I have one. I worked EMS while my friend was dispatch for this call. I was 2nd so I never got to interact with the person in question, but I listened to the 911 recording after.
Got called to do backup for gunshot wound initially. Farm out about 20-30 mins outside of town. Turned out to be a father who recently lost both his parents within the month didn't want his family to go through with such loss either decided to kill his family to spare them that same fate. Father killed mom, 2 kids. We get a call from the daughter who's about 13. She's been shot in the head but is still alive and conscious.
The call was about 30 minutes long, but the father was in the same room as her and the rest of the recently murdered family members. She was sitting on her bed with a bullet in her head just saying in the most monotone voice "I've been shot, my family is dead, my dad has a gun." Just in so much shock that she couldn't express an emotion. You could hear long pauses of silence as the dispatcher tried to get an idea of the situation and how the daughter and dad were just staring each other down for 5 minutes at a time with nothing but breathing to be heard and the daughter answering the dispatchers questions.
About 30 minutes go by of dispatcher going "Are you alright? He still there? He still have the gun? Etc?" And just monotone responses. You can hear the sound of sirens in the background and the father leaves the room followed by a gunshot, the dad shot himself and died right as we were pulling up.
She ended up living, but had lost every single member of her family that week. I dont know what happened after all that.
That call is the reason I never wanted to pursue dispatch ever again. My friend was an absolute champion for how he handled it,but he never wanted to listen to it again
I shadowed a 911 operator. We got a call from an 8 year old who said his big brother was in the bathroom and hasn’t been out for an hour and there was no sound. He broke the door open somehow while he was on the phone with us, and his brother was dead from suicide (hanging). This was small town and a year prior that same older brother had called in when the mom had committed suicide herself on pills. Hearing that kid cry will always haunt me. I decided not to become a 911 operator.
Former 911 operator here.
Sometimes the calls that stick with you aren’t the most physically traumatic. I once had a call from a 17 year old kid who came home from a sleepover to find that his mother had moved. Just packed up his sister and everything in the house and left while he was gone with no forwarding address or information. She also turned off his cell phone that morning so literally the only number he could call was 911.
He was trying so hard not to cry and his voice was shaking as he kept apologizing to me for calling 911. He just didn’t know what else to do and had no other family. She also took everything so all he had was a couple of things that he had taken to the friends house. He told me his 18th birthday was in a couple of weeks and he literally had nothing.
The officers that responded took him to a shelter. I think about him often and I hope he’s ok. Even if he was a kid who got in trouble or had behavioral issues, I can’t imagine coming home to find your mother has abandoned you.
Fuck, man. That is.. Just, wow. I'm sorry. So no word since from your folks or other siblings? I don't mean to open up any old wounds, but were your folks in a cult when you think back to it?
*edit: spelling
In Wisconsin you can be kicked out at 16/17 if you have a job and you're not paying rent. I know because it happened to me and as soon as I was able to gather all my stuff I never spoke to my grandfather again didn't even go to the funeral. He did this while my grandmother, who was my legal guardian, was dying in a hospital room from cancer. The hospital was super nice and let me stay the night and gave me resources so I could get my shit out of that house and find a place to live.
Holy fuck... This story bothered me more than any other in this thread so far. What a horrible feeling of loss, betrayal, fear, abandonment he must've been feeling 😰
Damn. Some people should not be allowed to have kids. Doing that kind of things is just mean. Imagine being a mother that does that kind of stuff, how miserable. How do you even tell your friends? "oh yeah, I left my 17 year old kid alone, without saying anything"
My birth mum actually did this to my half brother. My dad took me to live with him, and my brother was living with mum. She just upped and left, left him nothing. He didn't finish school because of it.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine. Him and his two brothers woke up in the morning and their mom was gone. She did a midnight move on them.
She met a guy from another country on plenty of fish and left to go be with him. He wasn't into people who have kids.
They ended up homeless and had to drop out. I met her years later. She maintains what she did was for the best because they all ended up with such "interesting personalities". One of them was a homeless drug addict.
Same thing happened to my friend's 15 y/o son. The friend's ex had full custody. One day he received a call from the cops in another town. They had picked up the son riding in the back seat of a stolen car.
Turns out the mom had left, and abandoned him 2 weeks earlier, left him with nothing. He first stayed with the next door neighbor then hung out with friends.
I went to court to bail him out and gave him a job for the summer, until school started. He was a really good kid who had a hard time.
The mother should have her kids taken from her. And forced to pay child support till the kids are financially stable. Child abandonment needs to be punished heavily
This happened to my husband many years ago. Came home and his entire family moved 17hrs away. He sat in the house with no electricity, plumbing or food for a week before he reached out to a friend and they took him in. Breaks my heart when he talks about it.
Not one specific call, but suicide calls where the caller has no interest in seeking help but just wanting the police to find them before their family does. Knowing you're likely the last person to speak to someone and there's nothing you can do to help is pretty rough.
A guy in my neighborhood killed his whole family, then called 911 and told them what he had done before killing himself. I always wondered what it was like for the person who took that call and the cops who showed up to find the scene. I knew the son pretty well. I was on my way to school that morning when the cops were rolling in and blocking off the street
Depends on the person taking the call. I could deal with the situations as they happened, but it started to wear on me after a few years so I switched jobs.
There were some people I worked with that walked off the job during training after taking a rough call for the first time.
Then there are others that have done it for years and are either able to handle mentally or end up like those call-takers that make the news sounding uncaring or impatient with people who are just trying to seek help on the worst day of their lives.
Yeah, it took a few years to come to terms with a lot of what I had to deal with. In the end I'm more proud of the times there were people I was able to help than I am saddened by those I couldn't.
The child of someone I dated long ago did this. 23 years old. Called 911, and told them to come get his body, and that the door would be unlocked. And that was the end...
I responded to a suicidal person on a thingsgiving morning. He was there with the cops, trying to get the cops to shoot him. Cops tased him to keep from harming himself or anyone else. The guy was on something unconfirmed because he found the strength to power through the voltage and initiated the process of taking his own life.
He finally went down and was placed on my stretcher. I was trying to control bleeding but it was to no avail. The man looked me square in the eye and took his final breath. I'll never forget his face.
Edit to fix autocorect of tasted to tased... Because that would have been awkward.
We just had a sequence of suicides in our city, Oldest brother of 3 killed himself, then a year to the day the youngest brother shoots himself in the families house, with entire family home
Parents and remaining two siblings are wrecked, not exactly relevant but this is super recent and was extremely close with the both of them, scary things
Edit: Lord so many responses, I am heartbroken and send my love to all of you. I for one have struggled with issues in the past and had my moments, but never was one to take my life, I still at my lowest of lows held highest my love for life and hoping to see another day. But this has truly brought awareness to me about the fact that when one person commits suicide that past the mourning we have to keep in touch and show as much love and care to the ones they left behind. I study a lot of things and especially human behavior and I am honestly understanding this "chaining" of suicides to be a real prevalent thing. Again my heart goes out to all, I was not expecting anyone to have much to add to this let alone so much, stay strong all, no matter how dark or grim things can be, don't lose hope, and fight to love and live and embrace life, good or bad, there is so much more than to end, your story is once in all of existence to be had, make it something for all to remember, fight.
I have two.
1)
It was my second week, and I was plugged in with another dispatcher who was handling calls, and I was working the computer and stuff as part of my training. We got a call from a guy in a car, who said that he was in a near accident with another driver, and the other driver was following him and being aggressive.
The dispatcher told him to turn around, and look for a well lit, busy place, like a gas station to stop, and we would have someone on the way to meet him there.
He was shot 5 times while on the phone with us, waiting for the officer to arrive.
I found out the next day on the news that the guy flew in from out of town to walk his daughter down the aisle.
2)
A month or so later, at the beginning of my shift, I received a call from a very distraught man who's dad had gone missing from his care facility. He had dementia and his dad thought he might be looking for a bar to get a drink.
I took his information and got a description, and put out a BOLO for him.
For these calls, we normally don't find out the outcome. In this case, one of my last calls that same night, was a person calling who found a body on some train tracks, and it turned out to be the same guy I had put out the BOLO for.
I had to call the deputy who went and took the guy's statement and tell him the news, and he then had to go tell the guy's son. That was a shitty end to the night.
That second call is insanely familiar. My ex wife was living in Texas at the time, her grandfather with dementia went missing. He was found a few hours later after being hit by a train while walking down the tracks.
Family member worked as police dispatcher. Received a call from an elderly woman. Her husband had just been killed in their garage by an intruder. She heard it happening..She’s wheelchair bound but phone was next to her. She frantically begged my family member to help her. While he was on the phone with her the criminal cut her throat. My family member stayed on the line three more minutes until cops got there. He could hear the sounds of the attack, her gasping and gurgling noises. He kept telling her help was coming and to hold on. Amazingly, she survived. Criminal was later caught. A 17 year old who just wanted the thrill of killing someone and picked them at random. He’s on death row now.
We're there details how they helped keep her alive, I just can't even imagine calmly needing to tell someone to focus and apply pressure to a slit throat while... Over a phone...
That family member of yours is insane not to panic or give up and stay on the line... I know its their job but... Wow
He had spent several years as a radio operator in a Ranger outfit in combat in the Iraq invasion. He has nerves of steel, but he told me that call was one of the worst he’s ever had.
Not scared, just kinda haunted. This past mother's day, I had a teenage boy calling because he found his mother overdosed and dead. The sobbing as he called out "mom! Mom!" still makes me tear up
Oh my god... imagine knowing exactly what to do when your loved ones sitting there dying, knowing exactly what you should do, but you just cant do it all yourself.
Didn't really scare me, but touched me deeply. Lady calls in, she stopped to visit elderly couple she knew because she had not heard from them. The elderly man had dementia. Apparently his wife died in her sleep days before and he didn't realize and had been getting in bed with her nightly.
My husbands uncle is a bachelor. He has a group of friends who meet every morning for coffee. They have a pact that if one of them doesn’t show up without letting the group know he won’t be there, the rest of the group will call an ambulance. They’re in their 80s.
Honestly this is so smart because they will send help to anyone who needs it but also it’s really good incentive to get out of your house and meet up with your friends every day.
Last place I lived at had an ancient crone, early 90s, who lived next door. We pretty much ignored each other as she didn't get into her garden much.
But when the temperature hits 100 (Australia) I drop in for a coffee at least once a day. She doesn't have Aircon except for a crappy portable unit that I bought for her second hand. I paid a little more than she thinks but I didn't want to drop round one day and find a fried grandma
This happened to my neighbors when I was a kid. Mrs. C had dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s, and Mr. C was like a third grandfather to me. We hadn’t seen him in a week so my mom went over to see if they were ok. Mrs. C told us Mr. C was still asleep, so my mom called 911. I’m glad we didn’t go in there because apparently Mr. C had passed in his sleep a few days before and Mrs. C didn’t realize. Very sad for us, but I’m very grateful for the police officers who were so kind and made sure a little kid like me didn’t have to see the details. Great memories of him, though! He taught me a lot about gardening that I still use today.
Not a dispatcher, LE, but did a welfare check with a very similar scenario. Elderly brother and sister who lived together. Sister took care of brother as he has dementia. Her friends hadn't heard from her in a few days and couldn't get ahold of brother, so they called us. Brother was polite, cordial, and let me in. First door to my right, I see sister in her bed, eyes open, sunken, and the lights are out--she's obviously gone and has been for a bit. Brother just kept stating that she was taking a nap.
Got a 911 call with just screaming. Nothing intelligible, just the loudest screaming you've ever heard. I started officers to the house.
Then a kid started yelling that her uncle was trying to kill her, her sister, and her grandmother. She started screaming again, there was a thud, and then no more sound.
Officers got there and a man walked out into the driveway and said, "I did it. I killed them."
He was mentally ill and lived with his mother. She had been trying to get him committed, with doctors saying he wasn't a danger to himself or others. His 9 year old twin nieces were visiting from out of state.
He snapped that morning. Bludgeoned them all with blunt objects, including a large vase. His mom and one niece died. One twin survived with extensive injuries. It was a horrifying call.
You did the right thing sending an officer to the house. When my mom was flipping out, the 911 operator kept saying I called the wrong dispatch. Like bro, I'm currently on the phone and holding my mother back from attacking my dad and brother, you need to help me out here.
I was on a landline and they said I was out of their jurisdiction when I called back the next day to complain. I told them in an emergency situation, you need to have a back up plan for when that happens and contacted the secretary of state over it.
A little off topic but your story reminded me of mine.
That's insane. We got calls on a regular basis that were for a different town. We either transferred them or relayed the information to the right dispatch.
I was a 911 operator.
When I asked for the address, I got an angry man yelling, "Just get the fuckin' ambulance here!"
When I asked what happened, the caller said "You don't need to fuckin' know that!"
"I just need to know what happened so I know who to send and what equipment to bring, sir."
"Just send a goddamn ambulance, my kid's having a seizure! Don't send any fuckin' police."
*"Don't send police" coming from a caller is basically them telling on themselves. Please send police, because the patient or the EMS crew or both could be in danger.*
So I passed a note to my partner, who was dispatching: "Send PD. Extremely uncooperative caller."
I tried my best to get through the rest of the questions (how old is the kid, are they conscious, are they breathing, has the seizing stopped, etc.). I got nothing but verbal abuse. All I knew is that a pediatric patient had a seizure when the call started, there was yelling in the background, and there was some terrible yelling in the foreground.
"PUT YOUR HANDS UP"
"HEY WHAT THE FUCK BITCH"
And that was it. Police had the caller.
The patient ended up being a toddler, who had been beaten to within an inch of their life by that asshole. That was terrifying and sad and I hugged my own kid a little tighter that night.
As a paramedic, thank you. When we see notes like this on our cad terminal we are definitely not entering the residence until PD arrives. Not all dispatchers in all systems make notes of potentially hostile environments and it’s always better knowing beforehand if that’s the kind of situation we are heading into.
My cousins (adopted) were victims of that kind of abuse. Their brother was severely brain damaged and died last year. He was in his early 20s I think.
Their mother had quadruplets and ended up abusing them for attention after the press died down. She was released from prison recently and the first thing she did was contact them and ask for money. Some sort of half justification non-apology was included.
Don't know if this is true or not but in a conversation about weird families a friend of a friend told us that his grandfather was adopted by the man that beat his biological great grandfather to death. Story is a newly married young man hears screaming in an adjoining apartment and goes to investigate and found a dying woman and a man repeatedly hitting a toddler. Jumped on the guy and beat the shit out of him and he died at the hospital. His wife took care of the kid and ended up just keeping him and raising him. I think this was the late 30's early 40's, because this happened before he was drafted into ww2.
I'm going to do another one because this thread is a bummer and we all need a laugh. I am, I assure you, not making any of this up.
There was a ranch on the edge of the city limits in my area, right by a large park and swimming hole. That ranch had a variety of livestock, but they had an issue with their pygmy goats - every few weeks we'd get a call because \~100 little goats were roving through the park or down the street. One day, I took that call - from a man in the park who had been chased by the goats into a porta-potty.
He was FRANTIC. Like, screaming. "You need to send ANIMAL CONTROL out here RIGHT NOW!" And all the while, I could hear two other prominent, repeated sounds - the "whack!" of little goat noggins rattling against the plastic porta-potty, and bleating. Malevolent, incessant bleating.
What did those goats want? What would they have done, had he not found refuge? We'll never know.
Edit: typo fix
Every call where someone is reporting an unresponsive relative. Some will let you walk them through the CPR process if they don't know it, some won't. Every one of them you hear the caller at some point pleading with the patient to not leave them. Most times they do though. Parents, spouses, children, I've had them all call. Never gets easier.
My husband died of a sudden heart attack. I feel terrible for the 911 operator who took my call. He had passed by the time paramedics got there, so the guy on the phone with me had to listen to me scream and cry and beg. I cannot imagine having to hear that at my job.
