{"id":341100,"date":"2010-02-19T16:28:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T21:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100219\/1238398241.shtml"},"modified":"2010-02-19T16:28:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T21:28:00","slug":"calling-911-thatll-be-300","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/341100","title":{"rendered":"Calling 911? That’ll Be $300"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apparently, the town of Tracy, California (a bit east of the Bay Area) has decided to turn 911 emergency calls into a profit center. Karl Bode<\/a> points us to the news that the town now wants people to pay $300<\/i> for every 911 call<\/a>. Of course, if you think you might be a frequent 911 caller, they’ve got a plan for that. For the low, low, low price of just $48 per year, you can call 911 as many times as you want. Yes, that’s right folks, there’s a special deal for those of you who regularly have emergencies. Make sure to order now!<\/p>\n

This has to be one of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard in a while. Does the town really<\/i> want to discourage people from calling in the event of an emergency? In my life, I think I’ve called 911 four times — and three of those were after witnessing car crashes by other people. With this rule in place, I would have much less incentive to call to get the police if I witness something bad happening, whether it’s a car crash, or someone getting mugged. 911 is a public service. You shouldn’t have to pay for a 911 call.<\/p>\n

Update<\/b>: As pointed out in the comments, there may be more to this story, and the CBS link above might not be that accurate. Another report notes that the $300 will only apply to cases where the fire department needs to respond to medical emergencies<\/a>. Still seems a bit questionable, but not as bad…<\/p>\n

Permalink<\/a> | Comments<\/a> | Email This Story<\/a>
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Apparently, the town of Tracy, California (a bit east of the Bay Area) has decided to turn 911 emergency calls into a profit center. Karl Bode points us to the news that the town now wants people to pay $300 for every 911 call. Of course, if you think you might be a frequent 911 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}