Dialing the Wrong Number

911 emergency, how can I help you?

Is this 911?

This is the 911 operator. What is the nature of your emergency?

Oh, hi, operator. How ya doin’? Listen, I’m really struggling here and I need some help.

Ma’am, you’ll have to tell me what the problem is so we can get someone there to help you. What kind of assistance do you need? Is your life in danger?

Yeah, you might say that. I’ve got to write this column by 4:30 or my editor will kill me.

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Much as we love hearing about other people’s failings--mostly for the smirking pleasure of knowing that for once, they’re not our own--there was no enjoyment in reading the news that 85% of Los Angeles’ 5 million 911 calls have absolutely no business being placed to 911.

Most fall into that gray zone of crisis--not as god-awful as a severed limb, not as frivolous as a cat in a tree, but along the lines of finding only empty curb where you’d parked your car last night, or coming home to a ransacked house. The Orange County neighbors of a paroled child molester dialed 911 every time the man set foot out of his apartment. Important matters, legitimate police matters, but not up to 911 standards.

The rest? As in L.A., 70% to 90% of the nation’s phone traffic to 911 is no true emergency at all: What time is it? How do I get to Dodger Stadium? My son is outdoors and won’t come in. The Russians have nuclear subs to sink our aircraft carriers. I’m calling from my car; can you tell my boss I’ll be late for work? There’s a squirrel in the house. I lost a quarter at the Laundromat.

They clog the phone arteries like bad cholesterol, and thousands more calls, their urgency unknown, never get answered at all. (Maybe cops in places like Fargo hang around the silent 911 phone praying for a little stolen wood chipper action, but that’s not the way of it here).

It costs L.A., in cash and in public confidence. Naturally the city wants to stop 911 abuse, and naturally everyone has an idea: Pull the plastic off those 16 new, untouched 911 phone consoles and staff them. Hire more bilingual operators, faster typists. Stanch the three-year 90% operator turnover rate.

Councilwoman Laura Chick has been after the cops to mount a public education campaign of 911 etiquette, to appeal to our better angels to keep the lines clear for the truly needy. Put it on grocery bags and billboards: armed robbery, yes; stolen bike, no.

I’m flummoxed that people don’t already know this. Its three digits are more firmly wired into our collective circuitry than 666. The show was “Rescue 911,” not “How Do I Open a Childproof Cap 911.” Shirley Maclaine, fleeing the Malibu fires, can joke that Malibu’s new area code should be 911, and everyone gets it. Nicole Simpson called 911, and O.J. opined later that she was just “venting.” A coke dealer got arrested after he inadvertently dialed 911 instead of 011 for his international call.

Councilman Mike Feuer wants L.A. to do what Baltimore did and adopt a new 311 line for non-emergency police calls; it has cut 911 traffic by 20% or 30% in that city of H.L. Mencken and other crabs.

But sometimes the carrot needs the stick. L.A. already imposes a three-calls-and-you’re-out-80-bucks fine for too many false security alarms--and 98% of them are false. Last year, Garden Grove fined 82 people $25 each for calling 911 and hanging up. L.A. has to think big--big fines, not for honest mistakes in misjudging emergencies, not for kids who call about a monster under the bed or the cat who hits the automatic dialer. Fine only the true 911 abusers, and (to guarantee it won’t happen again) bill it to the home phone as a 900-live sex call.

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Once upon a time, when 911 was just the marque of a German sports car, my small town’s 911 was named Mamie. She sat in a glass-block building, weaving the plugs and cords of her PBX switchboard. When she retired, my grandfather bought her PBX swivel chair; it now sits at my own desk.

Mamie could tell you how to fix your skates when you’d lost the key, how to salvage a fallen cake, who was on vacation so don’t bother to drop off those geranium cuttings, and where Dr. Mathews was making a house call in case anyone had an emergency.

Now, 911 is indispensable, and 311 is its understudy. For everyone else, for every variant of frustration and angst and crackpottery and prank, we need a national modern Mamie line.

If you’re about to smash your new VCR because you can’t set it up, press 1 to speak to a child. If you want to report that Herff Applewhite is trying to recruit you through the fillings in your teeth, press 2. If you want to get a little heavy breathing out of your system, press 3. If you want to know whether we have Prince Albert in a can, press 4, and we’ll let him out.