City Government

When Should You Call 911?

Citizens should have clear lines of communication with city officials and services, especially in emergencies or when an official response seems in order. Like most of you, I grew up in an era when calling 911 was for emergencies only. We think of these emergencies to be things like a fire, a child choking, a vehicle accident, a home invasion, a domestic violence situation, or even a strange noise outside. However, city personnel come into the offices Monday mornings and listen to voice mails on the general information line’s answering machine, left by citizens seeking immediate assistance from the police, and apparently people have posted queries to social media as well. Therefore, I want to make clear how to get the appropriate response from city services.

The purpose of calling 911 is to seek an emergency services response from the police, fire, ambulance, or all of the above. What I want everyone to know, and what your city team has been trying to communicate to everyone, is that no matter what the need might be, if there is a situation that requires some sort of response by one of our trained emergency staff members, the best way to get that response is to call 911 and have an officer or firefighter dispatched to the required location.

Our police officers are not in city hall offices around the clock. Instead, they are out patrolling, making officer-initiated contact with motorists and people, conducting proactive patrols throughout the city, and monitoring official radio channels to respond to 911-dispatched calls. Even when they are in city hall, they are not monitoring and answering the City Hall general information phone number, nor are they monitoring social media for posts and messages about loud parties, illegal parking, fireworks, stray animals, downed trees or power lines, or other quality-of-life issues. I also see questions posted on social media that easily could have been answered by your faithful city staff members during normal business hours.

Robert T. Rokovitz, MPA, ICMA-CM

For example, I saw one asking why the trees in the median of South Fulton Parkway were being cut down. Personally, I hated to learn that the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) initiated a new project to remove all trees 4” caliper or more from the medians for safety purposes. Unfortunately, the city has no control over GDOT’s regulations. Similarly, there was a post back when GDOT was installing the safety wire barriers to prevent head-on crashes when vehicles cross the median into opposing traffic. Prior to that post, someone spread a rumor that there were to be sidewalks in the median where concrete was being poured to install the median safety wires. These are examples of questions that can be asked of your local government officials, to avoid baseless rumors and/or misinformation. Making posts to social media will not get a response from our emergency services. Our staff may come across these posts, but that is oftentimes well after the incident takes place and therefore too late to take any action to remedy the situation.

We are asking that if our citizens want immediate action taken on something that they call 911 and report what is happening. When the 911 operator answers, he or she will say, “Fulton County 911, what is your emergency.” The caller’s response can simply be, “This is not an emergency, but I need an officer to respond to a situation.” That queues the operator to dispatch the necessary personnel. Your professional emergency personnel are here for you when you need them and always happy to assist with emergencies and non-emergencies.