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Richard Piatt and Tom Callan reportingThey're a huge waste of a police officers' time: crank calls. This week, officers put a stop to a rash of phony 911 calls -- more than 1,600 since January.
There are thousands of calls through the Salt Lake Police Department's dispatch center every week. A lot of them are desperate cries for help. So, when dispatchers figure out someone thinks it's funny to call them over and over again, it's more than annoying.
"We would tell them: ‘We're going to send officers out to talk to you.' And eventually, they kept calling and kept calling until the other night," explained Salt Lake City police dispatcher Angie Renteria.
That night was this week, when a dispatcher fed up with the game kept a 14-year-old girl on the phone. Unable to specifically track the cell phone, which had been disabled except for 911 service, officers used old-fashioned police work. The dispatcher carefully listened to background noise and relayed it to the officer on the street.
"They went to the area where the calls originated and practically looked for any clue they could get -- lights on late at night, dogs barking, audible noises the dispatcher could hear over the line where the call was being placed -- and then narrowed it down from there," explained Detective Mike Burbank, with the Salt Lake City Police Department.
From the music and dogs barking, the officer tracked the prankster to a Glendale home near 1200 West and Pacific Avenue. A 14-year-old girl who lives there was cited and could face serious charges.
It's possible she and other teens were simply playing a game, but considering police responded to the false alarms more than 1,500 times since January, it's something more serious.
"We send officers out there, and a lot of them are no case since we can't find a problem out there. So, these kids wasted a lot of officers' time," Renteria said.
It may seem like it's pretty obvious that cell phones are not toys for children or teens, and that calling 911 when there is no emergency is no joke, but this is an extreme example that dispatchers want to call attention to, and they take this kind of thing seriously.
E-mail: rpiatt@ksl.com
E-mail: tcallan@ksl.com
