911_AMA

I actually had one just today where a guy called 911 because his smoke detector was chirping and he couldn't reach it. He was requesting we send a tower fire engine out just to change the smoke alarm on his vaulted ceiling

I also had another guy who was instructing me on this entire sting operation he "needed" the police to do. He wanted two unmarked police cars to come around the back and to have another officer come through the front to purposely try and chase out the suspect who would "have" to run out through the back, all so we could catch the man who flipped him off and sped in front of him.

I probably get a serious call from a child about once a month, as opposed to accidental or prank calls from kids every day. The first thing I'll usually ask a child is if there's an adult I can talk to, and if not and they don't know their address I'll ask them to find a piece of mail and read it to me. That way I can at least get someone out to them and go from there. This is all assuming there's no history on their phone with an address

Worst case scenario if there's no call history and the child is too young to get an address in any way I can ping their cell phone, it's just a lengthy process

There used to be this woman who lived in an "upper class" part of town who would call in every week about a "suspicious" man walking down her street. This guy was always wearing a suit and walking in the same direction on Sunday (hm maybe going to church?) and she found it worthy of calling 911. After about the sixth or seventh time she called, she finally replied to the question "what's suspicious about the person?" with "well he's black and he doesn't belong in my neighborhood!". Needless to say the Sergeant went out to her home this time and told her not to call 911 about this. She still would call for the same thing on our non-emergency line every week for a few more times until the Sergeant put a hazard on the address instructing to just have him call the woman before dispatch

One that's always stuck out in my mind is an overdose call I took not too long back. The patient wasn't breathing effectively and unconscious, and the caller was on the border of hysteria. Giving CPR instructions over the phone is stressful enough, but this guy argued with every single thing I said all while calling me names and screaming into the phone. After a 5 min struggle (way too long) I finally got him to start doing CPR. He would take it seriously for a little bit and then stop or start yelling again and for some reason thought i was lying to him about paramedics being on their way. To make matters worse, he apparently had the address wrong because paramedics drove right by his house, escalating his anger 10x. When they finally got there and took over CPR he called me a few more names then hung up. I was in a bad mood all day because of this call and didn't think to care about what had happened afterwards. A few hours later I looked back into the call and saw that despite this guy delaying CPR for nearly 20 minutes, the patient was still barely alive when they got there. I don't know if it was due to him halfway doing CPR or not, but I didn't expect the amount of relief it would be to find out that this man I had never even talked to was still alive

During really tense calls there's definitely an amount of adrenaline involved that mutes most emotions for the time being. I find the most emotional calls to be the ones that aren't necessarily distressing, but just horrible acts morally. A great example of this is child molestation calls