Who would ever call 911 all the time?

Most people rarely ever call 911, they just don’t have emergencies that often. Some people though, a small percentage of the population have “emergencies” all the time. Ever since I started as a 911 dispatcher there are people I speak to regularly and even know them by the sound of their voice or just the phone number that appears on the screen.

Some have mental disorders, others call after a few beers and get themselves in trouble. Last week one lady kept calling at 5 in the morning to complain how the landlord wasn’t taking care of the house. Our regulars don’t always dial 911, they know the nonemergency too. They call to complain and vent, they want us to make all their problems just go away.

I would like to introduce you to some of my friends, the regulars.

“Sherry”
I met Sherry with in the first couple weeks. I was just listening in at the time. 911 call comes in and it’s an older lady reporting there was a gunman inside the nursing home shooting the place up and everybody was dead. HOLY SHIT!!!! Shit is going down.

My instructor was calm as could be and said “Sherry, can I speak to one of the staff?” Sherry then gave the phone over to somebody and they said they would keep Sherry away from the phones. That didn’t go how I thought it was about to.

Sherry calls us couple time a week, thinking one of the staff members is going to murder her in the middle of the night and bury her in the back yard. According to her there must be at least 50 others buried back there. She overhears a lot of people planning on killing other people, and has a lot of specific details too.

Overall Sherry is harmless, she has some mental issues but lives in facility and is on medication that helps. Most of the time I will listen to what she has to say then tell her I will have an officer check the area out. Sometimes I’ll call the staff and have them check on her.

“Donna”
Donna used to cause us a lot of trouble before she moved to wherever she is nowadays. A severe alcoholic who would call several times a night and threaten us with her mafia family in Seattle then break down crying and ask for an ambulance.

She would always say something was hurt or she was sick because she was lonely and the ambulance would always go. If somebody asks for an ambulance, I always send them. So medical would show up and she’d be piss drunk naked on the floor then try to kiss the emts, maybe just want to cry in their laps or something.

The paramedics wanted her arrested and would ask for officer assistance every time they had to go to her apartment. If the ambulance ever took her to the hospital there was never anything wrong with her and the hospital staff would get upset. We can’t arrest somebody for wanting to go to the hospital.

This went on for months until we did arrest her a couple times for calling 911 too much, then she just used the nonemergency line. Eventually I think she was committed to a mental institution, after that she moved back to Seattle with her mafia relatives.

“Sean”
Sean is an alcoholic blind man, or at least blind when it’s convenient for him. He is hard of seeing but he’s plenty capable of calling when somebody he doesn’t like walks by the house. Sean’s biggest disablilty is taste in friends.

Sean’s friends steal from him, stay at his house and eat his food, beat him up and deal drugs out of his house. Couple days out of the weeks after a few beers Sean decides he’s had enough and calls us to kick his friends out. Sometimes he tries to do it himself and get punched in the mouth for his efforts, or at least that what he says.

Every time officers show up the story changes or he doesn’t want to pursue charges or he’ll let them stay this one last night. It’s always the same group of friends though.

Sometimes they will steal his dog, or maybe the dog just got loose and is running around the neighborhood, but dog always seems to return though.

Sean is one the types who like to play the victim card, telling me how it’s a hate crime to punch him because he’s blind, but he is walking up to his mom’s house because that’s where his bat is and he’s going to make sure he gets justice.
Sean is a problem, if he calls once then he calls another five time throughout the night.

So these are a couple people that I know by the sound of their voice. They call, or at least used to call all the time. People who call often are usually suffering from some form of mental illness. Others like Sean are the kind of people who only blame and demand other people take action to solve their problems.

The lady who wanted to complain about her landlord and the leaky faucet, we gave her every piece of advice we could, but none of it was good enough. Only if we went and fixed the faucet ourselves would she be happy. People like this are the hardest to deal with.

Hope you enjoyed the post, if you have any questions or comments don’t be afraid to leave them in the comments section and I’ll link to two other posts I wrote. Thanks much.

https://steemit.com/blog/@kotedazure/it-s-suprisingly-awkward-being-a-911-dispatcher
https://steemit.com/blog/@kotedazure/i-m-a-911-dispatcher-working-on-christmas-night