Dial 911 and Die

That's disgusting i hope the family sue that person and that the two suspended are sacked, how dare they put peoples lives at further peril by not despatching the police to the scene,you really have to question the mentality of these people they must be real wankers
 
Interesting to see how that article degenerated from being an outraged expose of the attitude of some dozy 911 phone operators to extolling the virtues of replacing 911 with a gunfight!

See, this is what puzzles us so much down here... we just don't understand that thinking process.

Sack the operators, and/or chuck 'em in the slammer for inv.manslaughter and the rest will pick up their act.
Maybe you really do have something to worry about if your governing authorities aren't even capable of running the emergency services. It seems indicative of a very shaky society, but I don't see arming the nervous as the optimum solution. That's treating the symptoms, not the cause.

Perhaps it comes down to too many splintered and localized authorities treading on each others toes?
Not aware of how your services operate exactly but they appear to be run a bit differently to ours which come under a central authority covering all areas. A ('000' here) call from anywhere goes through the same call centre so there's little chance or occurrence of discriminatory action being taken on the operators part, they just pass it on to whoever is closest to the incident whether it be cops ambulance or fire brigade.
We still get the odd stuff up but it's seldom, if ever, proven to be malicious or overtly negligent at the point of dispatch.

Throwing 911 out in favour of vigilantism seems a pretty silly over-reaction to me. Does anyone simply consider tidying 911's operating procedures up?
 

It isn't vigilantism - that's the mistake that a few other people on this forum have made.

It's self-defense.

I don't see a single thing wrong with this scenario. You'd have to know about Detroit, of course, in order to make a fair judgment. You know that series of movies that were made a few years ago in your country? Mad Max?

That's Detroit, minus most of the sand.

Those response times mentioned are more and more becoming the norm rather than the statistical blip, because the failed economy has cut back on manpower.

Look at it this way: if I have a 300-pound steroid freak who's having a bad day trying to kick in my door at 3 in the morning, what do you think will be a more likely way of saving my ass - calling 9-1-1 and waiting for 20 minutes, or calmly pointing the shotgun at the door and waiting for his entrance?

Or put it another way: if I'm standing next to a person on a sidewalk and there's a cop standing a mere 20' away, I can take that person out with my bare hands before the cop gets even half-way there.

Where's the logic in waiting for help? Why is it so amazing, so distasteful to you, to protect yourself? Why are you in favor of giving up the responsibility of protecting yourself to someone else - someone who will never be there in time?

9-1-1 is handy for when your car has a fender-bender or when there's a raccoon prowling around your garbage cans, but in a real-world, fast-as-a-blur, violent scenario? It's useless.
 
Short answer? We don't live in Detroit. Yet anyway.

There-in lies the difference I guess. Horses for courses and all that. If you need 'em fine.
Do you ever wonder though why you need them? What went so dreadfully wrong? Maybe fundamentally this gun thing fascinates us because we're afraid of going that path someday too.

Mad Max.... yes I can see that future possibility but honestly, how many crippled old ladies, or blind men, are ever going to survive in that world armed or not?
What's the point of sitting in a house starving to death with a shotgun on your knee?
If you're not fit enough to get out and hunt and kill your own then you are not going to make it anyway.
That world will be populated by people we have no wish to be and we'd be better off out of it.

Does that make sense at all?
 
Maybe I shouldn't have used that link, because I certainly don't want this to be another gun control thread. In order to understand why many Americans feel that they need to be self-sufficient and defend themselves in a dangerous situation, one must attempt to listen (and hear) with an open mind. I completely agree with SifuPhil that it's merely self-defense...to immediately assume that it's vigilantism shows hard set opinion. I personally don't have any desire to change anyone's attitudes on guns, and I respect everyone's right to their own opinions and lifestyles.

There are definitely many issues with the 911 emergency system. People have died when they called for ambulances for conditions like gallstones, and were told by the operator to take a hot bath, ambulance refused. People in automobile crashes have perished, because the 911 operator failed to instruct the first responders with the proper location.

A problem with the operators is that many of them waste precious moments by asking the same questions over and over, when someone needs emergency aid immediately. There are stories of them sleeping at their stations, and missing calls. There are instances where they are just inadequately trained for the job. Some of them are disgruntled employees, perhaps over worked and over stressed, or underpaid. Some are just apathetic...and on, and on.

I often wonder myself if I should just call a local ambulance during an emergency, to avoid all the 911 nonsense involved, because it's a crap shoot. There are some good operators that have helped save lives, and I give them credit where credit is due.

There's also people calling 911 for ridiculous things. I've heard that someone called 911 because their French fries were served cold at a fast food place. I personally know a woman who called 911 because there were a lot of bees outside her house. So they do have to also put up with lots of nonsense.