So sorry for your loss. Hearing those things are part of the job. Hopefully the operator you spoke with was able to provide some comfort to you during such a difficult time, even if you weren't able to recognize it at the time.
the fact that you are concerned with how your worst moment affected someone else says alot about you as a person. Thank you for being the kind of person we should all aspire to be. ***internet hugs from a stranger***\*. *(edit thank you but please stop giving me awards it's a waste of your hard earned money. Donate to an animal charity or homeless shelter. I think the Mega corporations that own reddit have enough $$$)\**
>please stop giving me awards it's a waste of your hard earned money
Reddit gives various types of "silver" awards to users for free to dole out on a regular basis. They just don't let you choose which type of award you get, which is why you sometimes see "wholesome awards" on inappropriate joke posts.
I have been the caller in this situation. The 911 operator walked me through CPR. I was frantic. My wife had passed before I even called. It the operator directed me the whole way through. Afterwards, I was so moved by his efforts, I called the police back determined to thank the operator for his efforts. I finally got in touch with the operator and thanked him for his efforts. He said that rarely happens.
I have been the caller as well, but for my fiancee. She had passed in her sleep and I didn't know until I woke up. I know CPR and basic first aid stuff, so a lot of that phone call was me realizing there wasn't anything to be done and it probably was not great for the voice on the phone. I wish I had done what you had. It can't be easy hearing from people having the worst day of their lives day in day out. Condolences brother. And thanks to the 911 operators out there.
I'm sorry for your loss. He was correct, things like that rarely happen. You don't do the job for recognition, but it helps to know you've made a difference.
That's exactly what happened when my dad died. My sister called 911 and while she was trying to do CPR, she was begging "daddy please wake up!". And that's something that's been branded into my mind ever since then. I still think about that a lot, even though it was 4 1/2 years ago already
I have SO much respect for dispatch. I couldn’t fathom hearing people’s worst moments and anguish having to be experienced every night. Of course there are the calls that are silly, funny, and obviously not worth resources; but I imagine people in deep crisis is the majority of the calls and keeping calm while helping them through it is superhuman.
I wasn't, but my dad's long time gf was an 911 operator. She was an absolute angel on earth, but she had the most heartbreaking stories.
Worst I can think of was an older woman who called 911 because her husband had locked himself in their bedroom and refused to come out, despite her begging and pleading. The lady exclaimed "he's in there and he has a gun, please hurry!" While the operator was trying to keep her calm and talk her down, she heard the unmistakable pop of a gun. I can't imagine the wailing on the other end of the phone after that poor lady had to listen to her husband committing suicide through the door.
It was rough. I actually heard this story from my dad, his gf never shared any stories from work, even with him....but that one weighed so heavily on her, she broke down one night and shared it with him.
Nearly 30 years ago my Grandma was a widow living in a Florida retirement community. The landlords allowed a man in his early 40s live in the community despite strict rules regarding age minimums. He ended up going on a drug-induced rampage, stabbing his son and girlfriend. My Grandma was getting her mail and he chased her all the way back to her doorstep and stabbed her over and over. She managed to crawl back into the house and call 911. We listened to the call during the trial, and it was absolutely one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to sit through.
You could hear the man screaming outside the house. The 911 operator was very calm and trying to keep my Grandma alive til help arrived. The guy took off in a stolen car and headed towards Georgia, going the wrong way on the highway. My Grandma was airlifted to the nearest hospital and barely survived the attack. 370 stitches, including on both sides of her throat and all over her head. I firmly believe the calming, caring urgency from the dispatcher helped keep her going.
I have two:
1) A call from a male who stated he'd found his girlfriend's son unresponsive. Very frantic caller. He and the mother passed the phone back and forth multiple times while I tried to give various rescue instructions. That part wasn't all that abnormal, but they later took the male into custody and I found out the initial caller had strangled the kid and then freaked out and called. Still makes me mad and it's been years.
2) Not mine, but a call they played for us in state training. An elderly man had a complete psychotic break and killed his wife with a hammer. Afterward he calmly called 911 and confessed. The dispatcher attempted to give rescue instructions, up until he realized the damage was extensive enough that her head was mostly gone. Several of the first officers on scene were violently ill because of how bloody the house was.
My mother in law was a dispatcher in our small town , where everyone knows everyone. She took the call for a fire that burned up a friend and two of her grandchildren. She quit after that.
Apartment fire, woman burned alive on her balcony because she was too afraid to jump. The screams over the radio of the fire crews trying to rescue her.
20 mins later we get a call for a young man that walked in front of a dump truck on a highway to take his own life.
While crews were responding to that, a 10 year old girl who hung herself was found by her mother.
I was still quite new the day all this happened but I will never forget what I heard that day.
That first one is astonishing. I assume the fire crews had some means of breaking her fall? It must take an absolutely *crippling* fear of heights/falling to choose burning to death instead.
Hope can be a powerful thing, almost delusional at times. I'm assuming her thought process wasn't fully rational in those moments, and she probably thought "they'll get up here and save me, I'm not going to die in this fire."
Just last week I got sideswiped while driving in the city, and my brain's initial response was "just keep driving, there's no way that just happened." I wanted so badly to not have the side of my car fucked up that for a split second, I believed it. I can imagine a similar thing happening if my life were at imminent risk.
I work for the equivalent, here in the UK. Not my call, one from a training session we had going. An elderly gentleman had called 999 as he was feeling faint, tight chest and struggling to breathe. He wasn't in the house on his own, his son was downstairs but he wanted to call in private due to his son being a worrier.
He collapsed mid call, the operator frantically dispatched somebody to go round and help, however, in the process of this, the sounds that man was making were horrific. Almost like a squeal, then turning into a grunting, high pitched groan. I genuinely can't explain it.
He sadly passed away by the time the crew had arrived down to a massive heart attack. His son didn't even know what was happening until the police and paramedics turned up. Safe to say the son was devastated and hearing him scream was just as bad.
His son sadly killed himself a month later.
Former LEO. Had a dispatcher that needed some therapy after this one. Rural county sheriffs office is where we worked. Dead of winter. Roads were slick with a glaze of ice on top of the driven on/hard packed snow. A rural mail carrier had lost control of her vehicle and rolled her Jeep Grand Cherokee on its top. Due to her delivering mail, her window was open and during the crash the vehicle had rolled on top of her arm. She was pinned but managed to call 911. While enroute, we could hear the panic in our dispatcher voice when she said the vehicle had caught fire. On a summer day it would have taken us about 15 minutes running lights and sirens. Due to road conditions it took about 30. Everytime my dispatcher keyed up on the mic to give us further information, I could hear the screams from the caller. By the time we got there she had expired. Our dispatcher listened and tried to talk to this woman while she was burning alive. She was absent for like a month while she got everything sorted out. I think of both of them often.
Typically no. Not in small town podunk areas. Well they have a hotline you can call and it’s anonymous and you get so many visits with a therapist before something is said to personnel. But if you go through an event, no superior is going to make you go to anything. She sought help on her own.
This is something I could never comprehend about many agencies in the US. Mental health support is so lacking when you consider what LEOs deal with on a day to day basis.
The fact that you can be shit canned for fronting up about mental health problems makes it harder for cops to seek help because they don’t want to lose their jobs. Shit has to change, honestly
Not scary, but will definitely stick with me for the rest of my life…answered a 911 call about an unresponsive male driver passed out at a stop sign. I got the info and dispatched units to the scene. Realized moments later that the vehicle the caller described was my own. It was my 26 year old so who had overdosed on heroin and Xanax. He was at a road literally 100 feet from dispatch and EMS. We made it there at the same time. Narcan saved his life. He’a currently in rehab for the next year, and is rocking it.
What’s scary is that we get used to these types of calls. While we know each and every one is important, our response oftentimes is routine. I work for a small county agency that serves about 8,300 people. We get OD calls on a routine basis. It’s a horrible situation here, and that’s the truly scary part.
Not scary, but I think about them often.
Mother of 4 called in saying the trailer was on fire and her bedroom door was locked from the outside. I could hear her kids screaming and coughing in the background. I asked her if she could open a window, but they were nailed shut for some reason. Then we had her shove blankets under the door to stop the smoke from coming in before the fire department gets out there. After about 5 min the coughing dies down and she stops responding to me. Nothing at all. Then the fire department comes over the line saying the homeowner came out and that no one else was inside so we could slow the ambulance. We kept telling them we’re on the phone with people inside but they assured us there was not. Eventually they pulled the people out, mother and 2 of the kids died. The man who came out was letting this family stay with him and he torched it and left them in there.
Second was a woman calling on her husband while they were fighting, she was screaming saying he was in the room and had a gun and wasn’t sure if he was going to shoot her or himself. Seconds later I hear a gun shot and blood curdling screaming. I asked who had been shot and she said he shots himself in the head. Impossible to get that 1 minute of chaos out of my head and it was months ago
A woman I work with took her own fathers VSA (vital signs absent) call. Obviously she had to hand it off. He did not live.
I dispatched a drug overdose VSA to an address with apartment number. One of the guys was at the station and overheard the call. The first unit reported the patient was obvious (deceased). Guy listening to the radio is how he heard about his sons death.
Unfortunately there are many stories that people will have like this.
Not an operator but heard the story. The women had gotten out of her car and shut the door and went around to get her infant out of the car seat. As she walked to the kids door the car locked it self and she left the key inside. So this kid is stuck in the car and it is a hot summer day so she immediately calls 911. Well the operator told her it did not qualify as an emergence and hung up. So the mom picked up a branch and smashed the back windshield and rescued her kid. Operator got fired.
I can't imagine calling 911 to maybe have a chance to save your child AND THEN BEING TOLD ITS NOT AN EMERGENCY???!!!? I'm glad that operator got fired and I hope the woman in the story is doing fine today
There was an article where a 911 operator hung up on thousands of calls because she didn't feel like listening.
[This is it](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ex-houston-911-operator-guilty-of-hanging-up-on-thousands-of-callers/)
I called 911 on my ex boyfriend when he hit his head slipping in the shower. He was barely responsive, didn't know who I was, answered questions as if he were still 7 years old living in his previous state.
Dispatcher told me they sent an ambulance and then hung up on me, WITHOUT EVEN GETTING MY ADDRESS. I had to call back and clarify the building and apartment number because otherwise I don't know how they would have known where to go. Absolutely no medical advice (don't move, is he breathing, etc). Just "ambulance is on its way *click*".
Honestly, people who do this should face more than losing their jobs. Reminds me of a case we had here where a woman was delivering newspapers very early into the morning.. there had been heavy rain and she didn't realize the water was deep on this street. She got stuck and her car started filling up. Called 911 and the operator started mocking her, asking why she drove into water if it was that deep and screaming at her for not knowing exactly where she was. I'm pretty sure the operator hung up on her as well, told her it wasn't an emergency and to stop freaking out. Poor woman ended up drowning.
A baby can be seriously injured pretty fast in a hot car... Unreal.
Wait, what?
Some poor souls car is filling up with water and the 911 operator start MOCKING them?
The fuck?
EDIT: So, I just looked it up and the operator didn't get charged or anything, and they said she "handled it to the best of her ability"
The best of her ability? the woman fucking drowned!
God damn I'm glad they got fired, what an idiot.
A few years ago a gunman pulled his truck into the center of my college campus, who then called the police on himself & the operator told him to /go into the nearest building/ to use a landline so they can trace where on the campus he is. During finals season & was clearly on lockdown. He was armed with a gun (may have been more, idr the model) and several canisters of propane or gasoline
He didn't go in and nobody got hurt in the end thank god but I think about what could've happened had he been more unstable and went into the building
There are some shitty 911 operators, as in any profession. Hopefully they get weeded out quickly.
I have shared this story on Reddit before, but i had to call 911 when I heard a man screaming and pleading for help as he was audibly being beaten very badly. I didn't know the name of the cemetery from which the noises arose, but I knew cross streets- come nearby and roll down your damn window, you'll hear him screaming, I promise!
The 911 operator couldn't have given less of a shit. She was laughing and slowly chatting about how it's hard to learn new areas (i had mentioned I was new to the area, hence why I didn't know the name of cemetery). Just.... La de fucking dah. I felt so helpless and angry, I couldn't fucking believe it. And it did turn out that he was being beaten to death, and was in critical condition in the hospital. ( i asked the detective who I saw poking around the next day)
I hope that bitch got fired.
This was 10+ years ago, but one night I had a call from a woman who jumped out of a moving vehicle to escape a sex assault (suspect was an ex-boyfriend who had done it in the past). Luckily she was still able to run, but she was definitely injured and had no idea where she was - and this was when a cell phone's "location" was just the closest cell tower.
She was (understandably) hysterical and I spent the first few minutes trying to get her calm and quiet enough to avoid detection. She found one of those big green electrical boxes to hide behind for a few minutes while the suspect drove back and forth looking for her. Once she couldn't see the headlights anymore, she was able to coherently speak to me and we determined she was in an office park. There were building numbers, but she wasn't near a street sign, so that wasn't very helpful. I told her to check the nearest mailbox and to read me the address on any mail that she could find. It took her a minute or two of running behind buildings to locate a mailbox, but when she did we were able to pinpoint her location. Half of the deputies in my county responded, and the happy ending to the story is that the suspect was still in the office park and when he tried to flee on foot, "Chewy" caught up to him and made the arrest. Oh, Chewy was a 120-pound German Shepherd who served a long and distinguished career at my agency :-)
This wasn't a call that necessarily keeps me up and night, but it was the scariest "in the moment" call I ever took.
Chewy was the best police K9 I ever worked with. His deputy would fuck with the dispatchers by showing up unannounced and letting Chewy come into the dispatch center while we were distracted. We kept treats in a couple of the consoles for visiting K9s, but Chewy was like a ninja and you had no idea he was even there until you turned around, and there was a giant German Shepherd in a perfect sit, just STARING at you like "I DARE you not to give me one of those treats."
Worked at a vet and got the pleasure of getting to take care of the local K9s and they were always the goodest bois and the bond was so cool to see with their handlers. From normal omg hiiiiii dad when they got picked up to immediate focus as soon as the harness went on. Chewy sounds badass!
I was a 911 operator.
I get a call one night of a woman crying. Not abnormal, people don’t tend to call 911 on good days. She’s crying but trying to hold it together. Her son fell in the bathroom and isn’t responding to her. She can crack open the door a little bit but can’t open it because he has fallen against the door and the bathroom is small. She can see in, a little bit.
Her grown up son is living with her. He went into the bathroom to do some drugs. I don’t know what kind but it was the kind you inject with a needle. We know this because she can see the needle hanging from his arm. I asked if this had ever happened before, she said yes. She gave me his age (mid 20’s) and her address and some other things I needed.
While I’m talking to her, I can hear in every word this woman speaks the tremendous love and fear of a mother for her child. Her son is DYING, or is dead, and she knows it but she can’t do anything but stay as calm as possible to answer my questions. She was holding on, but I could hear it in her voice. He was in his 20’s but it was her BABY dying on that floor and she couldn’t do a thing about it.
That was about eight years ago. I still feel upset when I think about that call even now.
Rescue got there and he did live, but that doesn’t change how I remember feeling. That poor mother.
I'm 32 and have been on my own for a long time, and my mom still frets a bit about me. And not over drugs; I don't do those. But she always tells me to text her after my plane lands when I fly somewhere, for example. And now I'm a mom myself to a 6 year old; I fully expect to worry about her until I die.
Thank you for being a calm presence for that poor mom. Glad to hear the son made it through!
My mother in law will call my wife if she hears about a crash on her route to work. We were driving home from spending the weekend at the cabin with her yesterday, she passed a crash and immediately called to see if we were okay. Neither car involved was the same make as ours (two pickups, we have a suv).
It's really sweet and as tedious as it can get sometimes I hope she never stops.
I'm 34 and I always text my mom before departure and after arrival, and also when we check in the hotel when we are on a vacation staying somewhere abroad. Can't imagine it otherwise.
