Police To Blame For Dearth of 911 Calls?
Two seemingly unrelated major NY news pieces this past week:
1. Diane Schuler, the mom traveling the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway, killing 8 people in her car and the vehicle she crashed into head on.
2. The NYPD has been recording the cell phone numbers of people calling 911 since 2003, creating a database of millions of cell phone numbers and tracking their owners in past and future investigations.
The connection: According to the Schuler family defense attorney, Dominic Barbara, the NY State Police should have tried to intercept the Schuler vehicle the moment the first 911 call came in, considerably well before she traveled 60 miles the wrong way. The news of the NYPD cell phone collection has caused an uproar with many citizens protesting, along with what the civil liberties organizations are calling of a skirt-around-a-warrant maneuver by the police, stating they now would not call 911 in an emergency involving others, citing privacy concerns. To revert to the initial article, this is going to be an interesting situation to follow if a grand jury is impaneled, considering the only person who could possibly have been criminally charged would have been the deceased driver, Diane Schuler.
Today is voting day up on the Hill re: health reform.
Find Thy Elected Officials: Just type in your zip code and this site will supply you with the names and contact information for your legislators from the state level up. This is a two click site with a host of other relevant features.
As always, be safe.
C’mon, why the uproar? Who would expect the government to refrain from logging the 911 calls/phone numbers? The same government which monitors your calls for “bomb” keyword won’t be able to keep itself from collecting the police call records.
Logging 911 calls isn’t the issue. It is the perception of that information being used to invade a person’s privacy that will make people reluctant to call in.