The Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department Issues an Arrest Warrant for 911 Non-Emergency Calls

On Monday, May 26th, the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department responded to a call from dispatch stating an individual was repeatedly calling 911 on numerous occasions throughout the day for non-emergency purposes. Dispatchers stated the individual repeatedly called, was disrespectful, and would not give any information as to what was happening, only stated that he needed a supervisor to call him. The officer was given the individuals phone number and address in case he did not answer. After calling the individual, the officer had asked what they could do for him and what was going on. The individual said he was harassed a few weeks prior and he needed officer’s presence around his residence in Iron City. The office then asked if anything happened that day (Memorial Day), in which the individual responded no but the person he claimed to harass him would possibly be “drinking, driving around, and acting out”. When asked what number he used to call dispatch, the individual stated 911 because he was too lazy to use the non-emergency number. The individual also stated he was not disrespectful to the dispatcher when the officer asked him. The officer then informed the individual that it was illegal to call 911 in non-emergent situations and informed him if he did it again, we would go to jail and gave him the non-emergency number to dispatch. The officer received information of what type of vehicle the possible harasser would drive, which was a silver Toyota pickup truck. The officer then drove around Iron City in search of the vehicle, but never saw one that matched the description. Around 8:03 PM the same day, dispatch called the officer to inform them that the individual had called again requesting to speak with a supervisor. After calling the individual, he again stated he needed an officer around his house. The officer did inform the individual that he did a routine search for approximately 30 minutes and did not see the vehicle he described in Iron City. The individual stated he lost the paper with the non-emergency number so he called 911 again. The individual then became irate and hung the phone up while speaking to the officer. Dispatch stated the individual called 7 times from 4:00 PM to 8:28 PM and the individual never called the non-emergency line during that time frame. After this information was obtained, the officer decided to issue an arrest warrant for 911 calls in non-emergency situations due to the number of calls, the disregard of the verbal warning, and giving the individual the number for non-emergencies and it still was not used.