• daggermoon@piefed.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    This happens frequently enough where you’d think there would be a system in place to prevent this type of abuse.

    • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      It’s the ol’ “boy who cried wolf” situation. You probably don’t want public services like police and firefighters deciding which calls seem real or not.

      • Canaconda@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        K but there has to be some happy medium between 20 swat cars and showing up 2 hours after the pizza driver.

        • calcopiritus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          6 days ago

          Showing up with 20 swat cars doesn’t mean that there’s 20 swat cars blindly shooting at the house.

          There’s no harm on just showing up. As long as they verify the claims before acting on them, I don’t see the issue.

          The only issue is that it is expensive and may break a door or something. Which is why the caller should be tracked, and made to pay for all of it.

        • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
          0·
          6 days ago

          It’s really easy to say that when you’re not the one calling the police because there’s an actual madman with a gun holding your loved one hostage. I think it’s a tough situation that, really, has more to do with the overall culture in America than how emergency services respond to particular calls. If the overall level of potential danger was lower due to cultural reasons, I think then we could talk.

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      Genuinely hard to do. Even if we ignore the problem of guns in the US (this also happens in the europe, for example).

      Emergency services kind of have to assume every call is real and act accordingly. In hostage and shooting situations there’s not really much time to debate the validity of the case, because if they delay and it was a real situation, they now are responsible for potentially more victims.

      The only real solution is that the forces need to arrive with the potential that it’s a fake call. But that’s easier said than done

      Oh, and prosecute the hell out of the callers. Which is not always possible, depending how energy they put into making the call anonymous

      • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.comEnglish
        0·
        5 days ago

        they now are responsible for potentially more victims.

        No they are not. Multiple court cases have exonerated police for failing to respond or not responding quickly enough. See: Uvalde (among many others).

        They are trying to play it both ways: not responsible but also must respond in the most over-the-top aggressive manner possible.

              • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.comEnglish
                0·
                5 days ago

                This story is about the U.S. and very distinct aspects of our society (notably our healthcare system and our policing), hence the context of my comment is about the U.S.

                Grandmothers in other nations would not have to live stream Minecraft to raise money for their grandchild’s cancer treatment.

                “Yabbut other nations” isn’t going to cut it here because you absolutely 100% know that it is irrelevant to the discussion.

                  • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.comEnglish
                    0·
                    5 days ago

                    I’m not talking about Europe though. I am talking about the U.S.

                    Even in your original comment, the part about Europe was an “aside” in parenthesis, not the main part of the comment. A footnote, as it were. We aren’t going to divert the conversation over a footnote when the actual article and main content of your comment outside the parenthesis pertains to the U.S.