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Comment by VonGuard | Hacker News Reader

Oakland needs this help so badly. Call 911 on a cell in Oakland, and you're going to wait on hold for 30 minutes, most of which will be you being transfered to the wrong departments over and over. You start at a call center somewhere in middle America with a person who does not know where Oakland is. They pass you to CA CHP, who don't know Oakland either, because their dispatcher on the line is out of Sacramento. Finally, you get dumped to the local 911, which is overwhelmed, has long hold times, and sometimes even hangs up on you.

Just FYI, if you are ever in Oakland and have trouble, DO NOT CALL 911. Call the police directly at 510-777-3333

This Oakland 911 problem is, I think, the biggest single technical problem with Oakland as a whole, and it's been this way for 20 years...

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Sadly, this is not unique to Oakland. Several of the cities I've lived in have been plagued with 911 hold times of 10-20 minutes or more.

In one city, the mayor threatened to put a checklist on the ballot so people could decide which types of emergencies would be responded to, and the top vote-getters would be funded.

In another, a city council member publicly told his constituents "the police are not here to protect you. If you want to be safe, get a gun and a dog."

In Las Vegas for several years recently, the police department stopped responding to traffic crashes unless someone was killed. The insurance companies put pressure on the city to reverse that.

Unfortunately, it seems that all of the "homeland security" money that the feds send to the locals goes into military-grade weapons, and not into basic services like 911 and police patrols.

I would like to see a city sell the tanks it gets from the feds and use the money for 911, and other needed services.

Ouch. Sounds like a failed state scenario: anarchy by services disappearing and unconcern for community. When a government ceases to provide a fundamental function, such as protecting its citizens, it risks irrelevancy... and citizens better form their own government to replace the one not doing its job, or they’re inviting criminal thugs reminiscent of ISIS to fill the power-vacuum.

Many political philosophies believe THE fundamental purpose of government is to protect. Not performing the reason why people accept government in the first place means that the government has failed to do the reason it was created. It's not a legitimate government.

Your post and example is right on the money. This is incredibly scary and seems to be happening more and more as governments aren't allocating funds to do critical functions.

Problem is, the "...people ... form[ing] their own government to replace the one not doing its job..." usually ARE the ISIS-like thugs.

This is one of the great aporias of civic discord.

> failed state scenario ... criminal thugs reminiscent of ISIS

In Las Vegas? Really?

Well thank god it's so easy to get a concealed carry permit in California.

> I would like to see a city sell the tanks it gets from the feds and use the money for 911, and other needed services.

I'd like for my fellow citizens to agree to fund the police properly, as well as the schools. I know "taxes" are a bad word, but either we agree to pay for these things or they will underperform.

I know there is inefficiency and corruption, but if the budget is $100m and $20m is lost to inefficiency, cutting the budget to $60m won't cure the inefficiency, it will only cut the available funding to from $80m to $48m. (Also, I'm not convinced that government is so inefficient relative to other large organizations, such as every large company; politicians promising 'more efficiency' seems like a promise of hand-wavy magic that will get something (more resources) for nothing.)

> In another, a city council member publicly told his constituents "the police are not here to protect you. If you want to be safe, get a gun and a dog."

Well, they aren't there to protect you (at least not in the US). There is no protection requirement for police. Police are there to investigate crimes and catch criminals.

"The Supreme Court ruled [...] that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband [...]"

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...

My friend Matthew Hanson died in Oakland. He was shot in his home and died because of the 911 problem. Appalling.

In my home area 911 picks up immediately and police and EMS would have been there in under 15 minutes.

This story below (headline about how the shooter subsequently died) explains that there were two alterations. My friend (the victim) called 911 during the first altercation, 40 minutes before the second altercation where he was subsequently shot. He stayed alive for long enough to call 911 a second time. Sadly they didn't make it there in time. When the police arrived they couldn't get anyone to answer the door so they left. Matthew was found by a friend.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/06/15/oakland-slaying-suspe...

This is fucked. You should never have to wait for a 911 call to be answered. Our society needs to do better.

Can you share any insight into how things got so bad? What failure of politics or market forces led to this situation? What needs to change before everyone who needs help can get it when they need it?

It’s a question of priorities. 911 doesn’t excite voters as much as a bike line or zoning. Government gets many fundamentals wrong: pothole repair and 911 are good examples. Instead the Oakland mayor (and mayors everywhere) prefer to grandstand on hot button issues rather than doing the actual hard work of running a city. This is why I am suspicious when people call for more government regulation; it isn’t because I disagree with the idea, but I am not confident when it comes to actual execution. It isn’t even about money — it’s about how that money is managed and allocated.

Improving the 911 EMS system won't improve police response time in Oakland because Oakland, like most of the US, has an ongoing shortage of police officers. There isn't any easy way to make the job of a police officer more attractive.

The hatred directed at police officers certainly doesn't help.

The recent fury directed at the handful of police officers who did not enter this or that school with an active shooter comes to mind. People have the expectation that police officers are required to die for us. Imagine being told by someone who already hates you, that you are supposed to die for them.

It feels like we are awfully entitled when it comes to the police. We expect them to serve us with the highest integrity, kindness, & selflessness, while offering them mediocre pay, disgust, & hatred in exchange.