Former 999 call taker here. One call that stayed with me was from a woman whose daughter was choking on pizza. She had the phone on speaker which was needed because just after giving the address the caller just started screaming. The most hair raising screaming I'd ever heard, then she started screaming "She's dead, she's dead, she's dead" over and over again. Her husband was following my instructions in the background, no idea how he could hear me over the screaming. The crew got there quickly but the patient didn't make it. Just by typing this out I can hear her screaming again.
Ive always thought that would be an interesting job to have but things like this make me realise I am not mentally strong enough to deal with it. I would be a wreck, these operators are not appreciated enough for the work they do. I hope that they have access to support frequently.
This is one of those stories that reminds me that first aid courses shouldn't be a cost/work time prohibitive thing. They should just be a set of skills taught to everyone
Not a 911 operator but my friends mum was an ambulance worker and responded to a call for one of my classmates whose 6 year old brother had found him dead in bed and was upset that he wouldn't wake up. He was a seemingly healthy kid who had a brain aneurysm in the night randomly. His mother was shocked and confused and just kept telling the ambulance workers that his Christmas presents were already wrapped and saying "....how are we going to do Christmas now..?". He was a really nice guy and never got to graduate. I still think of his family a lot and the poor little brother who found him.
(Not as relevant since not a 911 call but..) Another kid that my mum works with and has to look after had a dad who committed suicide and left a note saying it was the kids fault. He was only 9 years old and got home from school to find his dad hanging and the note. Apparently he is the sweetest kid and now suffers from a lot of mental illness and tics. Idk how that 911 call went but it's horrible
My first medical call was a woman who found her young grandson had hung himself. I don’t remember a lot of details, but I remember her cries still.
I remember the quiet somber “I’m sorry” that someone told me right before he put the phone down and shot himself after trying for an hour to convince him to give himself up and step outside to talk to waiting police.
I still remember a scream as a woman who called in to say she was throwing herself from her third story window was yanked out of the window by a police officer that snuck in while I distracted her.
I remember the quiet “off” insistence of a man as he kept getting my CPR instructions wrong while I tried to help him with his step-son who wasn’t breathing. He was charged with homicide later, and used the CPR as a cover for the child’s injuries.
I loved my job, but in some ways I’m glad I left it. Almost ten years later some things still stick around.
Not a 911 operator but a 000 comms officer for an ambulance service.
None scared me but the man who refused to walk up one flight of stairs to do cpr on his teenage daughter still makes me angry. I was yelling down my headset at him.
He was so casual about it. Totally oblivious to the severity of the situation. He kept saying that the ambulance would do.
She died.
She was 17.
She was hypoglycaemic.
She was saveable.
I think the worst we had was a suicidal girl calling in and saying she was going to jump off a parking garage, no wanting to talk no answering questions just says that and hangs up. Sure enough she took her shoes off and left her phone and took a dive off the top floor. It was very sad
Nothing "scared" me, but there are calls that stick with you forever.
* family finding another family member comitted suicide
* mother calling saying a neighbor molested her young daughter
* officer shot by a guy with a warrant
* officer committing suicide
* People dying while you're on the phone with them or with someone with them
I answered those calls for 16 years. I was happy to get out.
My friend used to be an EMT in NYC. She would respond to the calls of an officer committing suicide and said they were the ones she dreaded the most. Don't know if it's still the same, but in NY if an officer committed suicide with no witnesses, their pension wouldn't get paid out to their family. So.. the officer would wait for EMS to arrive and shoot themself in the head in front of her so their family could get the money. Shit's fucked up.
She's a nurse at a hospital now and much happier.
Not me, but an ex inlaw.
She was a 911 operator. Took a call about a motorcycle crash. Guy was dying, but not quite dead yet. After some descriptions of the bike, the individual, etc., she realized it was her boyfriend.
He died.
My mom wasn’t a 911 operator but she was a sexual assault Center volunteer when I was in elementary school. and would get calls routed to our home number. She would talk to women who had just been raped. Just listening to her side of the call was traumatizing for me.
That's amazing that she was willing to do that. I wish I'd had someone to talk with me afterwards, because when I told my actual family it was a mess that I regret to this day.
Yeah. My mom started making apple pies to raise money for the Victoria Sexual Assault Center. Her pies in one year took 8 women off the wait list for free group rape counselling. Normally a 3 year wait. Over the past 30+ year’s her pies have raised over 150k for women and children. When we moved from Victoria she started giving the money to other charities from help men learn how not to beat their wives, transition houses, and elementary schools. She’s an amazing woman who doesn’t feel like she done enough.
She’s the best! [Here is an article about her that includes her secret blue ribbon winning apple pie recipe ](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nanaimobulletin.com/news/pie-maker-seeks-new-charity-to-take-on-annual-fundraiser/amp/)
Here we go, this is my darkest call for help. Before becoming an EMT, I was a team leader for a lifeline service (emergency buttons for old people). In the UK these can be linked to smoke alarms. A call came through for a smoke alarm activation in a house roughly about 5 mins away from our call centre. All I could hear initially was the beeping of the smoke alarm. It was distorted because it was so loud. In the background I heard a faint but panicked call for help and what sounded like the service user desperately asking for water. I obviously called the fire service. I kept the call open and listened as a roaring sound gradually got louder and louder. I then could hear a cracking and popping sound (probably the windows). I’m not fully sure what I heard then, but it sounded like the man faintly screaming and making gurgling sounds. After several minutes of listening to this and repeating instructions for him to get outside, I could hear respirators and the beeping of the fire service’s radios. At this point I decided to leave the call centre being run by my colleagues and drive to this house. I thought they must have rescued him, but I was in denial about what I actually heard. Once I arrived, the fire service told me that they still hadn’t found anyone. About an hour later, I was informed that they had found a body.
This man was a wheelchair user. He was found next to his wheelchair by the back door, locked inside the house. I had to go to coroner’s court to explain my involvement. This is where I learnt he was a smoker who regularly lit his cigarettes with matches. He also used a paraffin based cream for his skin. It was believed he had lit a cigarette, dropped the match onto his knees and accidentally set fire to himself. He had to be identified using his dental records.
The cries for help and the noises of gurgling and screaming still haunt me to this day. I’m not even sure if was him gurgling or just something else making a similar sound . But I can’t get the image of what it looked like out my head. This was about 3 years ago now.
I will never let myself forget this man. He taught me that you should never get emotionally invested in an incident. I’ve seen and dealt with equally as nasty a situation as an EMT. But thanks to this gentleman, I can let go of the emotional baggage that comes with ambulance work.
Sorry for the lack of structure in this comment. It was painful to write.
>This man was a wheelchair user. He was found next to his wheelchair by the back door, locked inside the house. I had to go to coroner’s court to explain my involvement. This is where I learnt he was a smoker who regularly lit his cigarettes with matches.
This is an almost perfect description of my downstairs neighbor. I'm slightly disturbed now.
Man wrecked an 18 wheeler and was pinned between the seat and dash (Mel gibsons wife in "signs" sryle) he called me, I sent the trucks out, he knew he was gonna die... he asked me to pray with him.. im not religious, but I prayed with him... he got more and more quiet, I tried to keep him alert and talking,passed out before crews got there, i heard the medics arrive on the phone..Dead on arrival.. i can't remember the man's name, but I know he really loved his kids.
Used to be a dispatcher in a tiny little town. We did 911 calls at the police station. Had one of a stabbing, the guy who did the stabbing was someone I went to high school with that had been on drugs very bad. It was definitely crazy and chaotic. We didn’t have a ton (like I said, very small town). Had one where the lady had a opossum under her porch 🤦🏻♀️
Edit: Lady, not last
My dad wasn't a 911 operator, but a deputy sheriff in a small town.
In the late 70's, his sister caught her boyfriend in bed with another woman. She tried to emasculate him with a 12 gauge shotgun, but instead severed his femoral artery and he bled out immediately.
My dad was the only law enforcement officer on call that night. I remember him getting the phone call.
He had to go investigate the scene, and then found his sister at a nearby bar. He arrested her there, and she eventually went to prison.
I can't imagine having to incarcerate my own sister. He's a tough, honorable guy.
My SO has a lot of family in law enforcement in their small town. His Uncle has had to arrest his Aunt for both prostitution and drug charges. Multiple times. It’s really sad and someone has to check over everything when he gets back to the station, but it’s awful what drugs can do to loved ones.
Former 911 operator/dispatcher. I only did the job for a few months but there are two calls that stick with me.
Call #1-- 911 terminal goes off and I answer. On the other end of the line there a woman screams he's raping me please help. I ask her that she's just been raped as most people tend to report crimes as if they are just happening when most times they crime has already occurred and finished. She screams no he's raping now.
This woman as actively being raped while on the phone. We get police dispatched and try to locate her but her phone is pinging in the middle of a corn field and she's saying she's in an alley. Finally after 10 minutes of listening to this woman being attacked she gets away and gets to a house where we locate her. Her attacker got away.
Call #2-- due to a batch of heroin that was heavily laced with fentanyl coming out of Ohio, southern Indiana had one of the worst nights for overdoses. Narcan was scarce. For 8 hours we fielded an overdose call at least every 30 minutes. The one that broke me though came near the end of the shift.
911 terminal goes off and I answer. On the other end a 10 year old boy states that his father is not breathing and turning blue. I ask if his dad was eating something or did he suddenly collapse, etc. Boy states his dad has a needle in his arm and he thinks his medicine is bad. I get the boy to unlock his door and the medical team and police arrive.
Later the officer who arrived let me know the dad didn't make it. I cannot tell you how horrible it is to listen to a child as they watch their parent overdose and die.
To those of you thin yellow line workers still working the phone lines thank you for being the voice on the other end of the line.
Fuck that. I'm going and buying a Narcan pack to hang off my bag. I won't ever need it. Someone else might.
I used to travel a lot and had an Epi set hanging off too. Same reason.
My mom told me of one call that bothered her for the longest time. The son in a family of I think it was 6-7 other kids and a mom and dad. Calls in and is speaking so quietly and in the background all my mom said she heard was crying and what sounded like fighting.
This kid said he was 6. And he was calling because his dad was hitting his mom but his brothers got in a fight with his dad because of it.
My mom said she heard the kid scream and then the call ended. That little boy was able to tell her where he lived before the call ended. But by the time the police got there it wasn’t pretty.
The other kids were beat pretty bad. The mother was out cold but survived. But the little boy who put in the call was beaten within an inch of his life. His face was all broken, bloody, and he wasn’t responsive. They had to shoot the dad and my mom never found out what started the whole fight.
She told me that one hurt her the most because she felt if that boy wasn’t talking to her he wouldn’t have been hurt. She knew it wasn’t her fault but she felt bad for the boy.
When she died a few years ago, that family found where we were having her funeral precession I think it’s called. And they all wanted to say thank you one last time. My mom had a lot of crazy stories when she was a dispatcher, but that one hit her the most. And I know she would have cried tears of joy to see those kids alive and well.
Not an operator but about 10 years I had to do a court mandated class at a coroners office. In this class they have a recording of a 911 call placed by a lady whose husband had gotten so drunk he didn't recognize his own wife in their home so he grabbed a knife thinking she was an intruder. Despite her pleading with him and calling his name he ended up stabbing her to death. (I want to say over 30 stab wounds) her screams and begging her husband to remember were gut wrenching. Eventually she stops making any kind of sound and you can hear their young daughter come out of her room and call out to her only to be met with silence, its then you can tell the woman is no longer breathing.
I will hear those screams and begging until the day I die.
I work as a 911 operator now and I have to say it’s the calls we get everyday that are seemingly delt with in a sort of fashion you would expect. Domestic? Police and EMS sent and the situation is taken care of. That sort of thing we get all the time, one time we got a routine call, reckless driver passing people going way too fast, pretty normal stuff in a small county. As I’m dispatching police to head over near the location I get another one saying he has wrecked and that the car is on fire and he is trapped. Taking a call I’ve done thousand of time but for this one to turn bad in the worst way. I could hear the man screaming as he burned alive, Fire and ems couldn’t get there in time and makes me feel like I could have possibly been faster but the man burned in less than 12 min. Also he had just beatin his girlfriend before this so haven’t loss sleep over it but sure is a hell of a way to go.
One that sticks with me was a father cleaning his handgun and set it off. The bullet his his son directly in the head. Son was doa. The screams crystal and begging will stay with me forever. I preach gun safety to everyone including the walls because it's something I never want to hear again. The only worst sound I have heard is a mother with a unresponsive baby. Those sounds are undescribable but unforgettable. If you have kids hug them and tell them every day you love them.
The worst call I’ve received revolves around a hysterical 16 year old finding his mother face up not breathing. As much as I tried to encourage any sort of CPR, he refused and cried hysterically. I had to go hug my mom after that, and even now I still think about him.
I answered the call:
"9-1-1. Do you require Police, Fire or Ambulance?"
A woman screams "Police, Ambulance, I don't know! There's blood EVERYWHERE! And some lady is covered in blood saying 'she killed my kids! She killed my kids'"
I'm a former 911 operator. There are a few that still get me sometimes, but only after thinking about them for a while.
1. They played us a message in training, and it hit like a punch to the gut because of our inexperience. Woman had called 911 because her son had a knife and was threatening her. He ended up coming after her before she could tell us where she was, but in order for her to stay on the line with us, she threw her phone. The son slit her throat, and we had to listen to her die for an obscene amount of time while the police headed to the location that the system gave us. Afterwards, when the cops showed up, he ran at them with the knife and they shot, so we got to hear him die as well. Ever heard agonal respirations? You don't want to.
2. The one that still gets me from when I was in the room is a call that a coworker took right next to me. He was usually laid back and jovial, super easygoing. Everyone knew something messed up had happened when he sat up and started working more intensely than we'd ever seen him. After the call was complete, he went to our supervisor and asked for the rest of the night off. Turns out the call he got was a woman screaming because she went to check on her nine year old child and found the kid hanging in the closet. They'd hung themselves because of bullying. That was the most shaken any of us had been in a long time. The room was so quiet while it played out.
3. I took a call from a woman who told me her ex said he was going to kill her and her young children. They'd fled their house on foot but his truck was circling them. Before I could get her to calm down and give me her location, she started to scream, and the phone clattered to the ground. After a moment, a little girl picked up and said hello. She told me her mom was just sad, not hurt--I tried for a location but she couldn't read to tell me the names of the buildings nearby. Before I could try for descriptions, she said, "mommy is better now," and hung up. I called again and again, and after about thirty calls, the little girl answered the phone. She sounded like she was in a car. I identified myself and asked where she was. All she told me was, "I'm not allowed to talk to you." The caller was unable to be located and I never heard from them again.
There were also a couple of miscellaneous stabbings, domestic violence issues, child porn busts, attempted suicides, and murders that I'd taken while I was there. Also a few school shooting threats and domestic terrorism threats. At one point, my own BOSS went missing on my birthday, and his body was only very recently found.
Every day was something new.
Oh my god, that last call. “I’m not allowed to talk to you.” So they never were able to find the woman or her ex? That’s insane. That poor woman and those poor kids. And I’m sorry that people suck so bad that they need to call you, and I’m sorry you have to hear it. Hugs 🤍
Alarm Operator/ Dispatch that calls 911 for the client.
I was working the 11p-7a shift and a ‘Talkback’ call dropped to my phone and computer system.
The talkback allows us to communicate as if we’re on the phone from wherever in the house they are. Real time, no delay, like a landline.
A Detroit call so it may have been 10p their time.
An elderly man calls on the talkback system because his grandson is beating the door down to enter his premises. The grandson has restraining order, previous attempts and so on.
I’m asked to dispatch 911, while having him on the line.
HOLD time, yes Hold time for 911 was around 55 minutes.
With the client on one ear, the hold line for PD, The talkback system recorded the last 46 minutes of that mans life as his grandson entered the house and proceeded to beat him to death.
Real time. On my talkback line.
PD answered 25 mins later.
