Thank God for good lawyers

[Stinky The Clown]

The story of the dismissed 911 call in Detroit really got to me. It was just outrageous that not one, but two different 911 operators dismissed this young boy's calls and as a result of inattention, his mother is dead.

Geoffrey Feiger is handling the case on behalf of the boy and his family.

I know we have bigger issues, but his small story is so incredibly sad to me.

edit to add link to story: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060410/NEWS11/60410010

[BlackHeart]

1. It is a sad story

and the 911 operator needs a new career. But Feiger is an asshat.
He only takes cases that give him lots of publicity.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. In a case like this, a high profile lawyer is a good thing .......

Who else would take a young black kid's case against the government and have even a prayer of winning?

[BlackHeart]

4. I should hope

that this is a slam dunk. The city should be opening up their check book right now.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. I don't know what the operator was thinking.

I used to work the midnight shift at an answering service, alone. One shift, maybe a 1/2 hour before I was going home, I got a call from a disturbed man, who asked to speak to his psychiatrist because he wanted to say goodbye before he killed himself. This was a first for me. I kept him talking, asking what the matter was, and somehow got his name and phone number. I put him on hold, got his psychiatrist on the line, patched the calls together, and heaved a sigh of relief.

Prematurely. The guy called back, thanking me, but not for what I wanted. He thanked me b/c the doctor just blew him off. And he hung up.

I called the doctor again, asking him what happened. The doctor was grumpy and told me it was a waste of his time, as this was an ex-patient. I told the doctor that within a few minutes, the caller was going to be literally an ex-patient. The doctor was ambivalent on what I should do.

I took the initiative, called 9-1-1, gave them his name and number (they can trace an address from a phone number).

Long story short: EMS got to this guy before he died, and I called the hospital later that night and found out he was still alive, on the psyche ward, but alive.

That incident still haunts me as far as what could have happened.

[BlackHeart]

5. It's not an easy job,

working at an answering service, is it?

[no_hypocrisy]

6. No, it isn't. The one thing I'm still proud about is that no one ever

died during my shift. People called with heart attacks, panic attacks, no medication, high fevers, etc. I always found the doctors and took flack for waking them up every now and then.

And believe it or not, this was one of my favorite jobs.

[BlackHeart]

7. The calls I thought were 'funny'

were things like "I'm having excruciating chest pains, could you call my doctor and see what I should do?" and I'm like "shouldn't you be calling an ambulance?".