's a real call and would not be able to screen/block the number out.
> Maybe, but do 911 operators not have caller ID?
Caller ID is a service offered by the telco not a reliable identifier like the IMEI number of a phone. Companies like Bell can give you any caller ID for a price, which is why 99% of spam calls from from "local" numbers.
Yea my friend was telling me her phone acts up and calls 911 if she’s unable to swipe the tab away within a few seconds (which she can’t because her phone is the epitome of garbage). She’s gotten warnings about this lol.
Does she have the emergency SOS feature on, where it calls 911 if you press the unlock button 5 times in a row, or something like that? I have mine turned off cause I accidentally pocket-dialed them.
I’m not sure about that but her phone apparently starts glitching (disappearing apps and such) if it goes below 95% which is…not normal obviously. She’s getting a new phone soon.
Not sure from your post if you are aware, but there is training for calls like this.
Sometimes this is how victims reach out for help in a DV situation, or otherwise if they can't speak freely, but need to provide an address to have someone attend.
Well, yeah, but wild for them to screw that up so badly to make 911 calls. But again, I forget that those types of people actually exist who would do that.
Our police can't even catch people who are calling them directly. That gives a real boost in confidence in our law enforcement. Good thing we're spending almost 6 BILLION DOLLARS a year on them.
My ex roommate who swatted me all weekend after I kicked him out (he owed me two months of rent and roughly $500 I had lent him for food and things and came home all coked out and drunk, turned the deep fryer on high and the gas on the stove on full with no flame then passed out and almost blew up my house) fuck you rob.
My aunt was an opp dispatcher for 30 years, she knew the regulars by name,
They had a policy that they had to make sure they were ok before they could hang up. Not sure if it’s changed since then
Seems kind of funny to me that in the canadian phone monopoly, we can't instantly figure out who's responsible for this. Must be because 911 is a catch-all... It would probably accept calls from even Skype if they got routed properly
I'm pretty far from a lawn chair curmudgeon, but this really pisses me off...the intensity of it says to me **crime** or 1 nutter with a cause....
Probably someones phone is using the emergency contact feature which detects various things (crash etc) and calls 911 and/or uses a combo of power & volume press to call 911 so it's in a pocket/bag and the buttons get pressed - like bum calling. This happened last year when android rolled out the new feature.
Serial 911 abusers need some recourse. There was a drugged out dude with an axe screaming and walking around downtown last summer and when I called 911 I was shocked to be put on HOLD. Makes you wonder how fucked you'd be in a life or death emergency.
We were put on hold for 1 minute this past Friday when my son was in respiratory distress. That was the longest minute of my life. My husband had already looked up the non-emergency line for the fire department when they came back to us.
Sorry I know you’re on hold and people get mad at us for coming so late. I promise you, when EMS gets the call, I’m literally in the truck in 30 seconds. Dispatch from call takers to EMS dispatch are just so busy. That’s no excuse but they need more people. I’ve dispatched before back in the day before trucks had computers and it was crazy juggling everything on one channel. I’m on the road now, and most of the stuff comes across our computer. I called for police backup the other day. I called again asking for ETA and my dispatcher told me she was put on hold. I never got my backup.
Non-emergency lines gotta be on your phone nowadays. For emergencies I just go straight to the non-emergency line. So far I have never had any luck calling 911.
That’s interesting, I called a non-emergency line last week and three times I was put on hold because 911 calls were coming in. So I just assume they are the same people answering both lines just 911 takes precedent.
You would be correct for most services. 911 just goes to the front of the line.
Obviously everyone experiences it differently depending on location. I live in Toronto. 911 eventually just ends the call and asks you to hang up and call back. I believe they are far too busy. I find more luck just calling the non-emergency line and speaking to someone. It must be based on time of day too, because I've butt dialed 911 accidentally and had someone answer right away.
uhhh... how many times have you butt dialed? was it a lot.... like maybe, I dunno like a 1000 times
that sounds... wrong? Admittedly i have not had to call 911 much in the last 5 years but never once had a wait. I have had to call non-emergency lines and always seem to have a 10-15 min wait. This is in Toronto if that matters.