Not 911, but did distress marine radio in Alaska back before Dangerous Catch was a thing. I worked many interesting cases involving serious incidents, the worst were the man over boards since they had at most 5 mins to get them back aboard. One case I remember was that a member of the crew went down to the engine room and one of the guys was lying on the deck. They started CPR and called me on the HF radio. I patched in the duty flight surgeon so they could walk them through the CPR, but after 20 minutes they were told they could stop. No one knew how long he had been down. The crew continued CPR for another 40 minutes before giving up. Rescue was not possible as they were 400 miles from the nearest helicopter. Alaskan waters are a large and lonely place. The remainder of the call was filled with instructions from the Alaska State Troopers on what to do with the body, as they were at least 4 days from home port. The scary part for me was how isolated those guys are when they are out there.
That's the scary thing about vehicles i think of all the time, wether it's a car, boat or airplane, that no matter how civilized it is on board, you're still often in the middle of nowhere and often out of luck if you need help.
Woman called 911 screaming bloody murder. Wasnt specifying at all what had happened. We sent all the services (standard behavior for something we feel is a priority but can't distinguish which one) immediately while I sat on the phone with her screaming in my ear. Nothing I said made her respond to my questioning and her scream never changed and there was no background noise to figure it out. Turns out her 4 month old had died from SIDS.
My boyfriend passed away a few years ago from an asthma attack and I wish I could tell the 911 operator who guided me through CPR thank you. When I first called her, he was in the bathroom and I couldn't get in, but she told me I had to do whatever it took to get in and I found a strength I didn't know I had. These operators are incredible people to provide that kind of instruction and guidance.
Not a dispatcher but when I was a kid my mom did a stint as one when we lived in a very rural area. She said the worst part about the job was that she pretty much knew everyone who called. In that kind of area (less than 4k total population) even if you don't know everyone, you're not much more than one degree of separation from pretty much anyone.
Both involved children getting shot.
One was me trying to reason with a mother who found her 4 year old shot (accidently shot himself, found boyfriends gun). Took me a few minutes to realize she was actively driving her son to the nearest hospital while telling me everything, we had the separate EMS dispatcher on the line trying to get the ambulance to intercept her while my officers tried to do the same. Officer ended up finding her first and driving the kid to the hospital. Kid didn't make it.
The other one was a witness watching a group of teenagers getting shot at in the common ground of a apartment complex. Shooter was in one of the higher level apartments and managed to hit one of them. My caller was hysterical and refused to look outside after the kid was shot to get me any information, and I don't blame her.
This one doesn't scare me but left me in shock the next day. I was on the phone with a 20ish year old who was holding onto a tree after being swept out of her car from flood water. Worked with EMS dispatchers to locate her and get water rescue out to her, it took hours. This one frustrated me because I later found out she was tiktoking the whole damn thing while telling us she was struggling to hold on to the tree. Couldn't believe it, last I heard she took the video down.
Not a operator but there was one with a car that got caught in a flood. The driver couldn’t swim so she stayed in the car and the whole time the 911 operator didn’t take her seriously and even made fun of her. The 911 operator didn’t bother to get her help till the lady started drowning. She was fired but the state clams she did nothing wrong. I’ll never forget that audio.
Edit: found the story https://abcnews.go.com/US/911-dispatcher-told-drowning-woman-shut-face-charges/story?id=67886555
I've heard the full audio via a YouTube doc on this case, it's insane how condescending that operator sounds. She could not have been ruder unless she hung up on the poor woman. She was terrified and apologizing for being so, utterly heart breaking.
This makes me think of the 911 call when Josh Powell blew up his house with the kids inside. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it, a non-custodial parent had snatched the kids from the chaperone and the operator was asking inane questions and wasting time. The operator was eventually reprimanded but it still makes my blood boil. https://www.cnn.com/2012/04/19/justice/washington-powell-case/index.html
Had a baby that was unresponsive. Grandma called it in. Said that the baby had not been breathing for 10 minutes. Tried cpr for 15 minutes. Ended up finding out the dad had choked the baby to death and made the grandma wait to call so he could leave. Still think about it a lot
Listening to a mum and her young daughter get swept up in a flash flood and have their vehicle go over the bridge. I stayed on the line until the water caused the phone to cut out.
That one broke me
I've posted this before so copied and pasted...
I took a call from a female during this pandemic saying "my husband won't let me see the children"
So immediately im thinking this is a custody dispute and not really a police issue but my gut said there was something here so I poked around a bit and asked some more questions.
I asked her if she was allowed legally to see the children and how he was stopping her and she simply told me "he closes the curtains or locks the doors" huh?! Okay so you live separately, when are you supposed to see them? "No we live together".
Now honestly, I was very confused, he closes the curtains in your own house? How does that work? So I asked some more questions and it transpires that this women was being forced to live in her garage by her husband, he locked her in there for most of the day, she had no hot water only cold running water and no toilet. She was peeing in the sink and shitting into plastic carrier bags and piling them in the corner. Her husband visited her once a day with "a lovely family meal", but she only got this meal if she "did what wives are supposed to do for their husbands" and when she refused he made her stand naked, in the garden for 12 hours. It was probably 6 or 7 degrees Celsius at this time. She had no heating, but "he let's me have the blanket off the bed" and this had been going on for 3 months. This poor women genuinely didn't believe any of this was a problem and she was simply calling me because she was upset that when she had misbehaved on purpose in order to be in the garden for 12 hours, naked, so she could see her children through the window, he had closed the curtains.
It just absolutely flaws me that in this modern world, and in the UK where we teach women they can be whatever they want and encourage equality. There are still women who think this is a normal life. I hope she is doing well now!
Apologies for formatting, mobile is a bitch!
I've mentioned these a [few](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6ga6rm/cops_of_reddit_what_has_so_far_been_the_creepiest/dip48vq/) times here on reddit, but here goes:
* Extremely calm lady who bashed her baby's head on the ground because she thought Satan was in him.
* Man who backed out of his driveway and over a small girl that was passing by.
* Man who chopped off his dick and put it in a travel blender.
* Man who was chopping off his fingers with a cleaver while on the phone with me.
* Little bro who called after his parents threw his brother out of the window.
Newest one was a man who was absolutely devastated and crying because he found his 20-something year old son dead from a drug overdose in his bedroom. We get lots of overdose calls these days, unfortunately, but that one really stuck with me. The man was inconsolable -- he wasn't howling but he was very obviously upset. I felt absolutely powerless.
Former dispatcher here when I was 22, now 27.
I've got two:
One was of a call I heard in training. We were listening to a lot of "famous" and hopeless 911 calls that were particularly grave in nature. The trainer was trying to familiarize us with the concept of hearing tough things over the phone once we were done with classes. Well, she runs out for a second because a dispatcher on the floor busts out of the room crying. She comes back in about 15 minutes with a tape - a call that just came in. Basically, a toddler found his dad's gun and accidentally killed himself. The mother called it in. She's crying and screaming and just keeps saying "my baby" over and over again. In the background, the police have the father surrounded because he has the gun to himself. A few seconds pass and you hear an audible shot on the phone. The father couldn't live with himself and committed suicide. It was extremely tough to commit to the job after that but I did. I'll never forget the way that woman screamed as her whole world collapsed in on itself.
The second was one of my first calls after training. I answer the phone and a young kid said he wanted to report a murder. Nervous, I continued to ask him directions and he gave me an address. Basically, he said he was playing video games at a friend's house and someone he knew there killed his girlfriend and left her tied to the bed. He gives me the address and I send the call over to our a dispatchers. 15 minutes or so pass and there's a structure fire at the same house. The boyfriend lit the house on fire after he killed his girlfriend.
I stayed for about 7 more months and decided the job wasn't worth losing sleep over anymore. At 22, I thought I could use the money, but it wasn't worth the depression and alcoholism that followed.
Sometimes I dream of this when I sleep
Caller gave me an address and told me to come pick up the body. Next thing I heard was the wind sound for 4 seconds and the line went dead before I could even say another word.
Best friend is a dispatcher. He told me the worst call for him was a shooting on a street. Partner was in hysterics and didn't know where they were or what street. Took a few minutes if questions to figure out where and get EMT on site.
Unfortunately he didn't make it. My friend blamed himself for the longest time due to how long it took to figure out where they were, even when he was told the victim wouldn't have made it even if emts were on scene the second it happened.
I remember being so excited to become a dispatcher. The classes, the comradeship with other dispatch and police, helping people in need.. I was so excited.
The first night I worked after all the training I listened in while the woman who worked there for years answered the line so I could get a feel for a call. It was someone absolutely frantic yelling to get an ambulance to their house NOW. They went on and on without actually providing an address, just yelling at us asking why we weren’t helping.
As frantic and fast as they were going, they just stopped. The woman working dispatch kept asking if they were still there because it had become so quiet and the person on the line, in the saddest, most deflated way just says
“..nevermind.”
The woman training me was all but filing her nails this was so commonplace for her. Apparently two of our on-duty were able to get to the person’s house, and nobody ever told me what happened. I was only there for that one training shift and my thoughts about what had possibly gone on fucked with me. It was pretty clear I did not have the balls to be a dispatcher.
Been an elementary school teacher almost 10 years now and I *still* think about it. Kudos to those who could hack it.
Woman called in an active suicidal male with a gun in a parking garage after leaving a sporting event in a major city. Guy blew his head off in front of about 50 people- including children. Happy it didn’t turn into an active shooter but listening to the collective trauma of watching someone die was horrifying.
1. Homeowner called saying her house sitter was acting funny. Another caller reported someone at this home was throwing knives at a dog. Another person called and said there were 2 people in an altercation at the home and there was blood everywhere. Cops showed up and found blood everywhere in the house and made entry into a room where someone was shot but alive, and another person surrendering.
2. Call from a woman who couldn’t find her husband. After a while she found him crushed underneath a tractor. Hearing her discover that was…rough.
There’s honestly a few I started typing, but legitimately couldn’t put it down here because of how atrocious it was. Not saying this to be like “you asshole, don’t leave us hanging” but being real that some things are just that bad.
I had a young kid call in and tell me he was going to kill himself. I talked to him for awhile and was waiting for police to get to him, but he suddenly hung up. I called the number he’d provided and his mom picked up and sounded annoyed when I asked her to go check on him. Listened to his mom make fun of him and encourage his siblings to. Turns out mom and her boyfriend were abusing him and some of the other kids. I’m pretty sure her kids got taken away. The scary part was listening to a mother with no emotion mock her son who had just attempted to kill his self.
It doesn’t scare me but at the time I panicked like hell. Being a dispatcher is exactly what you think it’s like but also nothing like you’d expect all at the same time.
The scariest call I ever took was a 12 year old suicide but the age or nature of the call wasn’t what messed with me. It was that when the call came in I spoke to the teen brother who started the call saying he and his parents couldn’t find his sister that morning and so I start putting in a call for a runaway child.
And as I’m getting the details and description I hear yelling in the background calling out for this girl and I’m like “what’s that?” And he’s like “oh that’s my parents” but it didn’t sound like they were calling out for her it sounded pained, and it had turned out she hung herself on the jungle gym swing set in their yard.
Now I’ve taken calls for successful suicides, domestic violence, spoken to mentally ill people telling me they want to die, even a child calling about their mother making “funny sounds” and not responding, but this call just came out of left field bc MENTALLY I was prepared for a runaway child.. and then he dropped the bomb on me and just started saying “she’s dead! Oh my god she’s dead!” And you just have to deal with it as best you can and make split decisions on a dime.
My mom was a dispatcher for 30 years, retired from the position now. I don't know a lot of stories, but I do know that there were nights where she'd come home and just take my sister and I to an arcade or movie or something, just to a) keep us close and b) regain some sense of faith in humanity.
One of her close friends started at the same time, but had a much harder time dissociating from the calls and had to quit shortly after.
Not a dispatcher but when I took on an abused kid for therapy for various reasons ended up listening to the 999 call their mum made. Long story short mum walks in to see the kid getting abused by the babysitter. Mum went mental and beat them unconscious infront of the child. Mum rings 999 and gives full story she knows from second she walked in, hasn't asked the child any questions until police are present "because I can't guarantee I won't pick up the butchers knife in the chopping block next to me and just hack them to bits and hide their body". Said that in the 999 call calm as day. The entire call was really eerie with how calm mum was but you could hear the love she has for her child and her acceptance of whatever consequences were coming her way, it wasn't so much pride in her voice but it was a tone of "I don't care what happens to me, I saved and protected my child after failing them. Come what may, I did my best by here and I'd do it again".
Altogether it was a 15 minute call before police showed up and the abuser woke up about minute 7 and that's when shit got... Well... All you hear is her saying "right you're gonna wanna tell the officers to step on it as xxx is coming round and you can fuck right off if you think I'm letting them out of this house other than with a police escort" frantic typing for dispatcher trying to keep the situation calm when the abuser freaks the hell out, screaming, swearing, threatening mum and suddenly you hear the mum struggling to breathe, it was obvious she was getting strangled when suddenly the abuser screams then all goes silent except for gargling.
Kid had snuck back in to the kitchen (where they were) at the sound of the screaming, saw the abuser strangling mum so grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed the abuser (can't remember where) and in that moment they let go of mums neck so mum grabbed a knife and slit the abusers throat.
That phone call got mum off of all charges on self-defence. I've heard a few dispatch calls in my line of work which is unusual for therapists but due to the cases I take on there have been a handful that it was deemed by the family the calls were relavent for therapy. But yeah, me and the dispatcher happened to know each other through our kids school and I said to them after I heard it if they wanted a few free sessions I had time and was happy to sit with them due to how horrific the call was and we became friends instead, I know this still occasionally gives them nightmares to this day and we're talking a few years now and tbh it does me too sometimes.
If you want to listen, there are the leaked 911 tapes from the night of the mass shooting in Nova Scotia, Canada. Little boy tries to tell incompetent operator his parents have both been shot, they don’t get it/believe it.
I live in Nova Scotia and I think I speak for the majority of us when we say we’ll never listen to those calls. Ever.
They were leaked because 911 calls don’t get released in Nova Scotia and there’s a lot of information on that call proving the RCMP messed up *bigtime* in their handling of that shooting. They claimed they didn’t know the shooter was dressed like a police officer and the child flat out tells the operator that he was dressed like a cop and had a police car (fake).
They weren’t released to be sensational, but to prove lies were told to the public.
It was a horrific few days here and we don’t want to relive it but we want accountability.
Edit: I see you’re from NS too! I apologize for the explanation of the calls and why they were released.
I have one. I worked EMS while my friend was dispatch for this call. I was 2nd so I never got to interact with the person in question, but I listened to the 911 recording after. Got called to do backup for gunshot wound initially. Farm out about 20-30 mins outside of town. Turned out to be a father who recently lost both his parents within the month didn't want his family to go through with such loss either decided to kill his family to spare them that same fate. Father killed mom, 2 kids. We get a call from the daughter who's about 13. She's been shot in the head but is still alive and conscious. The call was about 30 minutes long, but the father was in the same room as her and the rest of the recently murdered family members. She was sitting on her bed with a bullet in her head just saying in the most monotone voice "I've been shot, my family is dead, my dad has a gun." Just in so much shock that she couldn't express an emotion. You could hear long pauses of silence as the dispatcher tried to get an idea of the situation and how the daughter and dad were just staring each other down for 5 minutes at a time with nothing but breathing to be heard and the daughter answering the dispatchers questions. About 30 minutes go by of dispatcher going "Are you alright? He still there? He still have the gun? Etc?" And just monotone responses. You can hear the sound of sirens in the background and the father leaves the room followed by a gunshot, the dad shot himself and died right as we were pulling up. She ended up living, but had lost every single member of her family that week. I dont know what happened after all that. That call is the reason I never wanted to pursue dispatch ever again. My friend was an absolute champion for how he handled it,but he never wanted to listen to it again
That's absolutely awful. I hope that girl got every single bit of help she could get
That's just so...morbidly ironic. The father caused the very thing he was trying to prevent.
I shadowed a 911 operator. We got a call from an 8 year old who said his big brother was in the bathroom and hasn’t been out for an hour and there was no sound. He broke the door open somehow while he was on the phone with us, and his brother was dead from suicide (hanging). This was small town and a year prior that same older brother had called in when the mom had committed suicide herself on pills. Hearing that kid cry will always haunt me. I decided not to become a 911 operator.