Regardless of the cause, the system is definitely failing. Even if they started today to make big changes, there would be no results in my lifetime for sure. I understand that there's also issues with malfunctioning phones and computers. I for one, will not completely rely on the efficiency of the 911 operator in a dire situation, especially if it's an immediate physical threat.
 
When officers finally did arrive, the woman had been shot by a man with a military-style semi-automatic rifle. Now she is lying in a Detroit hospital in critical condition.
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Why do civilians have military-style semi-automatic rifles in the first place?

I've called 000 (our emergency number) twice. Once when I set fire to my kitchen and the second time when my husband overdosed in a suicide attempt. Both times the response was prompt. I agree with Diwundrin - fix the system and lower the number of guns so that the emergency staff are not under so much threat when they do respond.
 
Maybe I shouldn't have used that link, because I certainly don't want this to be another gun control thread.
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Sorry Seabreeze, I just honed in on that aspect of it because basically the cause of the whole situation was a wrong gun in the wrong hands, and then for the sheriff to be advising that more of them is a solution to a fundamentally clerical problem was more irony than I can resist.
 
Diwundrin said:
Short answer? We don't live in Detroit. Yet anyway.
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You don't know how lucky you are. ;)

There-in lies the difference I guess. Horses for courses and all that. If you need 'em fine.
Do you ever wonder though why you need them? What went so dreadfully wrong? Maybe fundamentally this gun thing fascinates us because we're afraid of going that path someday too.
Click to expand...

I don't often go looking for root causes - I just try to deal with the here and now. It avoids a lot of wasted time and effort over something that cannot be changed.

Mad Max.... yes I can see that future possibility but honestly, how many crippled old ladies, or blind men, are ever going to survive in that world armed or not?
What's the point of sitting in a house starving to death with a shotgun on your knee?
If you're not fit enough to get out and hunt and kill your own then you are not going to make it anyway.
That world will be populated by people we have no wish to be and we'd be better off out of it.

Does that make sense at all?
Click to expand...

It makes perfect sense. I've always maintained that we have only a paper-thin veneer of humanity, ethics and morals; it can be stripped away in a moment, and what remains looks a lot like that scenario you just laid out.

Survival of the fittest.
 
Diwundrin said:
Sorry Seabreeze, I just honed in on that aspect of it because basically the cause of the whole situation was a wrong gun in the wrong hands, and then for the sheriff to be advising that more of them is a solution to a fundamentally clerical problem was more irony than I can resist.
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No apologies needed Di. :love_heart: I should have known that the gun crime would be a tempting opening to gun ownership discussions. Guess being stabbed to death isn't so controversial. :p

[/In May, a Detroit woman was fatally stabbed after she dialed 911, and a police cruiser failed to arrive on the scene for an hour and a half. In that case, the dispatcher has since been charged with misconduct.
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You're afraid of going down that path in your country, and we're afraid of our country becoming what you have there. I think we can both agree that guns taken out of the hands of criminals, crazies, evil people and gangbangers would be a solution...but they will get their weapons on the street, regardless.


Warrigal, the type of weapon isn't important, she could have died just as easily from a shot that came from a small pistol. That's part of the problem, everyone focusing on gun crimes only, just to try to prove their point. The average responsible citizen should have the option of owning any type of gun they choose...it's called freedom.

Repeated to the point of exhaustion...there are many fatal crimes in which no guns are involved like beatings, stabbings, drownings, hangings, chokings, poisonings, smotherings, pushing people off cliffs, etc., etc.

There are many lives that have been saved by gun owners, including older men and women who are no longer able to physically fight an attacker, but they had a gun for protection in their homes and used it to avoid being murdered. Funny how those stories get swept under the rug...not the desired spin for some.


SifuPhil said:
I don't often go looking for root causes - I just try to deal with the here and now. It avoids a lot of wasted time and effort over something that cannot be changed.
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I agree, my thoughts exactly.

Well folks, I guess the 911 discussion has fallen by the wayside, and the gun thing is taking over again. :eek:hwell:
 
Extremely sad story...hard to hear about. But I wouldn't touch the gun control issue for all the tea in China. Whew, that is one more hot subject, isn't it?
 
Things always look wrong when looked at from an opposite type of observation.
As an example, suppose someone was talking to us from some land where knives were forbidden, because people there had been murdered with knives. They would positively HATE knives, and not understand why we would have them in our houses.

We, on the other hand, would try and explain that we don't go around murdering anyone with our knives, we use them to chop up heads of lettuce, slice tomatoes, or dice up green peppers and onions......complete mundane activities.
Yes, we would say, there are criminals that use knives to kill people, and they have the dangerous "Rambo" style hunting knife, which are not allowed, but we don't have those knives in our homes.
They are sold by underground gangs to other drug dealers or criminals, and the police arrest these types, and confiscate the dangerous knives.

