After never having called 911 ever in my life, I recently called twice in two days. I thought that the second time was an accident, but I have come to learn that there is no such thing as an accidental 911 call.
The first call happened in Madison. After attending a small wedding celebration at a restaurant a block from the Capitol, I went to retrieve my car from a nearby parking ramp. As I turned on the headlights to pull out of my parking space, I noticed a metal briefcase dangling from a small hook on one of the ramp’s concrete support pillars.
I paid for my parking, exited the ramp, and was heading up East Mifflin Street when I decided that a 15” x 20” metal box abandoned in a parking ramp was too suspicious not to report. I called 911.
The 911 attendant seemed uninterested in my call. At first, she didn’t understand why I was calling. Eventually she took down my name and asked which ramp I’d parked in. I was the one who suggested that I tell her where in the ramp the box was located. I hung up and never learned what happened.
The next day I was back in La Crosse. Late that morning I went to exercise at the recreation center on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus. I listen to a playlist during my workouts, so I had my phone with me. After an hour in the gym, I went to take a shower. I tossed my phone into my locker, and the instant it landed on an extra towel I had lying on the bottom of the locker, it rang. I answered, and a voice said, “This is 911. What is your emergency?”
I apologized and said there was no emergency. I explained that I’d called 911 the night before and must have bumped the recall button. The woman on the end of the line had me reconfirm that there was no emergency and then said, “I still need to record the call. What is your name, and what is your location?”
I told her, we hung up, and I went to take a shower. Ten minutes later, I stood in front of my locker with a towel around my waist. A campus cop entered the locker room, came down my row of lockers, and asked, “Are you Steve Simpson?”
I told him that I was, and he said, “We received your 911 call, and I need to make sure that you are okay. Do you have a form of identification with you?”
I reached into my locker, retrieved my wallet, and handed him my driver’s license. The police officer looked at the license and said, “I thought I knew all of the streets in La Crosse. Where is Huckleberry Lane?
“Hackberry Lane,” I replied.
“Yeah, that’s right” the cop said and returned my license. “Have a good day.”
When I reported a potential bomb threat, no one seemed to care. When I butt called 911, the call was treated as if I’d been abducted. When I stood all but naked in a gymnasium locker room, I looked suspicious enough that a cop had me confirm my identity. And out of the sixty or seventy people working out in the rec center that morning, the cop somehow knew that I was the one who called. Was he somehow able to trace my phone right down to my locker? I wish I would have asked.
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