With all due respect, a lot of that hatred stems from the high profile cases where police have overstepped the bounds with little or no recourse.

The body cam of that man in the hotel corridor being just one of the latest.

Perhaps it could also be at least partly related to the systemic and indiscriminate killing of people of color by police forces across the entire country.

I can't say I blame would-be "good cop" cadets deciding not to join the force to be associated with these acts; the willingness to protect bad cops by leadership seems, from the outside, to mean the entire system is rotten and impossible to change from within.

Well that's certainly the narrative that drives it. However for something to be systemic, it has to be happening regularly everywhere. The people who promote this narrative can only really point to a couple of unjustified office involved shootings (which are of course a tragedies, but are in no way 'systemic'), and in reality spend most of their time complaining about perfectly justified shootings as a scapegoat for all of the genuine problems in their communities.

In 2017, police killed 1,129 people. Were the vast majority of those "perfectly justified?" How about the vast majority of the 718 that were suspects in nonviolent offenses? Or the 147 that were unarmed? Are you sure? I'm not.

The reason "the narrative" exists, I think, is that there's a widespread perception that regardless of the circumstances of the shooting -- even if the evidence clearly shows the police shot an unarmed victim in the back multiple times, for instance -- the police tend to get off on the grounds that they "felt threatened." This contributes to a feeling that the police are held to a lesser standard than non-police suspects, rather than the same standard.

The vast majority absolutely are. There are some examples that are not, and whenever something even remotely questionable happens, the narrative pushers jump on it immediately. If you think the vast majority aren't, then go find some examples. You won't be able to come up with more than a couple.

It would be good if either of you could back up your claims.

People in minority communities around the U.S. have said for generations that the police abused them; I give that some serious credibility. Also, there is much more to abuse than killings; there are many reports on widespread abuses by police departments, such as Baltimore and New Orleans.

I will add that in at least some other countries police do their job and shoot hardly anyone; I think in Scotland it's on the order of one per decade.

The claim that there is systemic racially motivated killings carried out by police is the claim that needs to be backed up. This is a claim that is not supported by facts. There is a small number of officer involved shootings that are found to be unjustified, and there are entire communities of people who will jump at the chance to report on them, so it’s not like they can slip under the radar on a massive scale. The crime rates in different countries have absolutely 0 bearing on whether office involved shootings in the US are justified. The occurrences of unjustified office involved shootings in the US don’t come even remotely close to anything that could be considered ‘systemic’, the whole narrative is an outright lie.

> It would be good if either of you could back up your claims

If any of the people in this thread wish to have a go at that, try here: http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2018

Pick a year, note how many police shootings are listed there for that year, then generate 20 random numbers in the range [1, N] where N is the number of said shootings, and look at the corresponding killings. That should give some reasonable insights.

A lot of the anger directed at police in Oakland is well deserved due to the number of people they've needlessly killed without any real repercussions. There's other things coming to light showing even more corruption and that very little seems to be getting done about it.

Increased pay.

What if the city does not have the money?

Take the privilege to their own police away from them. Take the city through bankruptcy. Etc... It's not some poor human who has to suffer due to that, it's lenders who the city defaults on, and who should have thought better.

This has not been my experience. Last month I called 911 after getting hit by a car and I was speaking with someone within 10 seconds.

Just FYI, if you are ever in Oakland and have trouble, DO NOT CALL 911. Call the police directly at 510-777-3333

I recommend that whatever city you are in, you have a shortcut to the police on your home screen (perhaps buried a little, so you don't accidentally butt dial it).

Is there some sort of app for this sorta thing? I mean with numbers of police departments by city... I often wonder, sometimes depending on the trouble its a little smarter to call the police station directly especially if you know you need police and not... an ambulance or fire department.

I had an eye-opening experience with this. My android phone's home screen was locked, but somehow I managed to butt-dial emergency services. It wasn't until the police knocked on my door that I looked at my device to see what had happened. They were able to accurately find me at my house in an average suburban neighborhood. While I was pleased at the response, I was also quite embarrassed to have taken these folks away from more urgent matters.

I wonder if after the butt dial, your butt locked the phone (or it auto-locked after a time)?

SF 911 hold times are ridiculous. On two occasions (out of about four ever) I abandoned the call after being on hold for 5+ minutes.

Let's say 911 there got staffed up and got resources to handle the call volume. Would this actually translate to better emergency services response? One assumes they're also all busy, all the time, no?

High-priority call that makes it through to a dispatcher at least has a chance to be "triaged" and responders from something less urgent pulled for it?

Mmm, good point. Still, I'd bet that the money would be better spent beefing up policing / emergency service efforts instead of giving them even more work that they'll never get to.

That said, I'd never feel safe living somewhere where 911 didn't answer immediately and have an average response time within a few minutes.

It seems like there oughta be an app that can make it easy to pick non-/emergency numbers for a given location, type of service and jurisdiction (highway/state, unincorporated/county sheriff, incorporated/municipality, park ranger, tribal, military, etc.)

Where does all of the money in California go? I live in a low tax "poor" state and have never had any issues with police/fire/ems answering promptly and arriving in time

In California all Cellular 911 calls are answered by CHP.

Crowdsource 911 dispach?

get up get get, get down

Not a lot of public enemy fans here.

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