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From: chris@com50.c2s.mn.org (Chris Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: E911 Experience
Message-ID: <9611@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 9 Jul 90 18:34:27 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 474, Message 10 of 10


I had my first need to call 911 this weekend.  I was setting up
equipment for a concert in one of Minneapolis's parks on Sunday
afternoon, and a couple of guys who had the appearances of street
people got into a fight.  Since the audience (many with small
children) was disturbed by this, as was I, I started looking around
for security or park police people.  None were to be found.  At the
request of some of the parents, I headed for the pay phone to call the
police.  Just as I reached the phone, another man ran up and said one
of the men fighting had a knife.

I dialed 911 and said, "There's a knife fight going on in the Nicollet
Island Park."

The operator replied, "what's the address there?"  This was my first
clue that either the operator was daft, or she was not getting any
automatic information on my location.

Me: "I'm in the Nicollet Island Park shelter building, the fight is about 50
yards away in the ampitheatre."

Op: "Did you say they had knives?"

Me: "Yes, one of them has a knife."

Op: "Did you see the knife?"

Me: "No, another person here told me he saw one."  [meanwhile, fighter
A is cutting away pieces of fighter B, bit by bit]

Op:  "So you didn't see a knife..."

Me:  [exasperated]  "No, but these guys are drunk or brain damaged.  They are
way out of it.  They are scaring the people here..."

Op:  "Let me talk to the person who saw the knife."

Me:  "He left..."  [just then, another woman runs up with her four year
old daughter and says to me something about the one guy with the knife
is cutting the other guy up -- get an ambulance.  I say to the
operator "Here's another woman who saw the knife" and hand the phone
to the woman who proceeds to tell the operator in no uncertain terms
that we've got near panic on our hands, and a soon to be dead man,
even though the knife is small, he's cutting pieces out of the other
guy over and over.

The woman hangs up, and says to me that her husband has gone to call
the police also at another phone, over on shore.  I start to walk over
the bridge (I had been on my way to shore to get a bite to eat
anyway ...) and finally, I start hearing sirens.

We ended up with four police squads, a rescue truck, an ambulance and
two park police (where were they earlier, anyway?).  A few other
street people who were with the guys who were fighting immediately
made tracks for the woods, but I heard later they managed to at least
round up the one weirdo who was bugging me on stage, as well as the
two fighters -- one of whom went to the hospital with full lights and
sirens.  Don't know if he made it -- heard that he had about a dozen
superficial cuts when I got back talked with my friends.  But then a
while later, a truck and guy showed up from what I took to be the
coroner's office.

Still later, I found out a third person had also called 911.  I guess
once they got three different calls about the same problem from three
different phones they managed to figure out I wasn't kidding when I
first called.

While I can certainly appreciate false alarms, I was rather taken
aback at how much cajoling I had to do to get any response.  In fact,
who knows what might have happened if the other people had not called,
and the woman had not taken the phone from me and described the knife
to the operator.  Sheeesh.

Is this how E911 is supposed to work?  And why didn't they know my
location right away?  I know that the switch is plenty new enough, and
we've had E911 for at least 9 or 10 years here. 


   ...Chris Johnson          chris@c2s.mn.org   ..uunet!bungia!com50!chris
 Com Squared Systems, Inc.   St. Paul, MN USA   +1 612 452 9522


[Moderator's Note: Your experience was definitly NOT how 911 is
supposed to work. What sometimes happens is that although the
dispatcher usually gets an actual street address, some public
phones in parks, along the highway, etc. don't get very well identified
as to location if there is no physical street number associated with
the location. It sounds also like the dispatcher was possibly new and
not very well trained.  PT]