When Bad 911 Calls Get Worse

…Did you want us to come over to shoot her?

Last week, a mom in the Ft. Worth suburb of Watauga, TX called a 911 dispatcher and asked him to dispatch the police to help her with her unruly 12 and 14 year old daughters.

The 911 dispatcher, Mike Forbess, responded with, “Ok. Did you want us to come over to shoot her?” (audio link)

There was a moment of very uncomfortable silence before the mom started—finally—acting like an adult and a good parent. Forbess immediately apologized for his bad joke, and started back pedaling as fast as he could.

The dispatcher:

• Immediately apologized to the woman
• Reported the incidence to his supervisor
• Accepted full responsibility
• Was reprimanded for his actions

However, the mother doesn’t think that’s enough. Does she want an exemplary public servant—who made and owned up to one bad mistake—to be fired?

Some thoughts —

• The irony of the 911 call: Once the dispatcher cracks his joke, the mother takes a firm, no nonsense approach with the dispatcher to let him know that she’s not going to put up with his inappropriate behavior. If she had only used this same approach with her own children, she wouldn’t have needed to call 911.
• 911 calls are for emergencies. Not for bad parenting. Did you notice how quickly the mom forgot about her emergency and started to focus solely on the dispatcher’s comment? Maybe it wasn’t so much an actual emergency requiring police assistance, as it was a mother at wit’s end with her children.
• Was the dispatcher wrong? Yes. But having worked as an EMT, I can understand how he might have let this slip. After taking countless real emergency calls all day that do require police or medical assistance, he might have been a little annoyed about a call that shouldn’t have been placed in the first place. I don’t excuse his comment. But I understand it.