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Chapter 1: What is the significance of 911 in emergency services?
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Hey, everybody. Chuck here on your Saturday Selects. And hey, guys, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take us on a little walk down memory lane from 2020. And my picks for the next, geez, maybe up to 20 weeks for me, and then Josh picks his, so maybe 40 weeks, almost a year, are going to be walking back through the year of COVID.
kind of what was going on thematically that year and before and after. And we'll see if there's any fruit to bear as far as looking back. I hope this is more interesting than your usual select, but we're going to start it off with February 13th, 2020, pre-COVID by about a month-ish with our episode, 9-1-1 is not a joke. All about 9-1-1 and how it works. Great episode. Check it out.
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Chapter 2: How did the 911 system evolve over the years?
It is, which we'll get to, but that changed things. Yeah, the big spoiler is that the 911 system that we currently use in the United States is hopelessly antiquated. And they're working on improving it. And nothing that we should say about how antiquated it is should keep you from calling 911. It still generally works.
But it's having trouble or it's had trouble traditionally keeping pace with the massive sweeping changes in telecommunications that has gone on in the last couple decades. Yeah. Yeah, because telecom is always trying to move forward and they don't think like, oh, but maybe we should slow the pace for 911.
Right, exactly.
And plus, I mean, 911, we'll see those systems are built alongside the other system. So when the other system leads forward, they have to go through and rebuild this system that's just for 911. Because you can't get rid of an old system because people, well, we'll get to that stuff. We'll get to that. Let's not spoil it.
But we were laughing earlier about things that you should and should not call for. Some of these are debatable, I think. Oh, yeah? I think so. Says who? Says me. Okay. We'll get to the last one, really, is the only one that's debatable. But obviously, if there's a fire or smoke that you think is a fire. Where there's smoke, there's fire.
medical emergency and you can't, you know, obviously get in an ambulance or get in your car and run someone to the emergency room if you can, if it's quicker and you can do so safely. It's quicker and cheaper. Oh, well, sure. Cost of gas, maybe a couple tolls, who knows, compared to like an ambulance ride. No, that's a good point.
But, I mean, I imagine if your home just loaded and your kid gets hurt, you should probably call 911. Yeah, call 911. Car accidents, of course, if they are major enough and, like, have injuries, call 911. You should be able to tell. Like, if somebody's like, oh, that kind of hurt my neck, you don't have to call 911. You could call ā here's the other thing.
If we're saying don't call 911, that doesn't mean like don't alert anybody. Right. But there are ā there's a ā your police have their own phone number. Your local police have their own phone number. They do. Look it up and call that, the non-emergency number. Right. And then obviously the last category is some sort of crime being committed, violence being committed. Sure. Call 911.
Yeah, so that's like no one's going to argue with that. I think so. Okay. There are plenty of instances where you shouldn't call 911, and yet people reliably call 911 for stuff like this. And I think that's because it's been drilled into everyone's head. It's kind of a double-edged sword. You can't drill that into everyone's head.
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Chapter 3: What are the common misconceptions about calling 911?
That's beyond suspicious. That's like the act. That's the act. That's a crime being committed. So you have a second when you see a suspicious person to stop and think, like, would I call 911 if this person were white? Or if you're a black person doing this, say, would I call 911 if this person were black? And if the answer is no, then maybe you shouldn't call.
Maybe they're not acting that suspiciously. Yeah, it's just interesting on these Facebook neighborhood pages. it's kind of evenly divided between people saying, don't call 911 for this. This is just a guy going door to door, perhaps. Other people saying, no, you know what?
If it's 945 or 10 o'clock at night and someone's knocking on your door in our neighborhood, maybe you should call the cops and let them work it out. And for the cops, they say, you know, call us. That doesn't mean we're going to dispatch eight cars to your home, but we might work you through the situation and it's all going to be fine. Yes.
