Ahh the 911 hangup, every officer's pain in the posterior call. Yes they happen all the time. Sometimes it is a hardware problem. Here the telecommunicator will call the number back. An officer is still dispatched even if the homeowner says everything is all right.
We have two 911 dispatch centers in the county I work in. Each handles calls to half of the county. Calls are forwarded from the dispatch center to the approriate police agency, but fire and EMS are dispatched direct.
One night the cell phone in my squad rang. It was the county sheriff's dispatcher (they dispatch us too). The deputies were all busy at a disturbance at the other end of the county, about 25 miles away. The dispatcher said they had a 911 hangup at an address in the country about 6 miles Northwest of the city I work for and would I be kind enough to go up there and check it for them. I said I would and off I went. I get up close to the address she gave me and figured it would have to be the next house, well the next house was a mile and a half down the road and about 10 numbers different. Got on the phone and called dispatch and asked if they had a name to go with the number....No name, 911 just forwarded the number. I called the 911 center and asked for a name. It turned out that a serrgeant from the department that houses the 911 dispatch center was sitting at the console, and grabbed the call when it came in and just transferred the call to the sheriff. Turns out that they sent me to the tower . It was a cell cal that was lost so the number for the cell tower it hit came across the screen. I told the 911 operator that the tower was fine, it didn't look as if it was involved in a domestic disturbance.....
The system is far from infallible.
Jeff
We have two 911 dispatch centers in the county I work in. Each handles calls to half of the county. Calls are forwarded from the dispatch center to the approriate police agency, but fire and EMS are dispatched direct.
One night the cell phone in my squad rang. It was the county sheriff's dispatcher (they dispatch us too). The deputies were all busy at a disturbance at the other end of the county, about 25 miles away. The dispatcher said they had a 911 hangup at an address in the country about 6 miles Northwest of the city I work for and would I be kind enough to go up there and check it for them. I said I would and off I went. I get up close to the address she gave me and figured it would have to be the next house, well the next house was a mile and a half down the road and about 10 numbers different. Got on the phone and called dispatch and asked if they had a name to go with the number....No name, 911 just forwarded the number. I called the 911 center and asked for a name. It turned out that a serrgeant from the department that houses the 911 dispatch center was sitting at the console, and grabbed the call when it came in and just transferred the call to the sheriff. Turns out that they sent me to the tower . It was a cell cal that was lost so the number for the cell tower it hit came across the screen. I told the 911 operator that the tower was fine, it didn't look as if it was involved in a domestic disturbance.....
The system is far from infallible.
Jeff