Will calling emergency services repeatedly about a bar bill summon the cops? Sure, but they won’t be helping to sort out whether or not you were overcharged for a beer, they’ll be charging you with abusing the 9-1-1 system, an offense that can bring up to a year in jail and a fine that is the equivalent of many, many beers.
Police say an Idaho man dialed up 9-1-1 a dozen times early Monday morning with an urgent non-emergency, reports KXLY.com: He claimed that the bar he’d just been booted from had overcharged him for his beers.
“He was demanding that the place he got kicked out of didn’t over charge him for him being down there,” the town’s police captain said.
According to the police report, the man was kicked out of a bar around 1:13 a.m. and an officer gave him a courtesy ride home. Apparently he felt close to the police at that point, and decided to give’em a few more rings.
“He had been intoxicated, so we gave him a ride home and shortly after we started receiving 911 calls from him,” the police captain said, noting that he then called 12 times total.
First he called to say he wanted officers to come back to his house to talk about his bar tab. Then he called back seven minutes later to ask when an officer would be showing up. He called twice and hung up, then called three times and put his phone up to the radio. Telling a dispatcher that she’s “just like his ex-wife,” he then hung up, police say.
Such antics are a drain on police resources and could prevent them from helping others with real emergencies, the captain says. And besides, receipts from the bar show he was only charged $30 for the 10 beers he’d had, which is a lot smaller bill than the $1,000 he could now be facing as the result of a misdemeanor citation for misusing 911.
Man calls 911 to report he was overcharged on his bar tab [KXLY.com]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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