But this is the only one where I thought was a little bit like you shouldn't just say, like, don't call 911 when you see a suspicious person. No, you certainly shouldn't say that. At the same time, though, I think one of the big hesitations for calling 911 these days is, like, either the increase ā
Or the increase in reporting of people, innocent people who had 911 called on them being killed by the cops. Exactly. And that death would not have happened. Their death wouldn't have happened had the person been suspicious of them and called 911. And the fact, you know, when news of something like that gets out, it will make you second guess that kind of thing. For sure.
It makes you realize you're bringing like ā People who are armed and jumpy out to a situation where it's just somebody walking around or whatever. And when you look at it from that respect, it can make you second-guess the whole thing. Yeah, and things can look like potential malfeasance that's not, you know.
Like a lot of people, you see a lot of people saying, well, I think someone's casing my house because a car pulled into my driveway and sat there for two minutes. They asked me if I wanted to know more about Sierra Club.
Right.
Or someone stopped and was taking pictures of my house. Like, you never know, somebody might be taking a picture of the oak tree that they're trying to learn about. Or just looking up something on their phone and standing in the direction of your house. Nine times out of ten, they're trying to figure out more about the oak tree near your house.
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Chapter 4: What should you never call 911 for?
some guy got killed right from a swatting incident yeah i think it's happened more than once yeah that's serious stuff if you don't know what swatting is we'll just give you the the 411 on this abuse of 9-1-1 man i love myself sometimes great um So swatting is where you are a hacker, right? Mm-hmm.
And you can disguise the number that you're calling from to make it look like you're calling from a house that you want the cops to go to. Right. And you basically say, like, I'm in this house and I'm holding hostages and what are you going to do about it, Johnny Law? Yeah. And the law comes out and usually SWAT ā I shouldn't say usually.
In some cases, the SWAT team will actually enter this house where people who have no idea what's going on are. Right. And maybe the people who have been SWATed, you know, said something mean to the guy who, you know, called the SWAT team out on them. But it's basically ā it's not like saying like there's a ā I think there's a hostage situation in this house.
It's I'm the guy holding the hostages and here's where I am. You see something mean like, and SWAT teams stink. Right, exactly. So the SWAT team's like, we're going to go kill that guy. I'll bet you would never in a million years bring your SWAT team out. And whatever you do, don't come in guns blazing. Right. Which we're joking about something that's really happened. Sure.
So, like, I really think we need to talk at least the short stuff.
I think so.
We'll look into it a little further. We'll do one on swatting and one on doxing. Okay. The two weird new things that people do now. Right. But swatting is definitely a crime. Yes. Okay. Also... So that you don't make 911 feel like ā I think this is great. This is almost like a public service announcement that we're in the midst of. Yeah, we do these. So you don't get in trouble with the 911.
So they don't think that you're pranking them when you're not. If you ever call 911 accidentally or say your kid does or whatever, you do not want to hang up the phone. Yeah, I did that a few years ago I feel like. I accidentally called 911 because I think cell phones have a feature that ā It enacted like an automatic call by accident.
Right.
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Chapter 5: How do 911 dispatchers handle emergency calls?
That's right.
Which one?
I just said two different things. The Liberty Bell, the Southern Bell. Yeah. Bell from... Pacific Bell. Pacific Bell, the Bell from Beauty and the Beast. Right. All the Bells. Albuquerque Bell. Sure, why not? You can ring my bell. That's a good one. That's a good song. It's a good one. But I think More, More, More by Andrea True Connection is far better. What's that?
Virtually the same thing, but just a better song. Oh, okay. They got in touch with AT&T, and they said, can you help us out with this? Apparently, AT&T is the one that chose 911 because it hadn't been used yet, which is kind of the first stumbling block. Again, the rotary dial. Rotary dial. That wasā911's a lot better than 999. Wayāit's two-thirds better. It is two-thirds better.
