The week of April 10 – 16 is National Telecommunicators Week, and Communications Officers of the Washington State Patrol have offered tips on the right time to call 911.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you need a police officer, firefighter or emergency medical help at your location, you should be calling 9-1-1,\u201d said Mark Layhew, director of WSP\u2019s Communications Division. \u201cBeyond that, the list of reasons to call is pretty short.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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WSP is especially concerned about the number of people who call 911 to get road conditions or driving directions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to keep our phone lines and our dispatchers free to handle emergency calls,\u201d said Layhew. \u201cWe would love to be helpful in other ways, but will likely end those kinds of calls very quickly with a referral to non-emergency numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The State Patrol actively seeks callers who are watching impaired drivers at that moment. It\u2019s legal to use your cell phone to call police with that type of information.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAn impaired driver is an emergency,\u201d Layhew said. \u201cWe want those kinds of calls very badly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another reason to call 911 is with tips intended to solve some previous or ongoing crime, such as an AMBER Alert. It\u2019s easier to remember 911 than the phone number of an investigator that might have been listed in news coverage.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease don\u2019t hesitate to call us if you have information that will help solve a crime. We can get you in touch with detectives or others who are working the case,\u201d Layhew said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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The week of April 10 – 16 is National Telecommunicators Week, and Communications Officers of the Washington State Patrol have offered tips on the right time to call 911.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14774"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}