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But perhaps we at BoingBoing assume we only read about intrusions, they don’t happen to us.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/ktla-boy-thwarts-home-invasion,0,4254578.story

“What is your address? Where do you live?”
I can see it now. They get the address, and minutes later, police bust into the kid’s home. Except, he’s not at the home address, he’s at his dad’s. Or his neighbour’s across the street. Or… etc.

I’d say, if I were writing that script, “Where are you?” means “give me what you consider to be the most relevant location information for sending cops to you”, and I feel that’s the most important question to ask, and “where are you” is the best way to phrase it.

“Where are you in ” might be better, if they know the town that the caller is calling from, but on a mobile phone, an assumption like that might be bad. Takes longer to say, anyway.

I thought maybe “How should I send the cops to you?” but then I realised that would just get the answer “In gunships!”

I think that assuming people are retarded is the wrong way to handle any call (police or tech support). I’d say assume that they know their own situation, and stick to the advice that’s *proven* to save lives. “Stay still and quiet and don’t hang up” is probably by far the best and safest.

I’m not sure how ANYONE can handle 911 calls like this. 911 operators/dispatchers are amazing – not many jobs you can think of where, daily — and constantly — you deal with people in a state of emergency like this.

Where do you live/what is your address? : (gives address)

Where are you at? : I’m feeling scared / I’m in a bad place now

Language IS important.

Admittedly a 7 year old may not interpret the last question that way but perhaps the occasional urban coastal USian teenager (and possibly many others) may well. “Where you at?” appears to be occasionally used as a greeting equivalent to “How are you?” or “What’s up (wrong) with you?”

1. The inevitable order to “stay where you are, and stay on the line”. I realize this is straight from the standardized script, and is likely the safest course of action in many situations. The collateral damage is that if you’re in one of the atypical situations where getting the heck out of dodge immediately is both possible and appropriate, the 9-1-1 call center has just made you less likely to survive.

2. All the loud chatter over the “open line” after the kid gets grabbed. The operator has no idea who’s on the other end of the line listening to all of her inside-baseball conversations. Just seems undisciplined to be broadcasting in-house call-center chatter into a potential hostage situation.

3. “Where are you at?”. I wonder if that’s textbook terminology to prevent misunderstanding, or just an annoying colloquialism. Either way, it detracts from the operator’s “you can trust me, I’m a professional” image.

Doesn’t the audio start out with the kid saying?:

Caller: “There’s some cops… um… there’s some guys…”

Operator: “Where are you at?”

Caller: “Norwalk, California”

The first item could just be a slip under a very stressful situation. The second does not sound like a natural answer to a question under the circumstances. I would’ve expected a 7 year old in those circumstances to reply to the question of location in the following manner:

“In (a, the, our) bathroom”

or

“At my home”

And I hope they catch the bastards.

I had to call 9-1-1 when my brother stopped breathing. I really didn’t want to answer questions about his age and weight until I heard them tell me an ambulance was dispatched.

1. Sure that advise isn’t always the best, but you don’t know that that is what the dispatcher would have said in every case, and in this case, in the absense of any further specific information, telling the kid to stay in the bathroom where he has stayed undetected so far seems like the most sensible option. So I don’t know what you’re complaining about

2. If that was indeed the case then it is not wise, but I think that the recording was at the dispatcher’s end of the line, and she was probably switching between lines to inform the police personnel. Notice how there’s no more background noise of the screaming/bad guys shouting when she is relaying information.

3. Seriously?? If your only problem with 911 dispatchers is that their grammar doesn’t meet your high falutin’ prescritive standards then I’d say they’re doing their job more than well enough. So long as they don’t use sentence constructions that mainstream speakers won’t understand, I don’t see what the problem is.

There’s a time to bitch about shit that’s wrong, but this isn’t it.