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Comment by cpburns2009 | Hacker News Reader

cpburns2009

This is actually something I've wondered about. What is the non-emergency number?

The one thing you can do is call 911 and when they respond, just say "I need the non-emergency line" and they'll usually transfer you immediately or just check quickly with you. Just don't waffle on.

Please don’t tie up emergency dispatchers by using them like a receptionist.

You can just google the number.

It's the same people as non emergency line

Not everywhere. And in the places that is true, 911 gets priority in the queue.

If it’s not an emergency, there is no reason to call 911.

How do you know what number to even Google if it's not where you immediately live?

The same way you would find out how to call literally any place that you don’t currently know the number for.

What world do you live in where you need to make a non emergency call to the local police, but can’t just google “PLACE NAME police non emergency phone”?

Most people don’t know the police non emergency line for where they DO live, so you can safely just use the same procedure you use at home for phone number discovery when you are away from home. If you don’t have that dialed in, google can help you there too. It’s a fantastic place to learn all sorts of basic life skills.

It's not that simple. When you're away from home, how do you know the exact jurisdiction to lookup? And if it's not a police related matter, what non-emergency phone would you even look up? Plenty of metro areas have a bunch of interlocking municipalities, or if you're out in a rural area it can be hard to know which township is the right one. Prior to finding out about 311 (which might not be right?), I'd have no idea.

It really is that simple. I google local phone numbers while traveling all the time. Sometimes I have a problem where I’m not sure who can even help solve a problem, and google can help there too. I just googled “what to do if there is a branch on a power line” and google told me what signs would require a 911 call and also gave me the phone number for the correct utility in my current location.

It’s not an emergency, take your time and figure it out since timeliness is not extremely important. Google exists, phone books exist. You also don’t have to get it right on the first call, you can call the wrong people and they might know the right people to call. In fact, that happened to me when the water main broke on a Sunday near my house. I called the fire department non emergency line and they said to call the water department. I called the city water department, but they said I was in an area handled by the county. I called the county water department and they sent someone out. The first two calls cost me less than 5 minutes, and the people I spoke to at the wrong agencies were kind and helpful.

When I’m away from home, it really isn’t any different. I just change the name from “(town where I live) police non emergency line” to “(place I currently am) non emergency line” when I google things. Alternatively, turn on location services on your phone and you don’t have to put the place, google will figure it out for you.

In my state, doing this is a class A misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of a year in jail and a fine of about $6,000.

They probably wouldn't (but certainly could) charge you with it if you just do it once or without warning you, but still, it's an obvious abuse of the 911 system.

It’s just a regular phone number, so it depends what department you are trying to call. Google or a phone book is what you need.

It's usually on the web page of the local police or sheriff department.

How do you know what number to Google? Here's a real example. The day after a storm I noticed a tree leaning on a powerline. This was ~20 miles from where I live in a different county and township. If I hadn't already lived in that area before, I would have no clue who it call. 911 isn't appropriate because it's not an emergency... but that does need to get fixed.

That's a 3-1-1, good buddy

Or you can ask an LLM for some guidance.

You could do something like just call the non emergency line. They will tell you if they are the correct people to handle it. If not, you use your god given brain to think, “hmm, what do we call a company that handles the distribution of electrical power?”

You will probably arrive on the term “power company”. Then you can think, “hmm. What is a resource I can use to find their phone number?”. At that point you might realize that you have a little black rectangle in your pocket that is connected to a company called google that will tell you this exact information if you search “local power company”. If you inspect this device carefully, you will notice that it has more digits than just 9 and 1. You don’t even need to know where you are, google will do that for you to save your brain the trouble of overtaxing itself. In fact google will surface the clickable phone number for emergencies in your area if you do this (I just checked).

In any case, if you think it might be an emergency, it’s ok to call 911. They explicitly ask you to if there is doubt. The main thing is if you KNOW it isn’t an emergency, then, well, it isn’t an emergency. You have time to figure out what the correct thing to do is, because, again, it isn’t an emergency.

For that, call 911. It's a fire risk, and if the tree pushes the line down to the ground, it's an electrocution risk.

At least in our county, the non-emergency number calls the same people as the emergency number.

The emergency number has recording and location and all that fun stuff. And a different ringtone.

You needn't be afraid of calling 911.

Story time: I've called 911 and immediately said "this is not an emergency" when the call was picked up. I then said that the high speed chase "bad guy" had taken the exit and killed his lights. The 911 dispatcher relayed the info over the radio and the cops all hit the brakes and made a u-turn in the median immediately.

You might have to google it because it's not standardized across the country

https://www.google.com/search?q=police+non+emergency+number+...

In the USA its 311

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/nationally-assigned-3-d...

311 does not reach law enforcement. 311 is the number to complain about code violations or request routine maintenance from the municipal government. The types of requests that go through City Hall during office hours.

They can give the location of the nearest police or fire station, for some non-emergancy law enforcement issues they will put you through to the county sheriff. Had a friend call over a property dispute with their roommate and they got and sent a sheriff over (within a city that had its own municipal police force)

I had no idea 311 existed. If I'm honest, I had no idea there was any three digit shortcut aside from 911. Although now that I think of it, I may have seen signs near buried utilities saying to call 811 before digging. Interesting.

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