Situation Red - 3:30 AM this morning..

[richc]

OMG... well it's not like you have anything better to do!

Our 9-1-1 was overwhelmed by lost souls asking where and when will be postponed fireworks.......I am not kidding!

 

[cams]

I am still wondering what message the responding police received. Not the message that the OP tried to deliver, but what the dispatcher "heard" and passed on. Was the OP's message translated to a "suspicious person in a car", leading them to believe that it was just the woman whom they found?

Again, not faulting the OP, but it sounds like the officers did not know that there was a second person involved who was in hiding.

This brings up a great point for any calls for service provided. Understanding that OP gave a detailed account of what he was seeing and experiencing at the time, that message is not always passed along in exacting detail for responding officers.

Example, the old line up several people and tell the first in line some detail and ask them to pass it down the line, by the time it gets to the last person it’s completely different from what #01 was told.

Most police dept’s nowadays with the volume of calls coming in, have “call takers” and actual dispatchers.

So, whoever is calling 911 or a direct line to their local PD (the RP or reporting party) may get a call taker who answers their call, who then jots down notes (or not) regarding the call, who should be asking very specific questions of the RP and what’s happening, but that doesn't always happen, also consider that the RP isn’t a trained witness and is most likely in some form of distress, so they’ll be many essential details they don’t even notice when it’s happening.

The call taker then has to pass all that along to a dispatcher (verbally or written/typed in CAD) who in turn then passes it along to officers on the street (again either verbally via radio transmission or thru a CAD system to their laptop).

There are so many opportunities here for the information to either be diluted or elevated by the inexperience of a new call taker or dispatcher and the excitement/distress of the RP before it ever gets to the field for response.

You could also add into that line a victim on scene who is too excitable to make the original call, and now a witness is calling for them, only repeating what they’ve been told, furthering the list of people who can editorialize in their own way, what information needs to be passed on to said call taker, dispatcher, possibly desk supervisor and only then sent out to the field officers for response.

Add in possibly several calls for service happening at the same time, with different dispatchers speaking over the radio to different units in the field for their specific calls, the sound of sirens in your own car hampering your hearing while still focusing on driving and also trying to implement a course of action for arrival at your call and it’s not as easy as it sounds to separate all this information being transmitted by several different people back and forth.

It gets confusing as hell and frustrating dealing with this as a responding officer when you arrive at say, a call for a man waving a knife around at people on Atlantic Ave, when in actuality it’s a man sitting on a bench with a pair of large sized nail clippers and using the fold out file-true story) and you then have 5 cars rolling in fast for a man threatening with a knife when there actually is no knife or even a crime taking place.

Imagine the volume of calls daily and the amount of opportunities for this to happen. Frustrating doesn’t even come close.

 

[headednorth]

Where I live (close to NH border) perps from Lawrence and NH steal hanging baskets and potted plants to sell them somewhere. I did catch few of them but local police was not interested, minor crime, license plate from NH, too much work....yada, yada.....Classic catch and release operation.

Credit card fraud is the same way. Everyone is insured and or made whole so no one really gives a shit. Should've seen the look on the local cops face when I went in to file a complaint. Someone in a Target in Atlanta opened up an account with my info and bought a bunch of shit. I was filing a complaint just to cover my ass in case it came up in the future, wasnt expecting him to fly down to GA and start investigating. He went from "oh jesus is this guy serious" to "oh thank God he just wants a police report", lol.

 

[Asaltweapon]

I am still wondering what message the responding police received. Not the message that the OP tried to deliver, but what the dispatcher "heard" and passed on. Was the OP's message translated to a "suspicious person in a car", leading them to believe that it was just the woman whom they found?

Again, not faulting the OP, but it sounds like the officers did not know that there was a second person involved who was in hiding.

Ya know you reminded me of a B&E I was watching on Rt 110 at the gas station across the street from DD's in Chelmsford. I called my own towns dispatch because I knew the number and explained to the dispatcher on duty to call Chelmsford that I was watching a guy trying to obtain entry thru the front door with what looks like a large screwdriver. I don't know what happened or how my call got screwed up but I guess they sent the PD to another location. I know this because a CPD detective called me on my cell around lunch up in Maine to see if I had anymore intel on what was going on earlier that morning.

If I wasn't holding up traffic leaving DD's I would have stayed on the line to watch what turned out to be a waste of my time. I mean just how many DD's are on Rt 110 at 495 with a gas station across the street?