Did you see that awful Tom Cruise movie, where he was the future cop in charge of prosecuting people for future crimes? Well, if you recall, the system was ultimately disbanded at the end, because of the revelation that the process used for determineing the criminals invariably led to a number of “false positives.”
This post has absolutely nothing to do with tom cruise, and nothing to do with psychic triplets who predict crimes in the future. Instead, I’d like to spotlight what can go terribly wrong when people in charge of our safety and protection take matters into their own hands:
The Detroit Free press reports an absolutely sickening story of a six year old child who had called 9-1-1 after his mother, suffering from a heart condition, had “passed out.” His mother, Sharon Turner, had actually died of heart failure.
The child, alone in the house with his dying mother, had called 9-1-1 twice, trying to convey to the operator that his mother was in trouble. At one point, the operator asked the boy to put his mother on the phone…
Of course, a six year old’s cognitive skills are limited. And their reason is far from perfect. Especially when they are being wholly discounted by the 9-1-1 operator his mother had taught him to call in case of an emergency.
Robert called back about 9 p.m. An operator told him: “You shouldn’t be playing on the phone. … Now put her on the phone before I send the police out there to knock on the door and you going to be in trouble.”“Of all the people’s lives we save, this one incident has put a black cloud over us,” Harris said. “People are calling for her job and for her head.”
Detroit City Councilwoman Barbara-Rose Collins said the council has not dealt with many complaints related to the 911 system, but she described this incident as gross negligence, saying, “It’s not up to her to decide if it’s a prank or not.”
And I’d have to agree. It is not up to the operator to make the decision, when a child, barely an infant, is on the phone.
The Union President for the operators indicates that 25% of 9-1-1 calls are pranks. But determining the validity of the call should not be the providence of the operator on the phone with a six year old boy. I don’t know if Robert’s mother might’ve been saved if the response had been quicker, and had followed a more appropriate protocol. But that’s beside the point.
Of course, that Union-Boss probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass about this dead mother, nor the orphan his flunky helped create. His job is protect the lazy, good-for-nothing goons he represents.
Unions…gotta love ‘em.
Karen DeCoster posted something on this same story…asking if a privately run system would work the same way. She has a point.