I thought they had like top notch caller ID or something.

It isn't the image itself, but the frequency. It's just on the cusp of epileptic trauma. I'm sorry i didn't satisfy your needs with my Sponge Bob poll dancing, but that thing really worries me. Pokemon had to alter their animations for the same reason. It isn't about you, just the image. I have latent epilepsy. I've almost died three times in the last two years because of seizures. Please just consider it. That's all I'm asking.

They could probably ping me to find out roughly where I was, but either way I would have preferred to make the call about the incident, rather than about me!

Two days later I woke up in the hospital and thought I was in Hell. If there IS a Hell, I know that's where I'm headed, but I thought I was dead. And the bastards took my cell phone away.

assigned you can decline to give any personal information.

Lots of police departments have software tools that now plot the location of calls / crimes being committed. Specific areas start showing up with clusters for certain types of calls, they know to devote more officers to that particular area for that particular problem. Commanders for those area can thus be called to account by higher authorities if they fail to respond to continuing problems.

I'll pay cash and decline to give my name. I would hope that it would be sufficient to say "it's on Jones street between Bryant and Samson." Why would I want to be personally on record unless absolutely necessary?

The inescapable impression they give is that the arriving officer will come to the home of the caller, which isn't necessarily true but creates a real barrier. If I'm calling to have the shooter arrested, I don't want the cop stopping by my place afterward to show the shooter's buddies where I live. It would be helpful for the 911 dispatcher to indicate specifically why this information is needed (accepting, of course, that urgent situations may not allow such notification).


Annoying in any case. I came away from the call feeling as though I were the criminal simply because I called with less than encyclopedically complete information about the event and the suspect.

That Tracfone, or any cell phone is still going to ping off a tower in your neighborhood. Thus they're going to get a general idea where you're calling from. Thus they can still use that information for their software tools.

We just say, "we heard gunshots" or "there's kids on my lawn fucking."

We live next to a lot of bars.

Or pissing lawn kids.

They park in my driveway to do the nasty. They usually drive off in a huff when I start taking pictures. Sadly, they never ask me to join in. Us old folks still have some life in us.

Yep! We do!

I always wanted to try "If I guess right, can I go now without a ticket or lecture?" as a response.