'911? A Squirrel's Stuck in a Tree ...'

Vernetta Geric won't soon forget the 911 call she received about the squirrel in the tree.

An operator at the Allegheny County 911 Command Center, trained to handle critical emergencies, she sometimes answers calls that border on the absurd.

It's a growing problem across the state and the nation, as more people call 911 for non-emergencies, viewing the dispatching centers as a one-stop source of information.

The caller said she needed a police officer right away.

"What's the problem?" said Geric, 46, of East Pittsburgh.

"I have a large tree in my backyard ... there's a squirrel stuck in the tree."

"Ma'am, this is a squirrel? In a tree? What's the problem?"

"It's been there for about an hour. It's crying; it needs help. There's a problem," the caller insisted.

"Ma'am, sorry, but this isn't necessarily a police issue. It's a wild animal, sitting in a tree. It's supposed to be doing that. The squirrel will be OK. It'll climb down when it's ready," Geric said.

"Are you telling me you're not sending me an officer?"

"Sorry ma'am, this isn't a police issue. An officer wouldn't be able to do anything. The squirrel will be just fine, really."

"But police officers help people in need right?"

"Yes, ma'am. Squirrels are not people."

"Well, never mind, anyway. You've spent so much time explaining why an officer won't help me, the squirrel left. Thanks."

The county's 911 center in Point Breeze handled 1.4 million calls last year from 130 communities in Allegheny County and 88 Pittsburgh neighborhoods.

Most callers are people "in their worst states of mind during critical situations," said Robert Full, county emergency services chief. But a number of calls to 911 have little to do with police, firefighters or ambulances.

They run the gamut -- from the psychiatric patient who routinely called to report that he had the cure for AIDS, to the man who used to drink a little too much on Saturday nights and call 911.

"He wanted me to call his wife and let her know he was on his way home and she shouldn't yell at him," said 911 shift commander Jim Hazlett, 50, of Beechview.

Allegheny County 911 does not count crank calls, Full said. The agency's policy is to try to answer all calls, emergency and non-emergency. He did not know how much of the agency's nearly $10 million budget pays to handle crank calls.

State and national organizations also do not count such calls, so measuring their frequency is difficult.

Judith Brackin, president of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, said she believes inappropriate calls to 911 are a problem "across the state and the nation."

People who believe 911 is a public information service make up the largest portion of calls in many jurisdictions, said Gary Allen, editor of Dispatch monthly magazine.

Some agencies report that up to 60 percent of their 911 calls fall into the "bad call" category -- accidentally dialed calls, prank calls and inappropriate calls for things people believe 911 staffers should know, such as weather conditions, Allen said.

"911 operators are not the same people who worked at PA-Bell on the switchboard to answer your questions," said Tom McDonough, 36, of Monroeville, a shift commander at the dispatching center in Point Breeze.

Officials agree that the ability to trace crank calls from most phones has helped cut down on the number, but more calls today come from cell phones and are harder to trace.

Most counties in the United States -- including Allegheny -- don't have the technology to trace cell phone calls. That will change next year when the county's 911 system undergoes a $13 million technology update to enable it to trace cellular calls.

County 911 officials also are studying whether to install an information line, which could be an 800-toll-free number or a special three-digit number, similar to those used in other locales.