Law Dispatcher

Calls for people who are mentally handicap come in every so often.  Most 911 centers have their “chronics” who call repeatedly about whatever and each center has their own special way of dealing with them.  Occasionally, they are recognizable by their story but there are a few who sound perfectly legit.   Nevertheless, at some point and time, they will be labeled with the special interest person label.   NEVER should a 911 call be blown off just because the calltaker thinks the caller is a few bricks shy of a full load.   Each 911 call should be handled and dealt with appropriately.  It is not until the responding officer lets the call center know that the complainant is a nut, that the call center should react with something less of a emergency response and even then, each call should be evaluated for its validity of a real potential emergency.  At first this may be difficult for the calltaker but eventually, they will figure out what the complainants issue(s) are and adjust their response accordingly.  Case in point…

We have a certain person who was calling in up to 9 or 10 times a day stating that a certain group of people were using illegal surveillance systems on her.  She would ask that we respond to a certain address and tell them to turn down their surveillance systems.  She sounded perfectly normal in her tone of voice and could answer any questions you had with clarity of thought.  Yet, the story just smacked of wackiness.  At first, we responded to the address she asked us to go to, only to find nothing there.  I’m embarrassed to admit just how many times our officers responded to these calls before the sergeant decided the caller was a nut job and we didn’t need to go out there anymore.  Eventually, she received the “Special Interest Person” label.    Each time she called, the calltaker would still take her call but dispatch would let the sergeant drop the call without responding, thereby relieving dispatch of any liability.    Eventually (after many months of calling 911), we arrested her on abuse of the 911 system.  That was a short lived relief as she figured out the non-emergency number and called it.  It got to the point where we were able to track her down and we put her in a mental institution for a few days.  They never stay long enough at those places, and soon she was released.  To avoid being placed back in the system again, she started calling from another county on a cell phone and refusing to give us her location.    By this time, we are talking about a year or so of dealing with her.  She was eventually caught and is now housed in a facility that can give her the attention she needs.

I don’t discredit these people for who they are.  Many, like my chronic caller, have suffered some very traumatic events in their life that has caused them to go off the deep end.  After receiving a call from her one slow day, I questioned her about what she heard, why they were doing it and a little bit of her history.  The story she told me is no doubt the truth and just heart wrenching.  I’ve had confirmation of the story from other sources and they also feel for her.  It is no wonder that she is the way she is.    Of course, there are those that are wack jobs just because drugs and/or alcohol abuse has destroyed what reasoning capabilities they had.  As for them, I have no sympathy.  They did what they did and they should pay a price for their actions.

There is no special way of handleing these types of calls until an officer can respond and deal with them appropriately.  My advice would be to avoid calling 911 for these types of people unless they are endangering themselves or others.