Have you ever called 911 "just for fun"?

I’ve never done this and I can’t imagine any reasons at all where it would be okay to call 9–1-1 ‘just for fun’. Coming from a career law enforcement background, I’m in a position to realize just how important and necessary the 9–1-1 system is and the operators who field the calls certainly don’t need and don’t want frivolous calls mixed in with the actual emergency message traffic that they receive.

Of course not. But you are right, some people have. It’s dangerous and wrong. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money. And it uses resources urgently needed for real trouble including saving people’s lives.

Why do people still do it? Young people might do it because they see it as a trial of courage.
And maybe the same applies to older people with low self-esteem.

Even worse is calling the emergency services for non emergency reasons and thinking you’re doing them a favour and being a good citizen. see this

There should be a significant charge imposed for making a non emergency call . I called 911 recently for an accident and discovered that my phone was locked into the dispatcher until they released me. I have no problem with that. Anyone stupid enough to make a false call would be quickly identified.

Oh yeah I prank 911 like it’s a part time job.

Not. I don’t pull childish pranks anymore. If I wanted to prank call a Hospital service I’d better have something really good in store; a no holds bared line to say.

You would have to be a moron. And an even BIGGER moron to admit it.

I was little and called by accident. There was a number you could call and it would tell you the time. The number for the time had 911 in it. For some reason it called 911 instead of the number for the time.. Scared the crap out of me. I just hung up. Then they called back and I just hung up again without saying anything.

They kept calling back until my mom picked up the phone. I explained what happened and my mom didn’t care. I was six or seven years old at the time.

I’m pretty sure there is a law against calling 911 and not having an emergency.

When my grandson was 3 or 4, he somehow managed to call 911. Pretty soon, here a sheriff’s car shows up in the driveway. My daughter made sure that didn’t happen again! He soon found out that the phone was off limits to him.

@Lupin – After the recent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnenden_school_shooting

in Germany when 16 people were killed, there have been dozens of copycat threat calls and fake emergency calls about new shooting sprees. The calls were mostly made by underage students. Many are facing now serious trouble and some will have to pay for the police operations which have cost up to 50,000 euros.

if you wanna go to jail just for fun, you know, to figure out if the “Look who dropped the soap” story is real, then go ahead and call…

No. I call 1–900 numbers for fun.

I’ve never called 911 for fun, just by accident once. I grew up in a small town and we didn’t have 911 service. When I was in high school, the town finally got 911, but somehow I’d missed that fact. My friends and I were at school, bored, and used the payphone to call 911. We were shocked when an operator actually picked up. A couple of officers soon arrived at the school, but we pretended like we didn’t know how had called from the payphone.

What’s sad about small kids accidentally calling 911 is that sometimes kids call for a real emergency and are ignored as a prank. I remember a story in the news about a boy who called because his mom had passed out. He was lectured and ignored, but it took several hours before an officer actually came to the home. By the time, the boy’s mother had died. Each time he called 911 they thought he was pulling a prank.

It should be illegal….but, well. Once upon a time when my kids were, oh, 4 and 1, out of the blue the cops were at my door. They said they’d received a 911 call from this address. I was scratching my head in confusion when I realized my four-year-old was hanging on to my legs and inching herself behind me to hide. I looked at her, the cops looked at her and in a very quiet voice she said, “I just wanted to talk to my daddy.” She was soooo cute and innocent but everyone had to try hard not to laugh! And I addressed the issue in all seriousness before I locked myself in the bathroom for a minute to howl!!

Yeap I did once when me and my brother were really little I called I said I had a boo boo and needed and bandaid then hung up. But keep in mind this was back in the 80’s before you could get in trouble for doing so.