Originally posted by: GeekDrew
Originally posted by: alkemyst
Originally posted by: GeekDrew
Originally posted by: jumpr
Originally posted by: GeekDrew
Originally posted by: dullard
2) Don't call 911. The police have a non-emergency number. Try looking it up in the phone book.
Oh for the love of god, people! That point has been made in this thread - he should call the non-emergency number rather than 911. But nobody seems to realize that not all areas have active non-emergency numbers!
Every city and town I've ever lived in has a working non-emergency number.
... congrats?
hmm the local police, fire, and rescue don't have phones?
The immediate area that I live in has only volunteer fire & rescue companies - everything is routed through the 911 dispatching center at the county level, who then sounds the appropriate alarm(s), and any available volunteers respond.
The "city" that I live in is too small to have its own police dispatching center. They used to have one, tho, so the phone number that used to be assigned to it now routes to the 911 dispatching center at the county level.
The firehouses do have their own telephones, but most of the time they are used for communication with the firefighters by their families, etc. They *can* take calls there, but there's no guarantee that anyone will happen to be at the firehouse, and if there is, they have to relay the message to the 911 dispatcher, so that they can sound the alert tones for the volunteer radios.
My last job was for a public high school... we had previously been instructed to call the local police dept for non-emergency situations... but after that happened a couple of times, we were told by the chief of police that we should only use the 911 dispatching center. :-\