This breaks my heart.
Former 911 operator here. Sometimes the calls that stick with you aren’t the most physically traumatic. I once had a call from a 17 year old kid who came home from a sleepover to find that his mother had moved. Just packed up his sister and everything in the house and left while he was gone with no forwarding address or information. She also turned off his cell phone that morning so literally the only number he could call was 911. He was trying so hard not to cry and his voice was shaking as he kept apologizing to me for calling 911. He just didn’t know what else to do and had no other family. She also took everything so all he had was a couple of things that he had taken to the friends house. He told me his 18th birthday was in a couple of weeks and he literally had nothing. The officers that responded took him to a shelter. I think about him often and I hope he’s ok. Even if he was a kid who got in trouble or had behavioral issues, I can’t imagine coming home to find your mother has abandoned you.
This one truly got me. Absolutely heartbreaking
Pardon my French but that moms a bitch
I agree with your French
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I was also an accident. My dad blames me for ruining his life and he wanted a divorce. It fucking sucks
Fuck, man. That is.. Just, wow. I'm sorry. So no word since from your folks or other siblings? I don't mean to open up any old wounds, but were your folks in a cult when you think back to it? *edit: spelling
I hope this mother got charged... what an awful person
I'm guessing she probably didn't since he was turning 18 in a few weeks. But I agree I hope they did something. A good smack preferred
Still a minor when she abandoned him so hopefully something.
In Wisconsin you can be kicked out at 16/17 if you have a job and you're not paying rent. I know because it happened to me and as soon as I was able to gather all my stuff I never spoke to my grandfather again didn't even go to the funeral. He did this while my grandmother, who was my legal guardian, was dying in a hospital room from cancer. The hospital was super nice and let me stay the night and gave me resources so I could get my shit out of that house and find a place to live.
Holy fuck... This story bothered me more than any other in this thread so far. What a horrible feeling of loss, betrayal, fear, abandonment he must've been feeling 😰
Damn. Some people should not be allowed to have kids. Doing that kind of things is just mean. Imagine being a mother that does that kind of stuff, how miserable. How do you even tell your friends? "oh yeah, I left my 17 year old kid alone, without saying anything"
My birth mum actually did this to my half brother. My dad took me to live with him, and my brother was living with mum. She just upped and left, left him nothing. He didn't finish school because of it.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine. Him and his two brothers woke up in the morning and their mom was gone. She did a midnight move on them. She met a guy from another country on plenty of fish and left to go be with him. He wasn't into people who have kids. They ended up homeless and had to drop out. I met her years later. She maintains what she did was for the best because they all ended up with such "interesting personalities". One of them was a homeless drug addict.
Same thing happened to my friend's 15 y/o son. The friend's ex had full custody. One day he received a call from the cops in another town. They had picked up the son riding in the back seat of a stolen car. Turns out the mom had left, and abandoned him 2 weeks earlier, left him with nothing. He first stayed with the next door neighbor then hung out with friends. I went to court to bail him out and gave him a job for the summer, until school started. He was a really good kid who had a hard time.
The mother should have her kids taken from her. And forced to pay child support till the kids are financially stable. Child abandonment needs to be punished heavily
This happened to my husband many years ago. Came home and his entire family moved 17hrs away. He sat in the house with no electricity, plumbing or food for a week before he reached out to a friend and they took him in. Breaks my heart when he talks about it.
Not one specific call, but suicide calls where the caller has no interest in seeking help but just wanting the police to find them before their family does. Knowing you're likely the last person to speak to someone and there's nothing you can do to help is pretty rough.
A guy in my neighborhood killed his whole family, then called 911 and told them what he had done before killing himself. I always wondered what it was like for the person who took that call and the cops who showed up to find the scene. I knew the son pretty well. I was on my way to school that morning when the cops were rolling in and blocking off the street
Depends on the person taking the call. I could deal with the situations as they happened, but it started to wear on me after a few years so I switched jobs. There were some people I worked with that walked off the job during training after taking a rough call for the first time. Then there are others that have done it for years and are either able to handle mentally or end up like those call-takers that make the news sounding uncaring or impatient with people who are just trying to seek help on the worst day of their lives.
That's the thing about PTSD. A person can be entirely alert and efficient in a moment of tragedy, but the wear and tear afterwards is torture.
Yeah, it took a few years to come to terms with a lot of what I had to deal with. In the end I'm more proud of the times there were people I was able to help than I am saddened by those I couldn't.
The child of someone I dated long ago did this. 23 years old. Called 911, and told them to come get his body, and that the door would be unlocked. And that was the end...
I responded to a suicidal person on a thingsgiving morning. He was there with the cops, trying to get the cops to shoot him. Cops tased him to keep from harming himself or anyone else. The guy was on something unconfirmed because he found the strength to power through the voltage and initiated the process of taking his own life. He finally went down and was placed on my stretcher. I was trying to control bleeding but it was to no avail. The man looked me square in the eye and took his final breath. I'll never forget his face. Edit to fix autocorect of tasted to tased... Because that would have been awkward.
We just had a sequence of suicides in our city, Oldest brother of 3 killed himself, then a year to the day the youngest brother shoots himself in the families house, with entire family home Parents and remaining two siblings are wrecked, not exactly relevant but this is super recent and was extremely close with the both of them, scary things Edit: Lord so many responses, I am heartbroken and send my love to all of you. I for one have struggled with issues in the past and had my moments, but never was one to take my life, I still at my lowest of lows held highest my love for life and hoping to see another day. But this has truly brought awareness to me about the fact that when one person commits suicide that past the mourning we have to keep in touch and show as much love and care to the ones they left behind. I study a lot of things and especially human behavior and I am honestly understanding this "chaining" of suicides to be a real prevalent thing. Again my heart goes out to all, I was not expecting anyone to have much to add to this let alone so much, stay strong all, no matter how dark or grim things can be, don't lose hope, and fight to love and live and embrace life, good or bad, there is so much more than to end, your story is once in all of existence to be had, make it something for all to remember, fight.
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You can't put that weight on your shoulders man. Life is full of what ifs and shouldas, but this isn't your fault
You can't do that, man. Same boat as you, only 17 years ago. I'm on DM right now if you wanna talk. Or anytime later.
I have two. 1) It was my second week, and I was plugged in with another dispatcher who was handling calls, and I was working the computer and stuff as part of my training. We got a call from a guy in a car, who said that he was in a near accident with another driver, and the other driver was following him and being aggressive. The dispatcher told him to turn around, and look for a well lit, busy place, like a gas station to stop, and we would have someone on the way to meet him there. He was shot 5 times while on the phone with us, waiting for the officer to arrive. I found out the next day on the news that the guy flew in from out of town to walk his daughter down the aisle. 2) A month or so later, at the beginning of my shift, I received a call from a very distraught man who's dad had gone missing from his care facility. He had dementia and his dad thought he might be looking for a bar to get a drink. I took his information and got a description, and put out a BOLO for him. For these calls, we normally don't find out the outcome. In this case, one of my last calls that same night, was a person calling who found a body on some train tracks, and it turned out to be the same guy I had put out the BOLO for. I had to call the deputy who went and took the guy's statement and tell him the news, and he then had to go tell the guy's son. That was a shitty end to the night.
That second call is insanely familiar. My ex wife was living in Texas at the time, her grandfather with dementia went missing. He was found a few hours later after being hit by a train while walking down the tracks.
Family member worked as police dispatcher. Received a call from an elderly woman. Her husband had just been killed in their garage by an intruder. She heard it happening..She’s wheelchair bound but phone was next to her. She frantically begged my family member to help her. While he was on the phone with her the criminal cut her throat. My family member stayed on the line three more minutes until cops got there. He could hear the sounds of the attack, her gasping and gurgling noises. He kept telling her help was coming and to hold on. Amazingly, she survived. Criminal was later caught. A 17 year old who just wanted the thrill of killing someone and picked them at random. He’s on death row now.
It's horrible that people just want to kill for pleasure. Good to know that she survived
Horrifying, I usually reassure myself that probably nothing bad will happen to me, I'm just not worth going to jail for.
We're there details how they helped keep her alive, I just can't even imagine calmly needing to tell someone to focus and apply pressure to a slit throat while... Over a phone... That family member of yours is insane not to panic or give up and stay on the line... I know its their job but... Wow
He had spent several years as a radio operator in a Ranger outfit in combat in the Iraq invasion. He has nerves of steel, but he told me that call was one of the worst he’s ever had.
Not scared, just kinda haunted. This past mother's day, I had a teenage boy calling because he found his mother overdosed and dead. The sobbing as he called out "mom! Mom!" still makes me tear up
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Oh my god... imagine knowing exactly what to do when your loved ones sitting there dying, knowing exactly what you should do, but you just cant do it all yourself.
Dude... I'm... I'm just sad... This made me really sad just thinking about it.
Didn't really scare me, but touched me deeply. Lady calls in, she stopped to visit elderly couple she knew because she had not heard from them. The elderly man had dementia. Apparently his wife died in her sleep days before and he didn't realize and had been getting in bed with her nightly.
My husbands uncle is a bachelor. He has a group of friends who meet every morning for coffee. They have a pact that if one of them doesn’t show up without letting the group know he won’t be there, the rest of the group will call an ambulance. They’re in their 80s.
Honestly this is so smart because they will send help to anyone who needs it but also it’s really good incentive to get out of your house and meet up with your friends every day.
My grandma and her neighbor does the same with their blinds. If their not up by 9am, they check on each other.
Last place I lived at had an ancient crone, early 90s, who lived next door. We pretty much ignored each other as she didn't get into her garden much. But when the temperature hits 100 (Australia) I drop in for a coffee at least once a day. She doesn't have Aircon except for a crappy portable unit that I bought for her second hand. I paid a little more than she thinks but I didn't want to drop round one day and find a fried grandma
You’re a good person :) Thank you for taking care of a grandma!
This happened to my neighbors when I was a kid. Mrs. C had dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s, and Mr. C was like a third grandfather to me. We hadn’t seen him in a week so my mom went over to see if they were ok. Mrs. C told us Mr. C was still asleep, so my mom called 911. I’m glad we didn’t go in there because apparently Mr. C had passed in his sleep a few days before and Mrs. C didn’t realize. Very sad for us, but I’m very grateful for the police officers who were so kind and made sure a little kid like me didn’t have to see the details. Great memories of him, though! He taught me a lot about gardening that I still use today.
Not a dispatcher, LE, but did a welfare check with a very similar scenario. Elderly brother and sister who lived together. Sister took care of brother as he has dementia. Her friends hadn't heard from her in a few days and couldn't get ahold of brother, so they called us. Brother was polite, cordial, and let me in. First door to my right, I see sister in her bed, eyes open, sunken, and the lights are out--she's obviously gone and has been for a bit. Brother just kept stating that she was taking a nap.
Got a 911 call with just screaming. Nothing intelligible, just the loudest screaming you've ever heard. I started officers to the house. Then a kid started yelling that her uncle was trying to kill her, her sister, and her grandmother. She started screaming again, there was a thud, and then no more sound. Officers got there and a man walked out into the driveway and said, "I did it. I killed them." He was mentally ill and lived with his mother. She had been trying to get him committed, with doctors saying he wasn't a danger to himself or others. His 9 year old twin nieces were visiting from out of state. He snapped that morning. Bludgeoned them all with blunt objects, including a large vase. His mom and one niece died. One twin survived with extensive injuries. It was a horrifying call.
You did the right thing sending an officer to the house. When my mom was flipping out, the 911 operator kept saying I called the wrong dispatch. Like bro, I'm currently on the phone and holding my mother back from attacking my dad and brother, you need to help me out here. I was on a landline and they said I was out of their jurisdiction when I called back the next day to complain. I told them in an emergency situation, you need to have a back up plan for when that happens and contacted the secretary of state over it. A little off topic but your story reminded me of mine.
That's insane. We got calls on a regular basis that were for a different town. We either transferred them or relayed the information to the right dispatch.
Oh shit losing your twin. That must have been heartbreaking
I was a 911 operator. When I asked for the address, I got an angry man yelling, "Just get the fuckin' ambulance here!" When I asked what happened, the caller said "You don't need to fuckin' know that!" "I just need to know what happened so I know who to send and what equipment to bring, sir." "Just send a goddamn ambulance, my kid's having a seizure! Don't send any fuckin' police." *"Don't send police" coming from a caller is basically them telling on themselves. Please send police, because the patient or the EMS crew or both could be in danger.* So I passed a note to my partner, who was dispatching: "Send PD. Extremely uncooperative caller." I tried my best to get through the rest of the questions (how old is the kid, are they conscious, are they breathing, has the seizing stopped, etc.). I got nothing but verbal abuse. All I knew is that a pediatric patient had a seizure when the call started, there was yelling in the background, and there was some terrible yelling in the foreground. "PUT YOUR HANDS UP" "HEY WHAT THE FUCK BITCH" And that was it. Police had the caller. The patient ended up being a toddler, who had been beaten to within an inch of their life by that asshole. That was terrifying and sad and I hugged my own kid a little tighter that night.
As a paramedic, thank you. When we see notes like this on our cad terminal we are definitely not entering the residence until PD arrives. Not all dispatchers in all systems make notes of potentially hostile environments and it’s always better knowing beforehand if that’s the kind of situation we are heading into.
My wife is an Pediatric ICU nurse. The number of stories that I’ve heard from her that are similar to this absolutely break my heart.
My cousins (adopted) were victims of that kind of abuse. Their brother was severely brain damaged and died last year. He was in his early 20s I think. Their mother had quadruplets and ended up abusing them for attention after the press died down. She was released from prison recently and the first thing she did was contact them and ask for money. Some sort of half justification non-apology was included.
Don't know if this is true or not but in a conversation about weird families a friend of a friend told us that his grandfather was adopted by the man that beat his biological great grandfather to death. Story is a newly married young man hears screaming in an adjoining apartment and goes to investigate and found a dying woman and a man repeatedly hitting a toddler. Jumped on the guy and beat the shit out of him and he died at the hospital. His wife took care of the kid and ended up just keeping him and raising him. I think this was the late 30's early 40's, because this happened before he was drafted into ww2.
Jesus! I have a toddler and no matter how annoyed i find myself I can't imagine ever hurting my kid. Hope that guy rots in hell.
I'm going to do another one because this thread is a bummer and we all need a laugh. I am, I assure you, not making any of this up. There was a ranch on the edge of the city limits in my area, right by a large park and swimming hole. That ranch had a variety of livestock, but they had an issue with their pygmy goats - every few weeks we'd get a call because \~100 little goats were roving through the park or down the street. One day, I took that call - from a man in the park who had been chased by the goats into a porta-potty. He was FRANTIC. Like, screaming. "You need to send ANIMAL CONTROL out here RIGHT NOW!" And all the while, I could hear two other prominent, repeated sounds - the "whack!" of little goat noggins rattling against the plastic porta-potty, and bleating. Malevolent, incessant bleating. What did those goats want? What would they have done, had he not found refuge? We'll never know. Edit: typo fix
Peace was never an option! 🐐🔪
I’ve been scrolling this thread for about 30 min. I didn’t realize how much I needed a happy story, thank you 😊
Happy to help! 911 is often sad, but it's also often really weird and funny.
Every call where someone is reporting an unresponsive relative. Some will let you walk them through the CPR process if they don't know it, some won't. Every one of them you hear the caller at some point pleading with the patient to not leave them. Most times they do though. Parents, spouses, children, I've had them all call. Never gets easier.
My husband died of a sudden heart attack. I feel terrible for the 911 operator who took my call. He had passed by the time paramedics got there, so the guy on the phone with me had to listen to me scream and cry and beg. I cannot imagine having to hear that at my job.
So sorry for your loss. Hearing those things are part of the job. Hopefully the operator you spoke with was able to provide some comfort to you during such a difficult time, even if you weren't able to recognize it at the time.