And it was easy to remember, and, you know, I think they had set up at this point already 411ā
in a lot of areas so they just kind of extended that idea of the the something one one right so um the first this really surprised me the first um 911 call that was ever placed in the united states new york city you would think so washington dc no chicago what else you got uh chicago you already said that one okay i don't know what about los angeles yeah why not what about albuquerque
They're doing fine. Okay. No, none of those are correct. Haleyville, Alabama was the site of the very first 911 call. Yeah, that's a good little trivia question, I think. That is pedal to the metal. By the way, I recently watched, I had recorded all those Jeopardy shows with Ken Jennings on there, the champions run. That was some of the better TV I'd seen in a while. Really good stuff. Oh, yeah?
Well, I mean, if you're a Jeopardy fan, it was as good as it gets. Like, the smartest competitors and, like, big-time drama. Because they, you know, they had to bring it on those daily doubles. It wasn't like a regular show. Like, they were daily doubling on, like, $20,000 and stuff. Like, it was really tense. Wow. Like, good drama. Yeah. It was so cool.
Because I think Ken knew that other guy, the Holzheltzer guy, was a gambler. And he made his name for really just going all in. And Ken knew this. So he had to do the same. Well, sure. In order to beat these chumps. If you're playing a gambler, you get dragged into gambling whether you want to gamble or not. Bring it in there. You know? It's good stuff. Anyway, good trivia question.
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Chapter 6: What technology is used in the modern 911 system?
So as expected, aside from Haleyville and Nome, it was mostly like large metropolitan areas that were starting to roll out the earliest 911 systems. But the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which was the foundation based on Johnson & Johnson's company, They took an early interest in this and started handing out grants to rural areas to set up their own 911 systems.
So ironically, Haleyville, Alabama, had it not jumped on it, probably still wouldn't have a 911 system were it not for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doling out grants to like, you know, small towns around the country for their own. Yeah, because they're like, you know what? People call 911. They go to the hospital. They're going to be using Johnson & Johnson products. Yeah.
I'm not being overly cynical. I'm sure that, you know, 911 is probably good for the Band-Aid business. I would guess so. And baby shampoo? Yeah, because if you can't get an ambulance to that person, they're going to croak. But if you get the ambulance to them, right, you don't need Band-Aids when you're dead. Nope. That's just like a fact of death.
But if you survive, you're going to need a lot of Band-Aids depending on what you've done to yourself. That's right. Here's some stats for you. By 1976, when I was five years old, only 17% of the U.S. had 9-1-1. You want to know a surprising fact? 1976, I was just born. Well, you probably weren't covered by 9-1-1. Again, not until 1989. Well, by 1987, only 50% of the country, which is...
That's pretty late. I would have thought we would have had a lot more of the country covered by then. For sure, you would think so. And it wasn't until 99, actually, Chuck, that 911 officially became the emergency number for everywhere in America. 1999. Bill Clinton said, let's do this. He said, what about 999? And they went, Bill. Yeah, please. Wrong country.
Canada, speaking of wrong countries, they are very much the right country because they got on board with 9-1-1 as well. That's absolutely true, Chuck. Because they were like, why make things too difficult? You know, that's a great question, Canada. And I think the answer to that is you shouldn't make things too difficult. Just kind of go with the flow.
Go with the American flow.
Should we take another break or should we do some more stuff here? I was thinking maybe another break. Okay. Are you okay with that? Yes. Are you sure? Yes. What about you listeners? Okay, good. Well, we'll be right back.
Stuffish.
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Chapter 7: How does racial bias affect 911 response times?
And that evolved to the call center. That evolved to what was called Enhanced 911, which was in the 1970s, again, driven by telecom advancing with AT&T with new technologies. They developed ANI and ALI, automatic number identification and location identification. ANI is just caller ID. That's what everybody calls caller ID. Yeah.
Remember those cute little boxes that you could plug your phone line into? Sat on your little table. Show you in some little terrible readout. Yeah. Basically dot matrix readout. Yep. Who was calling? Pretty neat. And then it was on your handheld cordless phone. Right. You could look at it, and that was like, whoa, we're living in the future. Rich. Or the answering machine now is digital.
