Times-Union reporter arrested for 911 misuse

She should have shot the guy who knocked her down. Then she would have avoided trouble with the cops.

 

Given that it was Florida, I'm surprised there wasn't a resisting arrest charge tacked on there. They seem to get added to just about every arrest. I can recall more than a few cases from my time there when someone was charged with resisting arrest without violence ... and nothing else.

"You're under arrest."
"No I'm not."
"You're under arrest for saying that!"

 

Oh my.

 

Does anyone think she actually did misuse the 911 system?

I ask because I'm surprised at these charges. I have applied for an emergency-dispatcher job, a couple of times, in my state, and the process is pretty rigorous.

That aside, though, from the initial night in which prospective applicants are brought in for orientation, they are told that, in general, there is little in the way of calls that the system does not accept. This is because of the idea that the emergency officials/personnel would rather have callers/victims err on the side of caution than potentially really need help and not ask for it.

This is why some really stupid, seemingly obviously not-real emergency calls are not followed up upon or prosecuted. And yet, an arrest was made in this case?

While dispatchers may have chances to educate callers on what situations may really require help, or not, the general consensus that was discussed, and demonstrated, to us applicants was that you do not want to make people hesitate to call.

 

I would suspect the initial call probably wasn't going to get her arrested, at least not right away. But if she yelled down the phone at the dispatcher? Yeah, the cops aren't going to like that. And in reality, once one cop tells her that her complaint is unfounded, the next one's only going to do the same thing anyway. If she has a grievance, she can always take that up the next day through the formal channels.

 

That's one thing that pisses me off about my local paper. They run the police blotter every day, but they never run the disposition of the cases.

I'd like to know if they were convicted and what their sentence was, or found not guilty. Yet, that never runs.

 

Someone brought up that if a UF, FSU or Jaguars player were arrested for a similar offense, it would make the paper...


If a normal person were arrested for a similar offense, I'm guessing it does not make the paper.

I don't know... I read the article and shrugged.

As long as she's not suspended or fired, that's kind of all that really matters.

 

Absolutely.

 

I don't think it's too much to hold ourselves as accountable as we hold the 19-year-olds we write about in college coverage. If you're old/professional enough to write an arrest story for a daily paper like the T-U, you're old enough to know better. Ideally, would be some kind of deterrent, but not really.

 

Why didn't she just say she was holding her ground with the dispatcher? :

 

This was not an emergency worthy of tying up a 911 line.

She was bitching about something. There was no emergency. That qualifies as misuse or abuse of 911.

Additionally, resisting arrest can be as simple as refusing a police order by saying "No." It may seem to some to be dickish. They may tack it on to whatever else you did. But once they tell you to stop, place your hands on the car, turn around, stand in 'that' spot or whatever and you refuse, you have resisted arrest if they are indeed arresting you.

I had this explained to me very clearly by a police officer once many years ago, and then by the police chief who was a family friend. Complain about it all you want, but jacking around with a cop isn't a smart idea even if you think what you're doing is insignificant.