Let me help you help yourself.

This blog post was written in between calls as I worked tonight.

I wish I could write and dispense a user's manual for calling 911. As a normal citizen who doesn't use emergency services often, you may think that the calls you hear on the news (funny, tragic, heroic, etc.) are shining examples of how citizens act when they call 911. The unfortunate truth, beyond the fact that those calls have generally been edited and spliced to sound coherent and informative, is that the probably decent, upstanding citizenry seem to collectively lose their ever-loving minds as soon as a call to 911 connects.

The first and most important rule of thumb is not to scream your information. Seems reasonable, right? I'll get a little more technical to help you understand what a problem it really is. Cell phones have noise cancellation technology that is meant to help both parties hear more clearly. This is the sort of blessing technology that allows you to pee while on the phone with your closest friends and family (or telemarketers), leaving them none the wiser. If you are screaming into your phone, however, the noise cancellation technology works against you. The resulting distortion is extremely hard to understand, at best, and impossible to understand, at worst. So, first, calm down and talk in a normal speaking voice. It'll save everybody the agitation of having you repeat information twelve times over.

The second rule of thumb is to have the most important information ready for the operator you speak to. I wish that I could utilize a poll to ask citizens what they think the most important information is for any call. Let me tell you what is not important: what the weather's like, what has transpired between you and your mom over the last 20 years to leave your relationship is disrepair, the fact that you've already contacted your lawyer. Amazingly, the most important information in your call isn't even the reason you're calling police. THE most important information about every single call is where you are and, more specifically, where you need police to be. Just like in real estate, it's location, location, location. If you're unfamiliar with the area you're calling from, know where to look for an address. Sometimes businesses put their building numbers on their signs by the street. Sometimes it's above the door to the business. If you're inside a business, ask an employee for their address. If you're literally dying, giving a street name and a business name is permissible. If you're not, do your part to find out where the hell you are.

In the era of Google Maps, many people--myself included--seem to have stopped looking at street signs and building numbers, and I suspect that businesses and houses alike have stopped displaying address information as prominently as they once did. But let me tell you something. An address is the most important thing about your call, whether you've been in a fender-bender, see a suspicious person, or are shot and dying. I don't want to send an officer out to Main Street to look for you, not because I'm being mean, but because I really want them to get to you as quickly as possible. And Main Street is a long fucking road.

My last bit of advice, and this will help you in every step of your call, is to listen to the dispatcher. Sometimes, especially if you're reporting a high priority call, the dispatcher will let you yell out everything that comes to your mind. But inevitably, they will have questions for you. This is because a dispatcher is trained in what information police officers want and need in order to increase efficiency. Many times, callers have more information than they realize. But they also have quite a bit more useless information than they realize, and it is up to the dispatcher to sift through it all.