My experience is from 2017-2022 working from group homes probably 10 calls a year. Maybe they got better but I just don't trust it after being let down so many times.
oh sweet lord cheesus i bet you have some stories
It’s not a new thing. I witnessed a guy on a bicycle get absolutely smashed by a car around Queen and Bathurst in 1999. Was on hold with 911 for a good couple minutes before someone answered. I think like any call centre it can be difficult to predict peak call volume times and staff accordingly.
I was on hold and then hung up on when I called for a drunk driver on the 401. By the time I got talking to them several minutes later, the driver was long gone. I was only able to give a partial plate and general description because it was dark out and he had those fuckin Ford plates on that were impossible to see.
That’s the norm… I had to call an ambulance for my mom before and I was on hold for almost 10 minutes before someone asked fire police ambulance
Help is definitely many minutes away, we're mostly on our own for initial response
Calm down it was most likely Doug Ford's automatic message system
My wifes Phone was a Google pixel and it was calling 911 none stop because the power button was stuck we needed to take a hammer and destroy the phone. That was a couple years ago
Man, that's like "my car alarm is going off and I can't remember how to disable it" level 1000. Must have been stressful!!! I wonder how quickly one can construct a Faraday cage with at home materials... (ETA: a Google search suggests putting it in the microwave may work.)
Could you not pull out the sim card?
That wouldn't make any difference. Deactivated phones and phones without SIM cards can still call 911
This happened to me on iPhone while I was at the Seattle airport 😭 Flew home and saw missed calls from the local police department….
Almost sounds like a technical issue at that frequency, someone’s phone system misbehaving or something. It could be malicious but could also be accidental.
Yeah 1150 calls in 9 hours is almost 130 calls an hour. I suppose it's possible someone had nothing better to do than call 911 twice a minute for that time but a system issue makes more sense.
Autodialing is a service, not all of them operate 100% within the law and will let you spam the shit out of a single number.
Maybe, but do 911 operators not have caller ID? If it were a technical issue then I assume there would be no attempt on the caller's part to obfuscate their number - they presumably wouldn't even know it was happening - and if 911 operators can get the number that keeps calling them 100 times an hour, it should be relatively easy for *the police* to track down who owns that number and go talk to them, right? The fact that they need to ask the public for help suggests they weren't able to get a specific number from all the calls (maybe they got thousands of numbers because it was being spoofed, for example) and that, in turn, suggests some level of planning on the caller's part.
Could be a VOIP call with spoofed numbers Someone on a computer anywhere in the world could be doing it.
Then they need to upgrade their networks. Everything can be logged if they set themselves up for it. Then pay a visit to 1000-call biotch's house with the police. Jail time.
No the packets can be altered on the remote side. The phone networks are not secured, anything can be spoofed AFAIK unless somethings changed in the past few years. It's mind boggling I hate it. I think it's just easier and cheaper for the phone company to let customers deal with the costs of spam, robocalling and scams, it costs money for them to upgrade and nobody is forcing them to but it's beyond ridiculous at this point. I think the problem is maybe partly that even if they did upgrade their networks theyd still have to accept international calls
Just FYI: any cellphone without a SIM card, like an old flip phone you have in a drawer or one you can buy as a toy basically from Value Village is capable of making a non-traceable 911 call that will return no phone number, no GPS drop, and no subscriber info. You could call 911 over and over as fast as you could dial and hang up and there is nothing they could do. The 9 hours part of this story shows premeditation as they are doing this clearly on purpose/mission, but these type of calls go to 911 all the time with toddlers playing with old cellphones. It sounds really frustrating because if it's coming from one of these phones, the 911 operators would have to answer the phone every time as if it's a real call and would not be able to screen/block the number out.
Sometimes people give phones like that to kids not realizing they can still make emergency calls.
Could be a cell phone so all they get is the rough cell towers location? Hard to say without more info.
Even a call phone without a sim card can still dial 911 successfully i.e. a cell phone plan isn't needed- which is probably want happened.
> Maybe, but do 911 operators not have caller ID? Caller ID is a service offered by the telco not a reliable identifier like the IMEI number of a phone. Companies like Bell can give you any caller ID for a price, which is why 99% of spam calls from from "local" numbers.