We don't need those tiny tapes. Yeah, it's true. That was like a big revolution too. That was huge. Amazing. Because you could leave as long a message as you wanted now. Yeah. But you couldn't get that clever, nobody's home, nobody's home. Sure, you're still recording your outgoing message. Right. You could sing it, but they actually had that tape you could buy that you could put in there. Yeah.
There was one that was like a whole mixtape of them. Of just like gag answers? Mm-hmm. Oh, boy. You don't remember that? Not really. There was a very famous ad that ran.
Really?
Yeah. It was like, delight your friends. Basically, yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty funny. So this enhanced 911 system, the automatic number and the automatic locator, that was a big deal because now all of a sudden, if you were a call taker for 911 and a call came up on your little computer screen, it said what the number was and what the address was.
And because everybody was calling from landlinesā You knew exactly where that person was who needed help. That's right. Saved a bunch of time. It was a very huge life-saving measure. Yeah.
I mean, when you think about people in an emergency, it could be everything from crippling fear, keeping you from even knowing where you are, to having been hit on the head and not being able to say where you are. Yeah, or you just can't speak. Yeah. And so that really, imagine that they spend a lot of time sometimes just trying to get through that first step of where are you. Right.
So this was an enormous leap forward. In the 70s and 80s, it really kind of cemented how helpful and life-saving this 911 system could be. And then cell phones came along, and the rest of us kind of leapfrogged right over 911 because the cell phone carriers didn't have ANI and ALI. When you call 911, still to this day, from a cell phone, it does not come up what your number is,
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Chapter 8: What is the future of the 911 system and emergency response?
He's like a really quality director. Yeah, I know that name. And it seemed like this sort of ā from what? You going to call me out on that? I didn't hear you. From what? From where? Oh, I don't get what you mean. From where? Like what other... Oh, what other movies has he directed? Yeah. He directed a scary movie called Session 9. Oh, yes. Okay.
Well, then this guy is one of my favorites of all time. You know that movie? It's one of the best horror movies ever made. Yeah. I'm a fan of Brad Anderson because he has a range of genres. Like one of his early movies is this... kind of spacey rom-com called Happy Accidents that was great. Happy Accidents?
Yeah, really good with Marisa Tomei and Vincent D'Onofrio, but it had this, it was a rom-com with a sort of a bit of a sci-fi twist to it. Oh, okay. And he did Trans-Siberian. He's done, he did Next Stop Wonderland was one of his first little indies. But yeah, he does, it's unusual for a director to tackle all these weird or different genres. That's neat. Disparate genres.
Well, you had me at session nine. Yeah, The Call is a good popcorn movie. I highly recommend it. Okay, I'll check it out. Halle Berry is a call center person, and that's all I'll say. Hey, she's quality. She's a quality actress. She is. But the fact that I had never even heard of this movie really made me suspicious. It did pretty well. Okay. It wasn't a massive hit, but it did like $60 million.
But that's really surprising. Like, I'm very aware of movies. Like, I'll know what the movie's about, and I'll have never seen it. Not even seen a preview. I'll just kind of know. Sure. So I'm surprised. Yeah. Okay. I recommend it. I'll check it out. Yeah. I mean, it's no Black Coat's Daughter, but... Man, that's a good one, too. So where are we now? We are now at texting to 911.
Oh, wait, hold on. I want to drive this home real quick. Okay. Drive it home. The 1996 FCC rule that says you have to have a cell phone tower, tell 911 its address, the closest one to your cell phone, and then give the GPS coordinates for wherever that cell phone, they think the cell phone is.
Uh-huh.
That's the 911 system that's in place nationwide today in 2020. That's why they ask you from a cell phone, who are you and where are you, just like they did in the early days. Right, and this is a problem because, like you said earlier, 80% of 911 calls in the United States are made from cell phones, and 911 does not know where you are unless you tell them.
Yeah, but it's also balanced out by the fact that They really want to help. Well, you have that cell phone right there and immediately. Yeah, yeah. Remember the old days, you're like, let me find a pay phone. Let me go knock on someone's door. That's true. And ask about their oak tree and hopefully I won't get shot. Right. So people are calling right away.
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