Sorry, wrong number PEOPLE: As any 911 dispatcher can attest, many calls are far from emergencies.

December 27, 2000

By JEFF COLLINS The Orange County Register

The scene had all the hallmarks of a ghoulish slaying.

There was a trail of blood leading to a trash container. A two-by-four stained with bloody handprints lay nearby. And inside the trash bin lay a decapitated head splattered with brain matter.

But further inspection revealed that the case was more hoax than homicide. The blood and brains were bovine. The head, a rubber mask.

It was just another of the many weird, wacky and witless calls fielded almost daily by local police.

Police often get calls that don't pan out, said Santa Ana Sgt. Ken Witt.

"Some of the calls we receive are a little off," Witt added. "We get the gamut."

People sometimes treat police more like servants than public servants. One man called asking police to rescue his cat from a raccoon in a tree. A trailer-park resident called for help retrieving an aluminum patio cover that took flight in a windstorm.

"You're here to serve me," the woman told dispatchers.

They call seeking news or advice. They call 911 rather than 411 for phone numbers. Some appear so clueless that dispatchers wonder how they manage to get through the day.

But such calls aren't always unwelcome.

Kooky calls provide comic relief for an otherwise stressful job, one police dispatcher said.

Newport Beach dispatcher Jason Servin vividly recalls the distraught man with the New York accent who came home from a football game on an October night three years ago and found his wife upstairs in bed, a knife protruding from her chest.

The man was crying when he dialed 911. Servin dispatched five patrol cars to the scene with lights and sirens blaring.

That's when the man's wife revealed that the stabbing was a Halloween prank.

"My wife's joking," the man said in New Yorquese. Servin thought he said "choking" and switched the call to a paramedic dispatcher who, it turned out, had a better ear for Big Apple argot.

"On the tape you can hear (the man) cussing his wife out and screaming and calling her names," Servin said. Officers proceeded to the residence anyway and chastised the man's wife.

Julie Dutton, Garden Grove's police communications manager, said some people think of police as a combination news bureau and advice center.

People call immediately after earthquakes and ask what its magnitude was, before Cal Tech even knows. Or they call and ask, in all earnestness, "When's the next earthquake going to happen?"

One guy called Garden Grove police and asked how much it costs to ship a car to the East Coast. A woman called Thursday saying she had a toothache and asked for a dental referral.

"They figure the police department can help them, so they call for anything they can think of," Dutton said.

Dispatchers often are flabbergasted by how befuddled some callers are.

Dutton said it's common for people to call police after getting a page with 911 appended to the call-back number to signal that the page is urgent.

"What do you want?" they say. "You paged me."

Anaheim Police Sgt. Rick Martinez said a dispatcher in his department got a call from a citizen who described the license number of a vehicle as: "U as in university, M as in New Mexico, and N as in knife."

Another caller gave a plate number as: "A like Adam, T like Tom and F as in phone," Martinez said.

In yet another case, a woman calling to report a kidnapping said, "My sister's finance was taken prisoner," referring to her sister's fiancé.

A caller once asked a Placentia dispatcher what money laundering was.

The caller thought it meant cash falling into the washing machine.

"There are funny things that happen, and there are sad things," said Placentia police dispatcher Kim VanTilborg, a 20-year veteran. "There's a lot of variety. That's why I like it."

Calls on Christmas are often the saddest of the year, police said. Family fights, medical emergencies and custody battles predominate.

But the upside is there are fewer calls, and there's very little crime.

"It's one of the few days of the year that people do behave," said Orange County Sheriff's Lt. John Brimmage. "I wish it could be Christmas all year long."

-- cin (cin@cin.cin), December 30, 2000

Answers

One of my favorite episodes of "Cops" was when the cops arrived on the scene to see a man standing with blood dripping down his cheek. "What happened?"

"She hit me with a smoothie!" "What's a smoothie?"

"You know! You smoothe clothes with it!"

-- KoFE (your@town.USA), December 30, 2000.

LOL (iron, right?)

-- cin (cin@cin.cin), December 30, 2000.

Hope he never tries to iron his clothes with the drink.

-- Mother of Jehosophat! (for@cryin'.outLoud!), December 31, 2000.