Posted on 04/22/2018 5:54:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
A recent story highlights the dangers of a government being entrusted with personal care of individuals.
A 911 dispatcher intentionally hung up on thousands of callers in need of emergency help. She remained employed without anyone noticing. For a year and a half this went on, and no one noticed. Homicides, robberies, medical emergencies, etc. All ignored.
But the individuals harmed by her cannot bring personal actions against their government. Because the government has something called governmental immunity. This law is troubling for advocates of limited government. Basically, irrespective of whether you pay taxes and abide by the law, you are not entitled to 911 services. Unless, you are imprisoned or otherwise in government custody. Then you are entitled to these services. Troubling, yes.
The courts have held consistently that the governments have no duty to provide care to you. That means you can’t sue for damages.
So no matter how wronged you were by 911 response negligence, you can’t sue.
The government has valid points about the impossibility of being held accountable. So what can we do?
We can privatize 911 services. Imagine if we were able to shop around for 911 providers, consider provider reviews and recommendations, and switch providers if we were dissatisfied with services. Imagine being able to hold providers legally responsible for inaction or negligence. For if the 911 providers are private, they cannot hide behind the cloak of immunity from liability. Imagine being in control of your emergencies, moments when you feel completely out of control.
We would still need to maintain public 911 services for various emergencies that happen outside of private areas, but we would be able to significantly reduce dependence on public 911 and significantly decrease their funding.
Freedom dream
What private organization could afford the liability insurance that would arise from errors or omissions?
Kinda like privatizing the TSA. Make one mistake, let one device go through a security screening, and the lawsuits -—
I think 911 dispatchers get prank calls, perhaps lots of then. Gotta know this side of the story before o passing judgment.
The problem, IMO, is not private vs government. The problem is that particular 911 center & who the supervisors are/were. I worked 911 for a county - the supervisors were all over our calls. I had a problematic one where it took me longer than usual to get help dispatched because the computer would not recognize the location and let me enter the call. I finally worked it out, but the next thing I knew, a supervisor was all but down my throat. I explained the computer issue & she pretty much called me a liar and to prove it, she sat down at the computer to show me that the computer would take/assign the call. As it turned out, there was a “hole” in the location where streets/addresses were evidently not entered & she couldn’t get the call in either. She did admit I was correct & said she would contact IT to fix it .... no apology however. The supervisors were fairly brutal - you screwed up & they were talking to you or writing you up. With ANY supervision, I don’t see how this 911 operator lasted for year. No one called back in & complained they were hung up on? No other 911 operator turned her in on suspicion of hanging up after they talked to people who called back in? Disconnects did occasionally happen, but a year of this ... the other operators likely would have been on to her & the supervisors should have known very quickly if they monitored calls. Something really stinks here.
Hire 911 operators on intelligence, background, and history not affirmative action. That would stop a lot of this chicanery.
The article is mistaken in the assertion about sovereign immunity. That doesn’t apply when they break the law.
10 days jail for that stupid wench shows they aren’t too concerned about anything. That needs to change. At best the only thing that happens in these situtations is a lawsuit or settlement that only serves to impoverish the taxpayer, the very people that were harmed in this debacle. This needs to change.
For persons who live in the cities, dialing 911 will most likely get your call to a local LEO agency & get you some response.
For those of us who live rural, it is another story.
I had a mother/daughter, who had just bought drugs at the dealer at the interior end of our dead end rural road, fighting over who got what while they were driving past my house. 11PM, and they go off the road, move a rock about 7 feet around into my driveway & go thru & mess up my horse fencing. Killed the car her grandparents had bought her just the day before ‘for finishing her stint in rehab’. This was in Grass Valley, Calif. I called 911-—& I got a dispatcher in Sacramento-—MILES away from where I was at. I asked for deputies to come & round up these druggies, etc., and she asked where I was...I told her the address on Long Valley Road. She asked what county that was in...strange, I thought. I told her Nevada County. She then asked: WHERE IS THAT”??? I finally learned she was answering in Sacramento & obviously didn’t have a clue.
I hung up & called Nev County deputies. Got results, and both were arrested.
I moved to rural N Nevada and just after getting here, had reason to call 911. This time, I got a dispatcher answering in Tonapah-—about 200 MILES south of my ranch. When I asked why they were answering, the man told me that with Nevada 911, the Highway Patrol can pick up the call ANYWHERE in the whole state. State is over 500 miles long. SIGH !!
I have since memorized the Lyon County dispatcher number & I can dial that in the dark.
911 isn’t as good coverage as you might think.
There is a certain class of person who is not only ignorant, they are belligerantly ignorant. They screw things up on purpose, in any and every way way they possibly can. They do as little as possible (And you would be amazed at hiw little this can be) and cause endless headaches. They take great satisfaction in this. They can be extremely difficult to fire. Oftentimes they move around a lot, since they can’t get rid of them, they get passed around till nobody else can stand them anymore. Governmental agencies other than .mil (mostly) are chock full of them.
I have met people like that & worked with one in particular in a job that was not government - took over a year to fire her. She had a racial chip the size of a cinder block on her shoulder & she worked it to the last day. I ended up supervising her at one point & she lied about what instructions she’d been given - fortunately, some of us were wise to her at that point & always had a ‘witness’ around to verify what she was told. The day she was finally walked to HR for the last time was occasion for a celebration.
At the 911 job where I worked, the hangup employee likely would not have made it through the hiring process, much less training. Typically, 1-3 made it through a ‘class’ which was around 10. You were tested (written) every day. If you weren’t up to snuff, you were gone. Once we got out of the classroom & hit the phones with a trainer for 6-8 wks (trainer wrote up a review of what happened every day), people were dropping out like flies. To even get into a class required multiple board interviews, testing (could you type fast enough), psychological testing, credit & background checks. This gal never would have made it so I can’t imagine how lax/negligent the 911 center must have been in hiring, training, and monitoring. Our center had no problem firing people - you screwed up badly enough on a call or couldn’t take the pressure .... bye bye.
Judgement was already made.
Jail time as I recall.
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