Dear Everyone: Stop Calling 911 If Your Cable Is Out When Breaking Bad Is On
from the breaking-emergency-services dept
Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you have surely heard about AMC's hit show Breaking Bad, featuring Bryan Cranston cosplaying Gordon Freeman while making a ton of drugs and generally being an all-around badass. Fortunately for this story, journalistic integrity doesn't really include my opinion of the show, because I watch it enough that my dog and my fiancé can now recite the proper cooking method for a batch of blue crack-speed, which is a strange thing to hear from a dog, I have to tell you. Add to that AMC's being rather awesome when disputes with Dish Network prevented subscribers from seeing it on their TVs and I have something of a fanboi relationship with the show.
And yet, if I had a cable subscription and it went on the fritz during the latest episode, I probably wouldn't be on the horn with emergency services to get help like apparently everyone in Norwich, Connecticut was.
That's what happened last night in southern Connecticut when affected Optimum Cable subscribers decided that missing an episode of Breaking Bad or Eat Drink Love was akin to suffering a major heart attack. Service was down for about two hours during primetime because of a power outage in Norwich.The result of this pissing-off of dispatchers was for emergency services to engage their snark-emitters on social media, informing everyone that abusing 911 services could result in arrest and that they wouldn't get cable in prison, either. Not bad, but I wonder how many of them had to resist the urge to dispatch SWAT to each and every caller to administer a bit of the old scared-straight tactic, because if my Gram-Gram needed an ambulance and couldn't get one because someone's cable was out, I'd be inclined to go full-psycho on them.
Confused as to what to do and too impatient to wait until the next day, people started calling 911. That unsurprisingly pissed off emergency dispatchers.
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Filed Under: 911, breaking bad, cable service, police
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I find it rather amusing considering I don't generally watch tv ;)
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His reasoning skills are about that level
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This is worse than McDonald's getting your order wrong
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Re: This is worse than McDonald's getting your order wrong
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Re: Re: This is worse than McDonald's getting your order wrong
However, what about this?
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I don't think there's enough facepalm (or face-bat to the people called 911) to sum this up.
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Or...
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Re:
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Mr. Snowden blows the lid off the second biggest story of the century, and the most people do reach for another bon-bon, by comparison.
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Only 1 Person Called
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Re: Only 1 Person Called
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wow
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http://www.linux4chemistry.info/
I have been studying chemistry lately, mostly because I wanted to make soap from vegetable oil and paper from bamboo.
I discovered some wonderful resources out there.
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Life threatening?
I can't believe the police department is saying that. It's just not true. If someone stole your car ten seconds ago, that's not life threatening, but it's also totally appropriate to call 911. If my house is on fire and there's nobody inside and no other houses nearby, that's not life threatening either, but again 911 is the preferred method of reporting it. If you fell out of a tree and think you just broke an arm and a leg, you are not likely to die from that even without medical attention, but yet again 911 is what you should call.
"The result of this pissing-off of dispatchers was for emergency services to engage their snark-emitters on social media, informing everyone that abusing 911 services could result in arrest and that they wouldn't get cable in prison, either."
If you aren't going to arrest people for this, why even have the law? Calling 911 here was clearly illegal. If I were in charge, if there was an officer free I would send them over immediately. Have the officer act friendly, get the person to state they just called 911 because their cable was out, and then put them in handcuffs.
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Re: Life threatening?
It's legal to do so, but probably not the best use of 911 resources. It's not like they're going to rush right out with a forensics team to gather clues that will degrade if not attended to immediately. What they'll do is send a cop, take your report, and leave. It would be just as effective to call their nonemergency line.
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Norwich/Norwalk Quoted Article Edited without Update
Thought you'd like to know, and update your own article for errata.
Thanks,
Desmond
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I tried calling Cablevision's customer service line a couple times, but it was busy.
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