Fear and Loathing

I am a police dispatcher.

Before becoming so, I had a problem with authority. I imagined the police being just another tool of the Man trying to keep the Brother down. LAPD = all PDs; Mark Fuhrman = all police officers.

Like all generalizations, this is wrong. My department is quite conscientious about getting it right. I could go deeper but I’ll just leave it at this: I fully believe that I am working for the good guys; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t being working there.

That being said, Jaws brought up a good point in response to my story about a kidnapping turned into an arrest of the mother for an outstanding warrant: justice league. If the mother knew she had a warrant would she have called the police so quickly to help her? The answer is no. If you know you have a warrant, you probably will avoid calling the police as long as possible.

It’s quite easy to get a warrant, in most cases you do nothing at all. Arrested for assault and required to take an anger management class? Don’t go and you’ll earn yourself a warrant. Arrested and bail yourself out, promising to come to a future hearing? Don’t show up and you earn yourself a warrant. Most folks with warrants are not violent predators; most are people who made a mistake resulting in an arrest followed by the mistake of failing to perform the required community service or failing to show up for the next hearing. In these cases they know the likelihood of a warrant. They know that they will go to jail if a police officer contacts them.

So they hide. But there are plenty of reasons to contact the police that are not in one’s direct control car accidents being the most common and least controllable (they are called accidents for a reason). Not taking care of business at a time they choose leaves them with taking care of business at a time that they don’t choose, which is usually a lot less convenient.

Who else doesn’t call 911 unless it cannot be avoided?

- People who have drugs at home that are not related to the emergency prompting their decision to call.

- Illegal aliens

- People who do not speak English. They often do not know that we can call translators (at least on the phone) for nearly any language. They often have negative views of police because of the police in their country of origin.

- People who have called 911 before and had negative results (getting arrested for a warrant, calling to only stop a domestic argument but not expecting the police to arrest their partner, etc.)


None of these are good reasons to not call 911 if your three year old has been kidnapped. In the first two cases, there will probably be consequences other than finding your child. In the last two, there is nothing to fear by calling for help.

As for me, I was never worried about police coming to my house until I was hired as a dispatcher. Now if a police officer comes to my door I know I am being ordered for involuntary overtime and had not answered my telephone when they tried to order me in. Like the guy with the meth lab in his basement, my first inclination upon hearing the knock of a police officer is to bail out the back door and take off running. But not answering the phone in the first place, that would be wrong wouldn’t it?

You can run but you cannot hide.