suicide awareness walk PAGE 2
charitable yard sale PAGE 8
athletes go the distance PAGE 9
Nicola Valley’s News Voice Since 1905
merrittherald.com
bcclassified.com
MERRITT HERALD TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2014 • MERRITT NEWSPAPERS
FREE
A RUN FOR THE AGES The 34th annual Terry Fox Run held by Rotary Club of Merritt Sunrise in brought in an anticipated total of $1,090 this year, topping last year’s amount of about $700. In all, 67 people participated in the run, up from the 53 who took part last year. There were 12 volunteers for the 2014 run, which began and ended at Voght Park. Rotary member MJ Berezan said 87 cents from each dollar raised will go to the Terry Fox Research Institute for cancer research. Michael Potestio/Herald
False 911 calls plague police detachment By Michael Potestio the herald
reporter@merrittherald.com
Merritt police continue to be inundated with false 911 calls, according to two quarterly reports from the local detachment on the first half of 2014. At a city council meeting in August, Staff Sgt. Sheila White presented council with the RCMP’s second quarter report, which, like the first, reported a high number 911 calls that weren’t emergencies.
Between April and June, police received 93 emergency calls, but 90 of them turned out to be false. From January to March, 109 calls to 911 were made, of which 106 turned out to be false calls. White told city council some of these calls involve people calling in regards to vehicles broken down on the side of a highway, which don’t require police resources. She said some were mistakes, “but they’re not coming from the young people like you would think — little
kids playing with the phone.” She said the police only get one or two of those over the course of a year. Some of the calls that turned out to be false were caused by cellphone “pocket dials.” A pocket dial is when a cellphone accidentally makes a call while in a person’s pants pocket, purse or handbag. White said that each 911 call is investigated to determine the validity of the emergency. Sgt. Norm Flemming told
the Herald police appreciate people calling 911, but specific information is key when reporting an emergency. Flemming said police will receive many calls from people who have just driven past incidents on the highways surrounding Merritt, but often times cannot provide detailed information or an exact location. “We can wind up wasting hours looking for stuff, and it might have been just a guy broken down on the side of the road waiting for a tow,”
Flemming said. Vehicles with yellow police tape around them in a ditch along a highway have already been dealt with and don’t warrant a 911 call, Flemming pointed out. Flemming said another area of false calls police constantly deal with are abandoned 911 calls, where callers didn’t intend on phoning the police. Some abandoned calls occur when people attempting to dial 011 for an overseas directory dial the nine by
NATIVE LEGEND
Phone: 250-378-5500 2051 Quilchena Avenue, Merritt
$IJMESFO T "EVMUT '3".& "/% -&/4 1"$,"(&4
*.1"$5 3&4*45"/5 -&/4&4 8*5) 67 $0"5*/(
1"*34
✄
SUN COUNTRY OPTOMETRY
✄
#"$, 50 4$)00- 41&$*"-4
BOOK YOUR FULL EYE HEALTH EXAMINATIONS TODAY! Dr. Darryl Burgess, OD r &ZF &YBNT r $POUBDU -FOTFT r 1SFTDSJQUJPO 4BGFUZ (MBTTFT
mistake. “We’ve had people that have tried to dial the 011, realize they got 911 and hang up right away,” Flemming said. He said people in this situation should stay on the line and explain the misdial so police are not dispatched to a possible emergency. “When you dial 911, your name, your number and everything — your address — comes up, and as far as we know we have an emergency.”
*expires Sept. 30th, 2014