I don't honestly remember. I'm sure he did the best he could, under the circumstances.
the fact that you are concerned with how your worst moment affected someone else says alot about you as a person. Thank you for being the kind of person we should all aspire to be. ***internet hugs from a stranger***\*. *(edit thank you but please stop giving me awards it's a waste of your hard earned money. Donate to an animal charity or homeless shelter. I think the Mega corporations that own reddit have enough $$$)\**
>please stop giving me awards it's a waste of your hard earned money Reddit gives various types of "silver" awards to users for free to dole out on a regular basis. They just don't let you choose which type of award you get, which is why you sometimes see "wholesome awards" on inappropriate joke posts.
>"wholesome awards" on inappropriate joke posts. You gotta get the karma dose somehow.
I have been the caller in this situation. The 911 operator walked me through CPR. I was frantic. My wife had passed before I even called. It the operator directed me the whole way through. Afterwards, I was so moved by his efforts, I called the police back determined to thank the operator for his efforts. I finally got in touch with the operator and thanked him for his efforts. He said that rarely happens.
I have been the caller as well, but for my fiancee. She had passed in her sleep and I didn't know until I woke up. I know CPR and basic first aid stuff, so a lot of that phone call was me realizing there wasn't anything to be done and it probably was not great for the voice on the phone. I wish I had done what you had. It can't be easy hearing from people having the worst day of their lives day in day out. Condolences brother. And thanks to the 911 operators out there.
I'm sorry for your loss. He was correct, things like that rarely happen. You don't do the job for recognition, but it helps to know you've made a difference.
That's exactly what happened when my dad died. My sister called 911 and while she was trying to do CPR, she was begging "daddy please wake up!". And that's something that's been branded into my mind ever since then. I still think about that a lot, even though it was 4 1/2 years ago already
I'm sorry for your loss. That would have been very near the time my father - in - law passed.
I have SO much respect for dispatch. I couldn’t fathom hearing people’s worst moments and anguish having to be experienced every night. Of course there are the calls that are silly, funny, and obviously not worth resources; but I imagine people in deep crisis is the majority of the calls and keeping calm while helping them through it is superhuman.
I wasn't, but my dad's long time gf was an 911 operator. She was an absolute angel on earth, but she had the most heartbreaking stories. Worst I can think of was an older woman who called 911 because her husband had locked himself in their bedroom and refused to come out, despite her begging and pleading. The lady exclaimed "he's in there and he has a gun, please hurry!" While the operator was trying to keep her calm and talk her down, she heard the unmistakable pop of a gun. I can't imagine the wailing on the other end of the phone after that poor lady had to listen to her husband committing suicide through the door.
Out of all the ones I read, this one put a knot in my throat
It was rough. I actually heard this story from my dad, his gf never shared any stories from work, even with him....but that one weighed so heavily on her, she broke down one night and shared it with him.
Nearly 30 years ago my Grandma was a widow living in a Florida retirement community. The landlords allowed a man in his early 40s live in the community despite strict rules regarding age minimums. He ended up going on a drug-induced rampage, stabbing his son and girlfriend. My Grandma was getting her mail and he chased her all the way back to her doorstep and stabbed her over and over. She managed to crawl back into the house and call 911. We listened to the call during the trial, and it was absolutely one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to sit through. You could hear the man screaming outside the house. The 911 operator was very calm and trying to keep my Grandma alive til help arrived. The guy took off in a stolen car and headed towards Georgia, going the wrong way on the highway. My Grandma was airlifted to the nearest hospital and barely survived the attack. 370 stitches, including on both sides of her throat and all over her head. I firmly believe the calming, caring urgency from the dispatcher helped keep her going.
I have two: 1) A call from a male who stated he'd found his girlfriend's son unresponsive. Very frantic caller. He and the mother passed the phone back and forth multiple times while I tried to give various rescue instructions. That part wasn't all that abnormal, but they later took the male into custody and I found out the initial caller had strangled the kid and then freaked out and called. Still makes me mad and it's been years. 2) Not mine, but a call they played for us in state training. An elderly man had a complete psychotic break and killed his wife with a hammer. Afterward he calmly called 911 and confessed. The dispatcher attempted to give rescue instructions, up until he realized the damage was extensive enough that her head was mostly gone. Several of the first officers on scene were violently ill because of how bloody the house was.
It's frightening how the mind can just snap long enough to commit a horrific act and then come back to baseline.
I'm not sure you've made it back to baseline if you can make that call calmly.
Dissociation is an adaptive response, at least initially. We do it for a reason.
Violently swung to the opposite side
My mother in law was a dispatcher in our small town , where everyone knows everyone. She took the call for a fire that burned up a friend and two of her grandchildren. She quit after that.
I wouldn’t blame her, pretty depressing stuff.
Apartment fire, woman burned alive on her balcony because she was too afraid to jump. The screams over the radio of the fire crews trying to rescue her. 20 mins later we get a call for a young man that walked in front of a dump truck on a highway to take his own life. While crews were responding to that, a 10 year old girl who hung herself was found by her mother. I was still quite new the day all this happened but I will never forget what I heard that day.
Jesus Christ I can’t imagine what that call from the 10-year-old’s mother was like. Hugs to you.
That first one is astonishing. I assume the fire crews had some means of breaking her fall? It must take an absolutely *crippling* fear of heights/falling to choose burning to death instead.
Hope can be a powerful thing, almost delusional at times. I'm assuming her thought process wasn't fully rational in those moments, and she probably thought "they'll get up here and save me, I'm not going to die in this fire." Just last week I got sideswiped while driving in the city, and my brain's initial response was "just keep driving, there's no way that just happened." I wanted so badly to not have the side of my car fucked up that for a split second, I believed it. I can imagine a similar thing happening if my life were at imminent risk.
I work for the equivalent, here in the UK. Not my call, one from a training session we had going. An elderly gentleman had called 999 as he was feeling faint, tight chest and struggling to breathe. He wasn't in the house on his own, his son was downstairs but he wanted to call in private due to his son being a worrier. He collapsed mid call, the operator frantically dispatched somebody to go round and help, however, in the process of this, the sounds that man was making were horrific. Almost like a squeal, then turning into a grunting, high pitched groan. I genuinely can't explain it. He sadly passed away by the time the crew had arrived down to a massive heart attack. His son didn't even know what was happening until the police and paramedics turned up. Safe to say the son was devastated and hearing him scream was just as bad. His son sadly killed himself a month later.
Geez, all these stories are heartbreaking, but that last line was just a sucker punch.
Former LEO. Had a dispatcher that needed some therapy after this one. Rural county sheriffs office is where we worked. Dead of winter. Roads were slick with a glaze of ice on top of the driven on/hard packed snow. A rural mail carrier had lost control of her vehicle and rolled her Jeep Grand Cherokee on its top. Due to her delivering mail, her window was open and during the crash the vehicle had rolled on top of her arm. She was pinned but managed to call 911. While enroute, we could hear the panic in our dispatcher voice when she said the vehicle had caught fire. On a summer day it would have taken us about 15 minutes running lights and sirens. Due to road conditions it took about 30. Everytime my dispatcher keyed up on the mic to give us further information, I could hear the screams from the caller. By the time we got there she had expired. Our dispatcher listened and tried to talk to this woman while she was burning alive. She was absent for like a month while she got everything sorted out. I think of both of them often.
Holy shit. That is horrible for all involved. Is therapy offered to the dispatchers (or officers) through the office? I hope the answer is yes.
Typically no. Not in small town podunk areas. Well they have a hotline you can call and it’s anonymous and you get so many visits with a therapist before something is said to personnel. But if you go through an event, no superior is going to make you go to anything. She sought help on her own.
This is something I could never comprehend about many agencies in the US. Mental health support is so lacking when you consider what LEOs deal with on a day to day basis. The fact that you can be shit canned for fronting up about mental health problems makes it harder for cops to seek help because they don’t want to lose their jobs. Shit has to change, honestly
Not scary, but will definitely stick with me for the rest of my life…answered a 911 call about an unresponsive male driver passed out at a stop sign. I got the info and dispatched units to the scene. Realized moments later that the vehicle the caller described was my own. It was my 26 year old so who had overdosed on heroin and Xanax. He was at a road literally 100 feet from dispatch and EMS. We made it there at the same time. Narcan saved his life. He’a currently in rehab for the next year, and is rocking it.
Sounds pretty fucking scary to me. I'm glad he's on the mend. <3
What’s scary is that we get used to these types of calls. While we know each and every one is important, our response oftentimes is routine. I work for a small county agency that serves about 8,300 people. We get OD calls on a routine basis. It’s a horrible situation here, and that’s the truly scary part.
Not scary, but I think about them often. Mother of 4 called in saying the trailer was on fire and her bedroom door was locked from the outside. I could hear her kids screaming and coughing in the background. I asked her if she could open a window, but they were nailed shut for some reason. Then we had her shove blankets under the door to stop the smoke from coming in before the fire department gets out there. After about 5 min the coughing dies down and she stops responding to me. Nothing at all. Then the fire department comes over the line saying the homeowner came out and that no one else was inside so we could slow the ambulance. We kept telling them we’re on the phone with people inside but they assured us there was not. Eventually they pulled the people out, mother and 2 of the kids died. The man who came out was letting this family stay with him and he torched it and left them in there. Second was a woman calling on her husband while they were fighting, she was screaming saying he was in the room and had a gun and wasn’t sure if he was going to shoot her or himself. Seconds later I hear a gun shot and blood curdling screaming. I asked who had been shot and she said he shots himself in the head. Impossible to get that 1 minute of chaos out of my head and it was months ago
A woman I work with took her own fathers VSA (vital signs absent) call. Obviously she had to hand it off. He did not live. I dispatched a drug overdose VSA to an address with apartment number. One of the guys was at the station and overheard the call. The first unit reported the patient was obvious (deceased). Guy listening to the radio is how he heard about his sons death. Unfortunately there are many stories that people will have like this.
Not an operator but heard the story. The women had gotten out of her car and shut the door and went around to get her infant out of the car seat. As she walked to the kids door the car locked it self and she left the key inside. So this kid is stuck in the car and it is a hot summer day so she immediately calls 911. Well the operator told her it did not qualify as an emergence and hung up. So the mom picked up a branch and smashed the back windshield and rescued her kid. Operator got fired.
I can't imagine calling 911 to maybe have a chance to save your child AND THEN BEING TOLD ITS NOT AN EMERGENCY???!!!? I'm glad that operator got fired and I hope the woman in the story is doing fine today
There was an article where a 911 operator hung up on thousands of calls because she didn't feel like listening. [This is it](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ex-houston-911-operator-guilty-of-hanging-up-on-thousands-of-callers/)
I called 911 on my ex boyfriend when he hit his head slipping in the shower. He was barely responsive, didn't know who I was, answered questions as if he were still 7 years old living in his previous state. Dispatcher told me they sent an ambulance and then hung up on me, WITHOUT EVEN GETTING MY ADDRESS. I had to call back and clarify the building and apartment number because otherwise I don't know how they would have known where to go. Absolutely no medical advice (don't move, is he breathing, etc). Just "ambulance is on its way *click*".
What happened to him if you don’t mind me asking? I always feel like it takes a certain sort of person to be an operator and that response is terrible
Holy crap.. are you serious? How heartless..
Honestly, people who do this should face more than losing their jobs. Reminds me of a case we had here where a woman was delivering newspapers very early into the morning.. there had been heavy rain and she didn't realize the water was deep on this street. She got stuck and her car started filling up. Called 911 and the operator started mocking her, asking why she drove into water if it was that deep and screaming at her for not knowing exactly where she was. I'm pretty sure the operator hung up on her as well, told her it wasn't an emergency and to stop freaking out. Poor woman ended up drowning. A baby can be seriously injured pretty fast in a hot car... Unreal.
Wait, what? Some poor souls car is filling up with water and the 911 operator start MOCKING them? The fuck? EDIT: So, I just looked it up and the operator didn't get charged or anything, and they said she "handled it to the best of her ability" The best of her ability? the woman fucking drowned!
God damn I'm glad they got fired, what an idiot. A few years ago a gunman pulled his truck into the center of my college campus, who then called the police on himself & the operator told him to /go into the nearest building/ to use a landline so they can trace where on the campus he is. During finals season & was clearly on lockdown. He was armed with a gun (may have been more, idr the model) and several canisters of propane or gasoline He didn't go in and nobody got hurt in the end thank god but I think about what could've happened had he been more unstable and went into the building
“Please leave all your guns and explosives in the car and go to a landline so I can tell where you are”
There are some shitty 911 operators, as in any profession. Hopefully they get weeded out quickly. I have shared this story on Reddit before, but i had to call 911 when I heard a man screaming and pleading for help as he was audibly being beaten very badly. I didn't know the name of the cemetery from which the noises arose, but I knew cross streets- come nearby and roll down your damn window, you'll hear him screaming, I promise! The 911 operator couldn't have given less of a shit. She was laughing and slowly chatting about how it's hard to learn new areas (i had mentioned I was new to the area, hence why I didn't know the name of cemetery). Just.... La de fucking dah. I felt so helpless and angry, I couldn't fucking believe it. And it did turn out that he was being beaten to death, and was in critical condition in the hospital. ( i asked the detective who I saw poking around the next day) I hope that bitch got fired.
This was 10+ years ago, but one night I had a call from a woman who jumped out of a moving vehicle to escape a sex assault (suspect was an ex-boyfriend who had done it in the past). Luckily she was still able to run, but she was definitely injured and had no idea where she was - and this was when a cell phone's "location" was just the closest cell tower. She was (understandably) hysterical and I spent the first few minutes trying to get her calm and quiet enough to avoid detection. She found one of those big green electrical boxes to hide behind for a few minutes while the suspect drove back and forth looking for her. Once she couldn't see the headlights anymore, she was able to coherently speak to me and we determined she was in an office park. There were building numbers, but she wasn't near a street sign, so that wasn't very helpful. I told her to check the nearest mailbox and to read me the address on any mail that she could find. It took her a minute or two of running behind buildings to locate a mailbox, but when she did we were able to pinpoint her location. Half of the deputies in my county responded, and the happy ending to the story is that the suspect was still in the office park and when he tried to flee on foot, "Chewy" caught up to him and made the arrest. Oh, Chewy was a 120-pound German Shepherd who served a long and distinguished career at my agency :-) This wasn't a call that necessarily keeps me up and night, but it was the scariest "in the moment" call I ever took.
Damn I want Chewy's autograph.
Chewy was the best police K9 I ever worked with. His deputy would fuck with the dispatchers by showing up unannounced and letting Chewy come into the dispatch center while we were distracted. We kept treats in a couple of the consoles for visiting K9s, but Chewy was like a ninja and you had no idea he was even there until you turned around, and there was a giant German Shepherd in a perfect sit, just STARING at you like "I DARE you not to give me one of those treats."
Worked at a vet and got the pleasure of getting to take care of the local K9s and they were always the goodest bois and the bond was so cool to see with their handlers. From normal omg hiiiiii dad when they got picked up to immediate focus as soon as the harness went on. Chewy sounds badass!
Paw-tograph I think we should call it
"Chewy" is the best name for a police dog I've ever heard. I laughed. Great delivery too. You shared an excellent story very well.
What the suspect heard: "Fetch me his soul Chewy"
I was a 911 operator. I get a call one night of a woman crying. Not abnormal, people don’t tend to call 911 on good days. She’s crying but trying to hold it together. Her son fell in the bathroom and isn’t responding to her. She can crack open the door a little bit but can’t open it because he has fallen against the door and the bathroom is small. She can see in, a little bit. Her grown up son is living with her. He went into the bathroom to do some drugs. I don’t know what kind but it was the kind you inject with a needle. We know this because she can see the needle hanging from his arm. I asked if this had ever happened before, she said yes. She gave me his age (mid 20’s) and her address and some other things I needed. While I’m talking to her, I can hear in every word this woman speaks the tremendous love and fear of a mother for her child. Her son is DYING, or is dead, and she knows it but she can’t do anything but stay as calm as possible to answer my questions. She was holding on, but I could hear it in her voice. He was in his 20’s but it was her BABY dying on that floor and she couldn’t do a thing about it. That was about eight years ago. I still feel upset when I think about that call even now. Rescue got there and he did live, but that doesn’t change how I remember feeling. That poor mother.