Even so, it would be hard for someone that perceived a knife as a dangerous weapon wielded only by criminals to understand why we would have them in our homes, instead of using scissors, or a food processor to chop our veggies.

The whole perception comes from such different ingrained lifestyles. It is not that one is right and the other wrong, we just have very different views on the same subject.
 
The whole perception comes from such different ingrained lifestyles. It is not that one is right and the other wrong, we just have very different views on the same subject.
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Nailed that.

Some have the view we're a downtrodden poor mob of wooses who have given up all our rights or somesuch, that's just as mistaken as some's views of Americans all being gun happy. Talking about it just gives a better understanding, but if it makes people uncomfortable then it's not important to enough to risk that.
 
Diwundrin said:
Nailed that.

Some have the view we're a downtrodden poor mob of wooses who have given up all our rights or somesuch, that's just as mistaken as some's views of Americans all being gun happy. Talking about it just gives a better understanding, but if it makes people uncomfortable then it's not important to enough to risk that.
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All of you poor downtrodden wusses say that. :playful:

But I agree that HFL captured the nugget of gold with that post.

Okay, 9-1-1- how about all those news stories about people that call 9-1-1 for help with homework, or to settle a bet?
 
funny_911_calls.jpg
 
Happyflowerlady said:
Things always look wrong when looked at from an opposite type of observation.
As an example, suppose someone was talking to us from some land where knives were forbidden, because people there had been murdered with knives. They would positively HATE knives, and not understand why we would have them in our houses.

We, on the other hand, would try and explain that we don't go around murdering anyone with our knives, we use them to chop up heads of lettuce, slice tomatoes, or dice up green peppers and onions......complete mundane activities.
Yes, we would say, there are criminals that use knives to kill people, and they have the dangerous "Rambo" style hunting knife, which are not allowed, but we don't have those knives in our homes.
They are sold by underground gangs to other drug dealers or criminals, and the police arrest these types, and confiscate the dangerous knives.

Even so, it would be hard for someone that perceived a knife as a dangerous weapon wielded only by criminals to understand why we would have them in our homes, instead of using scissors, or a food processor to chop our veggies.

The whole perception comes from such different ingrained lifestyles. It is not that one is right and the other wrong, we just have very different views on the same subject.
Click to expand...
And I would explain that, unlike a knife, which is a useful and versatile tool, a gun is not a handy kitchen gadget. It cannot be used to carve a roast nor to butter your bread; it's sole purpose is to kill something or someone. An axe may be used as a murder weapon but that is not it's primary purpose. A semi-automatic rifle must surely be designed to be a homicide tool. Why else are they classified as assault weapons?

The difference of opinions on either side of the pond seems to me to hinge on the Bill of Rights. It is about patriotism and the defence of the Constitution as much as it is about self defence IMO but I could be totally wrong. We have no bill of rights yet we consider ourselves to be free under the Common Law and we accept that personal freedom should not be exercised to the detriment of society as a whole.

It is clear but baffling to me that American citizens are determined to resist any and all laws that would seek to limit the number and categories of weaponry for citizens but since democracy is a reflection of the will of the people, then so be it. However, IMO the consequences of this stance is more likely to result in more homicides rather than in less. By homicides I mean deaths using every kind of weapon taking into consideration murders, massacres, suicides and accidents. US statistics with respect to gun deaths are quite frightening when compared with other civilised countries.
 
homicide-by-firearm-rate-per-100000-population.jpg

source


Food for thought ... you might want to investigate those homicide-by-firearm cases more closely, because I think you'll be surprised to find that 60% of all gun deaths in the USA are from suicide. (source)

We're just implementing our version of the Right-To-Die Law.

Do you believe that by passing a law that says "ALL GUNS ARE NOW ILLEGAL!" will cause all those bad guys to come flocking in to the police station to turn in their weapons? Hardly.

Even if they did, by choice (unlikely) or by force, they would immediately go out and steal / buy from the black market another gun. If they failed at that they would go for knives or bats or clubs or rocks or ...

I admit that we're a gun-nut culture. For whatever reason, whether the Bill of Rights or our conception of how the Wild West Was Won, we loves us some guns. So the barn door was left open long ago. Trying to shut it now would be quite difficult.

We are also a political culture, and there is a massive lobby called the NRA that, while they don't do a lot for their members, DO keep the gun manufacturers in business.

Finally is the fact that we like our freedoms. As long as the bad guys are going to be able to get guns we aren't willing to give ours up nor do we take to being told that we have to. Call it American ego or pride or arrogance or whatever, but it's there.
 
Darn, we're only "2 to 5". Gotta step it up. Looks like getting shot out in the middle of the ocean is a sure thing at "12 to 70" . . .
 
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