Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: cat@tygra.ddmi.com (CAT-TALK Maint. Account) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: 911 Botch-up in Detroit Message-ID: <14589@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 11 Nov 90 14:13:46 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: jpp@tygra.ddmi.com (John Palmer) Organization: CAT-TALK Conferencing Network, Detroit, MI Lines: 37 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 811, Message 1 of 11 In article <14512@accuvax.nwu.edu> sander@anet.ann-arbor.mi.us (Sander J. Rabinowitz) writes: "An Associated Press report mentioned an incident in Detroit where a "girl (age 7) phoned 911 to report that her brother was being beaten. "She was told by a 911 operator to "get off the phone" and her call was "basically ignored. The operator's insistence that the girl hang up "interfered with the girl's pleadings for assistance. Detroit 911 has been very helpful and quick during the times that I had to call them (the guy next door is a drunk who was thrown out of his house by his wife. Every now and then he comes back, waving a gun at her and threatening to kill her and her two children). "(2) I don't believe Detroit's 911 system is one where the caller's "address is automatically relayed to the dispatcher -- in other words, "the caller would be required to calmly relay his/her location to the "operator. False. The Detroit 911 system has full ANI capabilities. When a call comes in, the address of the calling number is displayed on the operators CRT. Both times when I have called, the operator has said "so the trouble is one house north of " without me saying a thing. "(3) (Disclaimer: This point is mostly speculative, but I don't believe "it's way off the mark) I think it would be safe to say that Detroit is "understaffed across the board insofar as emergency personnel is "concerned, and that the problem extends to 911 operators. That's probably true. King Coleman (Young) likes to divert funds to other more important areas like building more convention space downtown. (By the way -- ignore the recent ABC broadcast which depicted Detroit as a wasteland. It is yellow journalism at its worst. We have a few political bad apples to get rid of, but the city is much nicer than some other cities like NYC, LA and Chicago).