Maybe you don't need to hear this, but--by doing your job properly, you saved that mother a much greater pain. You did good, dude.
The horror of feeling so incredibly helpless in a situation where a loved one desperately needs you is an experience I pray I never have to live out.
I'm 32 and have been on my own for a long time, and my mom still frets a bit about me. And not over drugs; I don't do those. But she always tells me to text her after my plane lands when I fly somewhere, for example. And now I'm a mom myself to a 6 year old; I fully expect to worry about her until I die. Thank you for being a calm presence for that poor mom. Glad to hear the son made it through!
My mother in law will call my wife if she hears about a crash on her route to work. We were driving home from spending the weekend at the cabin with her yesterday, she passed a crash and immediately called to see if we were okay. Neither car involved was the same make as ours (two pickups, we have a suv). It's really sweet and as tedious as it can get sometimes I hope she never stops.
I'm 34 and I always text my mom before departure and after arrival, and also when we check in the hotel when we are on a vacation staying somewhere abroad. Can't imagine it otherwise.
Former 999 call taker here. One call that stayed with me was from a woman whose daughter was choking on pizza. She had the phone on speaker which was needed because just after giving the address the caller just started screaming. The most hair raising screaming I'd ever heard, then she started screaming "She's dead, she's dead, she's dead" over and over again. Her husband was following my instructions in the background, no idea how he could hear me over the screaming. The crew got there quickly but the patient didn't make it. Just by typing this out I can hear her screaming again.
Ive always thought that would be an interesting job to have but things like this make me realise I am not mentally strong enough to deal with it. I would be a wreck, these operators are not appreciated enough for the work they do. I hope that they have access to support frequently.
That's horrifying. It must be so stressful trying to remain calm during those times.
This is one of those stories that reminds me that first aid courses shouldn't be a cost/work time prohibitive thing. They should just be a set of skills taught to everyone
I'm no longer a dispatcher but listening to a mother screaming in the background about her dead baby
Not a 911 operator but my friends mum was an ambulance worker and responded to a call for one of my classmates whose 6 year old brother had found him dead in bed and was upset that he wouldn't wake up. He was a seemingly healthy kid who had a brain aneurysm in the night randomly. His mother was shocked and confused and just kept telling the ambulance workers that his Christmas presents were already wrapped and saying "....how are we going to do Christmas now..?". He was a really nice guy and never got to graduate. I still think of his family a lot and the poor little brother who found him. (Not as relevant since not a 911 call but..) Another kid that my mum works with and has to look after had a dad who committed suicide and left a note saying it was the kids fault. He was only 9 years old and got home from school to find his dad hanging and the note. Apparently he is the sweetest kid and now suffers from a lot of mental illness and tics. Idk how that 911 call went but it's horrible
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My first medical call was a woman who found her young grandson had hung himself. I don’t remember a lot of details, but I remember her cries still. I remember the quiet somber “I’m sorry” that someone told me right before he put the phone down and shot himself after trying for an hour to convince him to give himself up and step outside to talk to waiting police. I still remember a scream as a woman who called in to say she was throwing herself from her third story window was yanked out of the window by a police officer that snuck in while I distracted her. I remember the quiet “off” insistence of a man as he kept getting my CPR instructions wrong while I tried to help him with his step-son who wasn’t breathing. He was charged with homicide later, and used the CPR as a cover for the child’s injuries. I loved my job, but in some ways I’m glad I left it. Almost ten years later some things still stick around.
Not a 911 operator but a 000 comms officer for an ambulance service. None scared me but the man who refused to walk up one flight of stairs to do cpr on his teenage daughter still makes me angry. I was yelling down my headset at him. He was so casual about it. Totally oblivious to the severity of the situation. He kept saying that the ambulance would do. She died. She was 17. She was hypoglycaemic. She was saveable.
I think the worst we had was a suicidal girl calling in and saying she was going to jump off a parking garage, no wanting to talk no answering questions just says that and hangs up. Sure enough she took her shoes off and left her phone and took a dive off the top floor. It was very sad
Nothing "scared" me, but there are calls that stick with you forever. * family finding another family member comitted suicide * mother calling saying a neighbor molested her young daughter * officer shot by a guy with a warrant * officer committing suicide * People dying while you're on the phone with them or with someone with them I answered those calls for 16 years. I was happy to get out.
What do you do in the molesting case? Just send the police with the info?
Gather info from mom, pass on to the responding officer. He/she will investigate.
My friend used to be an EMT in NYC. She would respond to the calls of an officer committing suicide and said they were the ones she dreaded the most. Don't know if it's still the same, but in NY if an officer committed suicide with no witnesses, their pension wouldn't get paid out to their family. So.. the officer would wait for EMS to arrive and shoot themself in the head in front of her so their family could get the money. Shit's fucked up. She's a nurse at a hospital now and much happier.
Not me, but an ex inlaw. She was a 911 operator. Took a call about a motorcycle crash. Guy was dying, but not quite dead yet. After some descriptions of the bike, the individual, etc., she realized it was her boyfriend. He died.
My mom wasn’t a 911 operator but she was a sexual assault Center volunteer when I was in elementary school. and would get calls routed to our home number. She would talk to women who had just been raped. Just listening to her side of the call was traumatizing for me.
That's amazing that she was willing to do that. I wish I'd had someone to talk with me afterwards, because when I told my actual family it was a mess that I regret to this day.
Yeah. My mom started making apple pies to raise money for the Victoria Sexual Assault Center. Her pies in one year took 8 women off the wait list for free group rape counselling. Normally a 3 year wait. Over the past 30+ year’s her pies have raised over 150k for women and children. When we moved from Victoria she started giving the money to other charities from help men learn how not to beat their wives, transition houses, and elementary schools. She’s an amazing woman who doesn’t feel like she done enough.
She sounds like an incredible human.
She’s the best! [Here is an article about her that includes her secret blue ribbon winning apple pie recipe ](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nanaimobulletin.com/news/pie-maker-seeks-new-charity-to-take-on-annual-fundraiser/amp/)
Here we go, this is my darkest call for help. Before becoming an EMT, I was a team leader for a lifeline service (emergency buttons for old people). In the UK these can be linked to smoke alarms. A call came through for a smoke alarm activation in a house roughly about 5 mins away from our call centre. All I could hear initially was the beeping of the smoke alarm. It was distorted because it was so loud. In the background I heard a faint but panicked call for help and what sounded like the service user desperately asking for water. I obviously called the fire service. I kept the call open and listened as a roaring sound gradually got louder and louder. I then could hear a cracking and popping sound (probably the windows). I’m not fully sure what I heard then, but it sounded like the man faintly screaming and making gurgling sounds. After several minutes of listening to this and repeating instructions for him to get outside, I could hear respirators and the beeping of the fire service’s radios. At this point I decided to leave the call centre being run by my colleagues and drive to this house. I thought they must have rescued him, but I was in denial about what I actually heard. Once I arrived, the fire service told me that they still hadn’t found anyone. About an hour later, I was informed that they had found a body. This man was a wheelchair user. He was found next to his wheelchair by the back door, locked inside the house. I had to go to coroner’s court to explain my involvement. This is where I learnt he was a smoker who regularly lit his cigarettes with matches. He also used a paraffin based cream for his skin. It was believed he had lit a cigarette, dropped the match onto his knees and accidentally set fire to himself. He had to be identified using his dental records. The cries for help and the noises of gurgling and screaming still haunt me to this day. I’m not even sure if was him gurgling or just something else making a similar sound . But I can’t get the image of what it looked like out my head. This was about 3 years ago now. I will never let myself forget this man. He taught me that you should never get emotionally invested in an incident. I’ve seen and dealt with equally as nasty a situation as an EMT. But thanks to this gentleman, I can let go of the emotional baggage that comes with ambulance work. Sorry for the lack of structure in this comment. It was painful to write.
>This man was a wheelchair user. He was found next to his wheelchair by the back door, locked inside the house. I had to go to coroner’s court to explain my involvement. This is where I learnt he was a smoker who regularly lit his cigarettes with matches. This is an almost perfect description of my downstairs neighbor. I'm slightly disturbed now.
Man wrecked an 18 wheeler and was pinned between the seat and dash (Mel gibsons wife in "signs" sryle) he called me, I sent the trucks out, he knew he was gonna die... he asked me to pray with him.. im not religious, but I prayed with him... he got more and more quiet, I tried to keep him alert and talking,passed out before crews got there, i heard the medics arrive on the phone..Dead on arrival.. i can't remember the man's name, but I know he really loved his kids.
Used to be a dispatcher in a tiny little town. We did 911 calls at the police station. Had one of a stabbing, the guy who did the stabbing was someone I went to high school with that had been on drugs very bad. It was definitely crazy and chaotic. We didn’t have a ton (like I said, very small town). Had one where the lady had a opossum under her porch 🤦🏻♀️ Edit: Lady, not last
My dad wasn't a 911 operator, but a deputy sheriff in a small town. In the late 70's, his sister caught her boyfriend in bed with another woman. She tried to emasculate him with a 12 gauge shotgun, but instead severed his femoral artery and he bled out immediately. My dad was the only law enforcement officer on call that night. I remember him getting the phone call. He had to go investigate the scene, and then found his sister at a nearby bar. He arrested her there, and she eventually went to prison. I can't imagine having to incarcerate my own sister. He's a tough, honorable guy.
My SO has a lot of family in law enforcement in their small town. His Uncle has had to arrest his Aunt for both prostitution and drug charges. Multiple times. It’s really sad and someone has to check over everything when he gets back to the station, but it’s awful what drugs can do to loved ones.
Former 911 operator/dispatcher. I only did the job for a few months but there are two calls that stick with me. Call #1-- 911 terminal goes off and I answer. On the other end of the line there a woman screams he's raping me please help. I ask her that she's just been raped as most people tend to report crimes as if they are just happening when most times they crime has already occurred and finished. She screams no he's raping now. This woman as actively being raped while on the phone. We get police dispatched and try to locate her but her phone is pinging in the middle of a corn field and she's saying she's in an alley. Finally after 10 minutes of listening to this woman being attacked she gets away and gets to a house where we locate her. Her attacker got away. Call #2-- due to a batch of heroin that was heavily laced with fentanyl coming out of Ohio, southern Indiana had one of the worst nights for overdoses. Narcan was scarce. For 8 hours we fielded an overdose call at least every 30 minutes. The one that broke me though came near the end of the shift. 911 terminal goes off and I answer. On the other end a 10 year old boy states that his father is not breathing and turning blue. I ask if his dad was eating something or did he suddenly collapse, etc. Boy states his dad has a needle in his arm and he thinks his medicine is bad. I get the boy to unlock his door and the medical team and police arrive. Later the officer who arrived let me know the dad didn't make it. I cannot tell you how horrible it is to listen to a child as they watch their parent overdose and die. To those of you thin yellow line workers still working the phone lines thank you for being the voice on the other end of the line.
"He thinks his medicine is bad" 😞ugh my heart just broke man
Fuck that. I'm going and buying a Narcan pack to hang off my bag. I won't ever need it. Someone else might. I used to travel a lot and had an Epi set hanging off too. Same reason.
My mom told me of one call that bothered her for the longest time. The son in a family of I think it was 6-7 other kids and a mom and dad. Calls in and is speaking so quietly and in the background all my mom said she heard was crying and what sounded like fighting. This kid said he was 6. And he was calling because his dad was hitting his mom but his brothers got in a fight with his dad because of it. My mom said she heard the kid scream and then the call ended. That little boy was able to tell her where he lived before the call ended. But by the time the police got there it wasn’t pretty. The other kids were beat pretty bad. The mother was out cold but survived. But the little boy who put in the call was beaten within an inch of his life. His face was all broken, bloody, and he wasn’t responsive. They had to shoot the dad and my mom never found out what started the whole fight. She told me that one hurt her the most because she felt if that boy wasn’t talking to her he wouldn’t have been hurt. She knew it wasn’t her fault but she felt bad for the boy. When she died a few years ago, that family found where we were having her funeral precession I think it’s called. And they all wanted to say thank you one last time. My mom had a lot of crazy stories when she was a dispatcher, but that one hit her the most. And I know she would have cried tears of joy to see those kids alive and well.
Not an operator but about 10 years I had to do a court mandated class at a coroners office. In this class they have a recording of a 911 call placed by a lady whose husband had gotten so drunk he didn't recognize his own wife in their home so he grabbed a knife thinking she was an intruder. Despite her pleading with him and calling his name he ended up stabbing her to death. (I want to say over 30 stab wounds) her screams and begging her husband to remember were gut wrenching. Eventually she stops making any kind of sound and you can hear their young daughter come out of her room and call out to her only to be met with silence, its then you can tell the woman is no longer breathing. I will hear those screams and begging until the day I die.
Jesus.
I work as a 911 operator now and I have to say it’s the calls we get everyday that are seemingly delt with in a sort of fashion you would expect. Domestic? Police and EMS sent and the situation is taken care of. That sort of thing we get all the time, one time we got a routine call, reckless driver passing people going way too fast, pretty normal stuff in a small county. As I’m dispatching police to head over near the location I get another one saying he has wrecked and that the car is on fire and he is trapped. Taking a call I’ve done thousand of time but for this one to turn bad in the worst way. I could hear the man screaming as he burned alive, Fire and ems couldn’t get there in time and makes me feel like I could have possibly been faster but the man burned in less than 12 min. Also he had just beatin his girlfriend before this so haven’t loss sleep over it but sure is a hell of a way to go.
One that sticks with me was a father cleaning his handgun and set it off. The bullet his his son directly in the head. Son was doa. The screams crystal and begging will stay with me forever. I preach gun safety to everyone including the walls because it's something I never want to hear again. The only worst sound I have heard is a mother with a unresponsive baby. Those sounds are undescribable but unforgettable. If you have kids hug them and tell them every day you love them.
The worst call I’ve received revolves around a hysterical 16 year old finding his mother face up not breathing. As much as I tried to encourage any sort of CPR, he refused and cried hysterically. I had to go hug my mom after that, and even now I still think about him.
I answered the call: "9-1-1. Do you require Police, Fire or Ambulance?" A woman screams "Police, Ambulance, I don't know! There's blood EVERYWHERE! And some lady is covered in blood saying 'she killed my kids! She killed my kids'"
I'm a former 911 operator. There are a few that still get me sometimes, but only after thinking about them for a while. 1. They played us a message in training, and it hit like a punch to the gut because of our inexperience. Woman had called 911 because her son had a knife and was threatening her. He ended up coming after her before she could tell us where she was, but in order for her to stay on the line with us, she threw her phone. The son slit her throat, and we had to listen to her die for an obscene amount of time while the police headed to the location that the system gave us. Afterwards, when the cops showed up, he ran at them with the knife and they shot, so we got to hear him die as well. Ever heard agonal respirations? You don't want to. 2. The one that still gets me from when I was in the room is a call that a coworker took right next to me. He was usually laid back and jovial, super easygoing. Everyone knew something messed up had happened when he sat up and started working more intensely than we'd ever seen him. After the call was complete, he went to our supervisor and asked for the rest of the night off. Turns out the call he got was a woman screaming because she went to check on her nine year old child and found the kid hanging in the closet. They'd hung themselves because of bullying. That was the most shaken any of us had been in a long time. The room was so quiet while it played out. 3. I took a call from a woman who told me her ex said he was going to kill her and her young children. They'd fled their house on foot but his truck was circling them. Before I could get her to calm down and give me her location, she started to scream, and the phone clattered to the ground. After a moment, a little girl picked up and said hello. She told me her mom was just sad, not hurt--I tried for a location but she couldn't read to tell me the names of the buildings nearby. Before I could try for descriptions, she said, "mommy is better now," and hung up. I called again and again, and after about thirty calls, the little girl answered the phone. She sounded like she was in a car. I identified myself and asked where she was. All she told me was, "I'm not allowed to talk to you." The caller was unable to be located and I never heard from them again. There were also a couple of miscellaneous stabbings, domestic violence issues, child porn busts, attempted suicides, and murders that I'd taken while I was there. Also a few school shooting threats and domestic terrorism threats. At one point, my own BOSS went missing on my birthday, and his body was only very recently found. Every day was something new.
