9-1-1 What’s The Address of Your Emergency?

     Here in Connecticut there are 169 towns and communities. The various regions each have a dedicated communications center to handle true emergencies from their citizens. It may be a local police or fire department, or a State Police barracks answering the call. The 9-1-1 system is a nationwide, universal number easily remembered, and dialed which will route you directly to the dispatch center that handles your local area.

     What many people consider a true emergency, is in fact more of a complaint, and these calls, placed on the 9-1-1 line will tie up a phone line dedicated for a true emergency. It is important to understand exactly what constitutes an emergency worthy of dialing 9-1-1 and reporting it to the authorities. Some of the instances that can be considered worthy of dialing 9-1-1 are: medical emergencies requiring an ambulance, paramedic, or fire rescue. Police emergencies such as prowlers, crimes in progress such as break-ins to motor vehicles, burglaries in progress, domestic arguments, motor vehicle accidents with injuries, and any situation in which intervention by the police or fire  will prevent further harm to life and property.

     What many people consider to be life and death emergencies are in fact “complaints”, which should be reported on the local non-emergency/routine line to your individual police or fire department. Those phone numbers are available in the [blue] pages of the phone book by individual town. It is understood that people who are witnessing something, or experiencing it firsthand are a little emotional, and they may not be thinking clearly. But by calling 9-1-1 they are not likely to get a faster response to their complaint. Calls are handled by the communications center based on urgency, and prioritized using strict guidelines set up to keep resources available to the community for actual dire circumstances.

     If you are in a situation that you believe needs intervention by the police or fire department, consider the circumstances and determine if an immediate response would in fact mitigate your problem or if it just needs to be reported and documented. Some of the calls that come into the center on the emergency line can clearly be relagated to the routine response category, and thus save the priority lines on the switchboard, and the requisite resources for those in dire straights. Some of the calls which the general public considers emergencies, but which are in fact ‘complaints’, are: roaming dogs (not aggressive), garbage pickers sifting through recycling bins on the curb, past tense incidents of larcenies {thefts}, vandalism and criminal mischief. Juvenile complaints involving boisterous youths not engaging in criminal activity, noise complaints of loud parties, fireworks complaints, and neighbor disputes over property that are not in progress. All of these types of calls may seem critical to you as they are personal, but are in fact not true emergencies worthy of using the 9-1-1 line to report it to the authorities.