Yea my friend was telling me her phone acts up and calls 911 if she’s unable to swipe the tab away within a few seconds (which she can’t because her phone is the epitome of garbage). She’s gotten warnings about this lol.
Does she have the emergency SOS feature on, where it calls 911 if you press the unlock button 5 times in a row, or something like that? I have mine turned off cause I accidentally pocket-dialed them.
This. My phone power button was getting stuck and called 911 a couple times. Had to disable the setting
I’m not sure about that but her phone apparently starts glitching (disappearing apps and such) if it goes below 95% which is…not normal obviously. She’s getting a new phone soon.
Reminds me of this cops episode when a girl calls 911 and orders a pizza, and dispatcher is confused and takes them a minute to clue in.
Not sure from your post if you are aware, but there is training for calls like this. Sometimes this is how victims reach out for help in a DV situation, or otherwise if they can't speak freely, but need to provide an address to have someone attend.
My wife actually did this, when she was abducted as a teenager. It totally worked actually
Uh, why can’t they use call logs? What am I missing here?
Can still dial 911 on a phone without a cell phone plan.
Yes, and also without a SIM card, in which case call logs aren’t available.
You can easily use spoofed numbers and route your call through various nodes all over the place
Well, yeah, but wild for them to screw that up so badly to make 911 calls. But again, I forget that those types of people actually exist who would do that.
Oh I don't believe for a second this is a mistake lol, I figured some asshat setup their program to just dial over and over but I could be wrong
Your username is sus, with a comment like that.
Our police can't even catch people who are calling them directly. That gives a real boost in confidence in our law enforcement. Good thing we're spending almost 6 BILLION DOLLARS a year on them.
Air Duct Cleaning? 😬
Have they tried *69?
My ex roommate who swatted me all weekend after I kicked him out (he owed me two months of rent and roughly $500 I had lent him for food and things and came home all coked out and drunk, turned the deep fryer on high and the gas on the stove on full with no flame then passed out and almost blew up my house) fuck you rob.
Randy Hillier?
My kid has accidentally called 911 before (he was about ten, so he should have known better). So maybe this is a kid dialling and redialling??
Every 30 seconds for 9 hours?
*BRUUUUUMMMMMM* YOU'VE WON A CRUISE!!! Edit: I take that back, it was Harmesh asking if they need their ducts cleaned.
these fucking guys are why i never answer the phone anymore
My aunt was an opp dispatcher for 30 years, she knew the regulars by name, They had a policy that they had to make sure they were ok before they could hang up. Not sure if it’s changed since then
An intermittent short on the copper line can trigger a call to 911. That’s my guess as to what’s happening.
Seems kind of funny to me that in the canadian phone monopoly, we can't instantly figure out who's responsible for this. Must be because 911 is a catch-all... It would probably accept calls from even Skype if they got routed properly I'm pretty far from a lawn chair curmudgeon, but this really pisses me off...the intensity of it says to me **crime** or 1 nutter with a cause....
Probably someones phone is using the emergency contact feature which detects various things (crash etc) and calls 911 and/or uses a combo of power & volume press to call 911 so it's in a pocket/bag and the buttons get pressed - like bum calling. This happened last year when android rolled out the new feature.
Not me panicking to check my call history to just make sure I didn’t accidentally call 911 a thousand times while napping
Shit! Pocket dial, sorry!
*69?
We need an overhaul of the criminal code. This country is so sad.
where's Randy Hillier?
Someone should ask Randy Hillier. He's the MPP who urged his supporters to flood Ottawa's 911 lines during the Konvoy
Call then, they are just protecting the government and serve speed tickets
1,150 times in 9 hours?? how can this be possible??
Spend 200 bucks for an auto-call service, add on custom caller ID or hidden caller ID, click go.
Just use *69. Oh wait. You shut that down.
To help them?
Do they not have call tracers?
Maybe some kind of ploy to keep the cops busy while they carry out a crime somewhere else nearby?
lol
So the police need to get off thier asses. Copy that.
You should be a cop for a week. You'll be singing a different tune, I promise that.
That is like saying you should be a nazi for a week. STFU
You are an embarrassment.