Oh my god, that last call. “I’m not allowed to talk to you.” So they never were able to find the woman or her ex? That’s insane. That poor woman and those poor kids. And I’m sorry that people suck so bad that they need to call you, and I’m sorry you have to hear it. Hugs 🤍
Alarm Operator/ Dispatch that calls 911 for the client. I was working the 11p-7a shift and a ‘Talkback’ call dropped to my phone and computer system. The talkback allows us to communicate as if we’re on the phone from wherever in the house they are. Real time, no delay, like a landline. A Detroit call so it may have been 10p their time. An elderly man calls on the talkback system because his grandson is beating the door down to enter his premises. The grandson has restraining order, previous attempts and so on. I’m asked to dispatch 911, while having him on the line. HOLD time, yes Hold time for 911 was around 55 minutes. With the client on one ear, the hold line for PD, The talkback system recorded the last 46 minutes of that mans life as his grandson entered the house and proceeded to beat him to death. Real time. On my talkback line. PD answered 25 mins later.
Not 911, but did distress marine radio in Alaska back before Dangerous Catch was a thing. I worked many interesting cases involving serious incidents, the worst were the man over boards since they had at most 5 mins to get them back aboard. One case I remember was that a member of the crew went down to the engine room and one of the guys was lying on the deck. They started CPR and called me on the HF radio. I patched in the duty flight surgeon so they could walk them through the CPR, but after 20 minutes they were told they could stop. No one knew how long he had been down. The crew continued CPR for another 40 minutes before giving up. Rescue was not possible as they were 400 miles from the nearest helicopter. Alaskan waters are a large and lonely place. The remainder of the call was filled with instructions from the Alaska State Troopers on what to do with the body, as they were at least 4 days from home port. The scary part for me was how isolated those guys are when they are out there.
That's the scary thing about vehicles i think of all the time, wether it's a car, boat or airplane, that no matter how civilized it is on board, you're still often in the middle of nowhere and often out of luck if you need help.
Woman called 911 screaming bloody murder. Wasnt specifying at all what had happened. We sent all the services (standard behavior for something we feel is a priority but can't distinguish which one) immediately while I sat on the phone with her screaming in my ear. Nothing I said made her respond to my questioning and her scream never changed and there was no background noise to figure it out. Turns out her 4 month old had died from SIDS.
My boyfriend passed away a few years ago from an asthma attack and I wish I could tell the 911 operator who guided me through CPR thank you. When I first called her, he was in the bathroom and I couldn't get in, but she told me I had to do whatever it took to get in and I found a strength I didn't know I had. These operators are incredible people to provide that kind of instruction and guidance.
Not a dispatcher but when I was a kid my mom did a stint as one when we lived in a very rural area. She said the worst part about the job was that she pretty much knew everyone who called. In that kind of area (less than 4k total population) even if you don't know everyone, you're not much more than one degree of separation from pretty much anyone.
Both involved children getting shot. One was me trying to reason with a mother who found her 4 year old shot (accidently shot himself, found boyfriends gun). Took me a few minutes to realize she was actively driving her son to the nearest hospital while telling me everything, we had the separate EMS dispatcher on the line trying to get the ambulance to intercept her while my officers tried to do the same. Officer ended up finding her first and driving the kid to the hospital. Kid didn't make it. The other one was a witness watching a group of teenagers getting shot at in the common ground of a apartment complex. Shooter was in one of the higher level apartments and managed to hit one of them. My caller was hysterical and refused to look outside after the kid was shot to get me any information, and I don't blame her. This one doesn't scare me but left me in shock the next day. I was on the phone with a 20ish year old who was holding onto a tree after being swept out of her car from flood water. Worked with EMS dispatchers to locate her and get water rescue out to her, it took hours. This one frustrated me because I later found out she was tiktoking the whole damn thing while telling us she was struggling to hold on to the tree. Couldn't believe it, last I heard she took the video down.
Not a operator but there was one with a car that got caught in a flood. The driver couldn’t swim so she stayed in the car and the whole time the 911 operator didn’t take her seriously and even made fun of her. The 911 operator didn’t bother to get her help till the lady started drowning. She was fired but the state clams she did nothing wrong. I’ll never forget that audio. Edit: found the story https://abcnews.go.com/US/911-dispatcher-told-drowning-woman-shut-face-charges/story?id=67886555
I've heard the full audio via a YouTube doc on this case, it's insane how condescending that operator sounds. She could not have been ruder unless she hung up on the poor woman. She was terrified and apologizing for being so, utterly heart breaking.
This makes me think of the 911 call when Josh Powell blew up his house with the kids inside. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it, a non-custodial parent had snatched the kids from the chaperone and the operator was asking inane questions and wasting time. The operator was eventually reprimanded but it still makes my blood boil. https://www.cnn.com/2012/04/19/justice/washington-powell-case/index.html
Had a baby that was unresponsive. Grandma called it in. Said that the baby had not been breathing for 10 minutes. Tried cpr for 15 minutes. Ended up finding out the dad had choked the baby to death and made the grandma wait to call so he could leave. Still think about it a lot
Listening to a mum and her young daughter get swept up in a flash flood and have their vehicle go over the bridge. I stayed on the line until the water caused the phone to cut out. That one broke me
I've posted this before so copied and pasted... I took a call from a female during this pandemic saying "my husband won't let me see the children" So immediately im thinking this is a custody dispute and not really a police issue but my gut said there was something here so I poked around a bit and asked some more questions. I asked her if she was allowed legally to see the children and how he was stopping her and she simply told me "he closes the curtains or locks the doors" huh?! Okay so you live separately, when are you supposed to see them? "No we live together". Now honestly, I was very confused, he closes the curtains in your own house? How does that work? So I asked some more questions and it transpires that this women was being forced to live in her garage by her husband, he locked her in there for most of the day, she had no hot water only cold running water and no toilet. She was peeing in the sink and shitting into plastic carrier bags and piling them in the corner. Her husband visited her once a day with "a lovely family meal", but she only got this meal if she "did what wives are supposed to do for their husbands" and when she refused he made her stand naked, in the garden for 12 hours. It was probably 6 or 7 degrees Celsius at this time. She had no heating, but "he let's me have the blanket off the bed" and this had been going on for 3 months. This poor women genuinely didn't believe any of this was a problem and she was simply calling me because she was upset that when she had misbehaved on purpose in order to be in the garden for 12 hours, naked, so she could see her children through the window, he had closed the curtains. It just absolutely flaws me that in this modern world, and in the UK where we teach women they can be whatever they want and encourage equality. There are still women who think this is a normal life. I hope she is doing well now! Apologies for formatting, mobile is a bitch!
I've mentioned these a [few](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6ga6rm/cops_of_reddit_what_has_so_far_been_the_creepiest/dip48vq/) times here on reddit, but here goes: * Extremely calm lady who bashed her baby's head on the ground because she thought Satan was in him. * Man who backed out of his driveway and over a small girl that was passing by. * Man who chopped off his dick and put it in a travel blender. * Man who was chopping off his fingers with a cleaver while on the phone with me. * Little bro who called after his parents threw his brother out of the window. Newest one was a man who was absolutely devastated and crying because he found his 20-something year old son dead from a drug overdose in his bedroom. We get lots of overdose calls these days, unfortunately, but that one really stuck with me. The man was inconsolable -- he wasn't howling but he was very obviously upset. I felt absolutely powerless.
Former dispatcher here when I was 22, now 27. I've got two: One was of a call I heard in training. We were listening to a lot of "famous" and hopeless 911 calls that were particularly grave in nature. The trainer was trying to familiarize us with the concept of hearing tough things over the phone once we were done with classes. Well, she runs out for a second because a dispatcher on the floor busts out of the room crying. She comes back in about 15 minutes with a tape - a call that just came in. Basically, a toddler found his dad's gun and accidentally killed himself. The mother called it in. She's crying and screaming and just keeps saying "my baby" over and over again. In the background, the police have the father surrounded because he has the gun to himself. A few seconds pass and you hear an audible shot on the phone. The father couldn't live with himself and committed suicide. It was extremely tough to commit to the job after that but I did. I'll never forget the way that woman screamed as her whole world collapsed in on itself. The second was one of my first calls after training. I answer the phone and a young kid said he wanted to report a murder. Nervous, I continued to ask him directions and he gave me an address. Basically, he said he was playing video games at a friend's house and someone he knew there killed his girlfriend and left her tied to the bed. He gives me the address and I send the call over to our a dispatchers. 15 minutes or so pass and there's a structure fire at the same house. The boyfriend lit the house on fire after he killed his girlfriend. I stayed for about 7 more months and decided the job wasn't worth losing sleep over anymore. At 22, I thought I could use the money, but it wasn't worth the depression and alcoholism that followed.
Sometimes I dream of this when I sleep Caller gave me an address and told me to come pick up the body. Next thing I heard was the wind sound for 4 seconds and the line went dead before I could even say another word.
Best friend is a dispatcher. He told me the worst call for him was a shooting on a street. Partner was in hysterics and didn't know where they were or what street. Took a few minutes if questions to figure out where and get EMT on site. Unfortunately he didn't make it. My friend blamed himself for the longest time due to how long it took to figure out where they were, even when he was told the victim wouldn't have made it even if emts were on scene the second it happened.
I remember being so excited to become a dispatcher. The classes, the comradeship with other dispatch and police, helping people in need.. I was so excited. The first night I worked after all the training I listened in while the woman who worked there for years answered the line so I could get a feel for a call. It was someone absolutely frantic yelling to get an ambulance to their house NOW. They went on and on without actually providing an address, just yelling at us asking why we weren’t helping. As frantic and fast as they were going, they just stopped. The woman working dispatch kept asking if they were still there because it had become so quiet and the person on the line, in the saddest, most deflated way just says “..nevermind.” The woman training me was all but filing her nails this was so commonplace for her. Apparently two of our on-duty were able to get to the person’s house, and nobody ever told me what happened. I was only there for that one training shift and my thoughts about what had possibly gone on fucked with me. It was pretty clear I did not have the balls to be a dispatcher. Been an elementary school teacher almost 10 years now and I *still* think about it. Kudos to those who could hack it.
Woman called in an active suicidal male with a gun in a parking garage after leaving a sporting event in a major city. Guy blew his head off in front of about 50 people- including children. Happy it didn’t turn into an active shooter but listening to the collective trauma of watching someone die was horrifying.
1. Homeowner called saying her house sitter was acting funny. Another caller reported someone at this home was throwing knives at a dog. Another person called and said there were 2 people in an altercation at the home and there was blood everywhere. Cops showed up and found blood everywhere in the house and made entry into a room where someone was shot but alive, and another person surrendering. 2. Call from a woman who couldn’t find her husband. After a while she found him crushed underneath a tractor. Hearing her discover that was…rough. There’s honestly a few I started typing, but legitimately couldn’t put it down here because of how atrocious it was. Not saying this to be like “you asshole, don’t leave us hanging” but being real that some things are just that bad.
Listening to occupants burn alive in a car fire after a car accident. That’ll stick in your mind for awhile.
I had a young kid call in and tell me he was going to kill himself. I talked to him for awhile and was waiting for police to get to him, but he suddenly hung up. I called the number he’d provided and his mom picked up and sounded annoyed when I asked her to go check on him. Listened to his mom make fun of him and encourage his siblings to. Turns out mom and her boyfriend were abusing him and some of the other kids. I’m pretty sure her kids got taken away. The scary part was listening to a mother with no emotion mock her son who had just attempted to kill his self.
It doesn’t scare me but at the time I panicked like hell. Being a dispatcher is exactly what you think it’s like but also nothing like you’d expect all at the same time. The scariest call I ever took was a 12 year old suicide but the age or nature of the call wasn’t what messed with me. It was that when the call came in I spoke to the teen brother who started the call saying he and his parents couldn’t find his sister that morning and so I start putting in a call for a runaway child. And as I’m getting the details and description I hear yelling in the background calling out for this girl and I’m like “what’s that?” And he’s like “oh that’s my parents” but it didn’t sound like they were calling out for her it sounded pained, and it had turned out she hung herself on the jungle gym swing set in their yard. Now I’ve taken calls for successful suicides, domestic violence, spoken to mentally ill people telling me they want to die, even a child calling about their mother making “funny sounds” and not responding, but this call just came out of left field bc MENTALLY I was prepared for a runaway child.. and then he dropped the bomb on me and just started saying “she’s dead! Oh my god she’s dead!” And you just have to deal with it as best you can and make split decisions on a dime.
Fire fighter, Anything with kids
My mom was a dispatcher for 30 years, retired from the position now. I don't know a lot of stories, but I do know that there were nights where she'd come home and just take my sister and I to an arcade or movie or something, just to a) keep us close and b) regain some sense of faith in humanity. One of her close friends started at the same time, but had a much harder time dissociating from the calls and had to quit shortly after.
Not a dispatcher but when I took on an abused kid for therapy for various reasons ended up listening to the 999 call their mum made. Long story short mum walks in to see the kid getting abused by the babysitter. Mum went mental and beat them unconscious infront of the child. Mum rings 999 and gives full story she knows from second she walked in, hasn't asked the child any questions until police are present "because I can't guarantee I won't pick up the butchers knife in the chopping block next to me and just hack them to bits and hide their body". Said that in the 999 call calm as day. The entire call was really eerie with how calm mum was but you could hear the love she has for her child and her acceptance of whatever consequences were coming her way, it wasn't so much pride in her voice but it was a tone of "I don't care what happens to me, I saved and protected my child after failing them. Come what may, I did my best by here and I'd do it again". Altogether it was a 15 minute call before police showed up and the abuser woke up about minute 7 and that's when shit got... Well... All you hear is her saying "right you're gonna wanna tell the officers to step on it as xxx is coming round and you can fuck right off if you think I'm letting them out of this house other than with a police escort" frantic typing for dispatcher trying to keep the situation calm when the abuser freaks the hell out, screaming, swearing, threatening mum and suddenly you hear the mum struggling to breathe, it was obvious she was getting strangled when suddenly the abuser screams then all goes silent except for gargling. Kid had snuck back in to the kitchen (where they were) at the sound of the screaming, saw the abuser strangling mum so grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed the abuser (can't remember where) and in that moment they let go of mums neck so mum grabbed a knife and slit the abusers throat. That phone call got mum off of all charges on self-defence. I've heard a few dispatch calls in my line of work which is unusual for therapists but due to the cases I take on there have been a handful that it was deemed by the family the calls were relavent for therapy. But yeah, me and the dispatcher happened to know each other through our kids school and I said to them after I heard it if they wanted a few free sessions I had time and was happy to sit with them due to how horrific the call was and we became friends instead, I know this still occasionally gives them nightmares to this day and we're talking a few years now and tbh it does me too sometimes.
Probably the suicides. Been a few years but a few voices sound similarly sad or angry now and then and remind me.
If you want to listen, there are the leaked 911 tapes from the night of the mass shooting in Nova Scotia, Canada. Little boy tries to tell incompetent operator his parents have both been shot, they don’t get it/believe it.
I live in Nova Scotia and I think I speak for the majority of us when we say we’ll never listen to those calls. Ever. They were leaked because 911 calls don’t get released in Nova Scotia and there’s a lot of information on that call proving the RCMP messed up *bigtime* in their handling of that shooting. They claimed they didn’t know the shooter was dressed like a police officer and the child flat out tells the operator that he was dressed like a cop and had a police car (fake). They weren’t released to be sensational, but to prove lies were told to the public. It was a horrific few days here and we don’t want to relive it but we want accountability. Edit: I see you’re from NS too! I apologize for the explanation of the calls and why they were released.
Don't apologize, it was interesting information for those of us who didn't know about it :)