You simply would not believe how many bogus 911 calls we receive at ECOMM in the course of a night. The’re accidental, certainly, but there are so many that it seriously impairs our ability to deal with real emergency calls, because we are spending so much time calling back to thoughless people who have:

1) Left their cel phones unlocked, chucked it in their pocket/backpack/purse and wandered off. I deal with dozens of calls a night where we are listening to people partying in some bar or restaurant or chatting with friends in front of the TV while sitting on their phone, tying up the 911 emergency lines.

2) Leaving their cel phones laying around where young children can play with them. Most people in Canada don’t realize that even though a cel phone may no longer be activated with the local cel provider, as long as it has a battery in it it must, by CRTC regulations, be allowed to call 911. I’m constantly finding myself talking to children who are playing with their parent’s old cel phone. This can be a real nuisance, because the child tends to keep dialling and call again, and again, and again….

If you accidentally call 911 by land line or on your cel phone, DO NOT HANG UP. Stay on the phone and the 911 call taker will deal with it quickly. If you realize what you’ve done and hang up in embarrassment, then you’ve just complicated the process because that call taker must then take the time to call back to ensure that it is not an emergency, which takes much longer. If you turn off the phone to avoid dealing with the call back from the call taker, you’re going to discover a police officer knocking on your door to make sure that you are alright. This, of course, reduces the number of cops that are available to take real emergency calls.

Accidents happen, and those of us managing the 911 lines understand that and aren’t going to give you a hard time when it happens. But we would really appreciate the public taking every precaution to reduce unnecessary 911 calls.

The local emergency response people are now running ads, telling people NOT to program 911 into their cellphones! It seems that a great percentage of calls going in to the center are purely accidental — they sat on their phone, or the dog toothed the speed dial while “fetching” it, or something.

“I’d caution you to be very careful indeed about letting your clients track you down like that. ”

Thanks for the word of caution. After 30 years of in-patient and out-patient practice, including patients who have murdered, I think I’ve learned a little something about human nature.

My “knee-jerk” comment makes no assumptions about police creating donnybrooks. I have the greatest respect for the police, and was the psychotherapist to a major metropolitan police department for years. My comment is meant to remind that relationship and skilled assessment is the key to action in a therapeutic relationship, and that not all “stalking” is stalking.

You make some good points, Ogden, but let me point out that Colin Rowett (1986, Violence in Social Work: A Research Study of Violence in the Context of Local Authority Social Work, pg. 92) noted that 60 % of clients involved in assaultive behavior had existing relationships with their workers that were of at least six months duration. Most often it is not the stranger that attacks the worker, it is the person that you feel “comfortable” with. The person that you think would never do such a thing. I’ve lost count of the times that workers told me: “I never thought they’d do that.” We get complacent and miss the obvious cues that are staring us in the face. Assumptions are not a sound basis for safety. I’d caution you to be very careful indeed about letting your clients track you down like that.

Also, it seems from your comment about “knee jerk” reactions that you assume that involving the police will invariably result in a donnybrook. I’m a retired cop and a trained martial artist and I don’t like getting into fights. My approach to safety is founded on not letting a situation get to the point where it turns violent. Violence isn’t going to be good for anyone involved, least of all the client. If you cultivate safety awareness and approach these things properly, then you rarely get to the point where violence erupts. And on the rare occasion that does and you have the proper resources in place, then the outburst is quickly and efficiently contained and no one gets hurt.

Charles Ennis

Those of us who have been doing psychotherapy for years will recognize that clients come with various needs and styles of attachment and object relations, and various needs and styles of borrowing ego from the therapist.

It has not been uncommon in my practice to recognize what I might call benign or regressive stalking. The frail suicidal patient who drives by one’s house at night to see if the therapist is home… they continue to drive on to their own home, safer in the knowledge that the therapist is “alive”. It is at that time, an active use of the client’s reliance on ego-lending that is keeping them sustained.

I’ve had a couple of client’s who have “tracked me down” after being out of treatment for years… sometime seeking to return as a part of a regressive decompensation. None of these patients have had violent intent… even if their wishes were not satisfied by me.

It strikes me that clients that attempt to intrude on our boundaries are oftern working through the issues that bring them into our offices. The behavior should be addressed in therapy, in my opinion, reflectively- not knee-jerkedly labeled dangerous behavior.

2 cents,
Ogden