
When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers - tehabe
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/business/dealbook/when-you-dial-911-and-wall-street-answers.html?_r=0
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jzwinck
In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was
happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you.

I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true
today.

I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three
continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten.
Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not at all, even when they say they will
come.

We pay fees for E911 service which includes location of cellular phones. But
if you call 911 in Manhattan and tell them you are on 4th Street they will ask
you if it's East or West 4th. They will even ask you this if you say you're on
3rd Avenue--an absurd question for a local resident but not for 911
dispatchers who are not locals and do not know local vernacular much less
geography.

A few days ago the car I was in was robbed while we were driving in Chicago. I
immediately called 911. They said they'd send someone so I told them where to
find the driver. They called me back 20 minutes later and said they were not
coming and that such a crime could be reported by phone only. The driver's
phone had been stolen.

A fire alarm went off in a commercial building. I called 911. They didn't show
up. Forty minutes later I called again. They sent the FD to my house. Not the
fire.

911 is broken. Be prepared to take care of yourself.

~~~
CPLX
This doesn't sound right. I don't know as much about other cities but if you
call 911 in Manhattan you're going to be connected to a call center at
Metrotech in Brooklyn, a few blocks from where I am typing this, where a real
live human who is almost certainly from NYC and lives here will answer your
call, determine the precinct and sector and get the job to dispatch.

If someone is asking clarifying details it's likely because they are trained
to do so, as people in real life emergencies tend to get flustered and make
mistakes.

The 911 system in NYC is sophisticated, was revamped by the Bloomberg
administration heavily in the wake of September 11th, and is very much part of
the civil service here. Your story about calling 911 in NYC and getting an out
of town call center is obvious fiction and makes me doubt the rest of your
stories as a result.

~~~
jzwinck
I never said I got an "out of town call center." I said the dispatcher was not
a local. Obviously I couldn't tell you where the call center was (though
another time I called, I was routed straight away to the NY State Police and I
have no idea why).

As you may know, there is a law that New York City employees must be
residents. However, I once lived in an apartment used by multiple firefighters
as their residential address, but who did not actually live there. Rent in NYC
is expensive, city employee salaries are not generally very high, and so
people do cheat by paying a small amount of money for a place to use as a
mailing address (or even sleep occasionally).

Another story from NYC 911: I called to report live exposed electrical wiring
in a sidewalk shed on a busy street. The British call this a hoarding, and
out-of-towners often don't know the term, but it's sufficiently well-known in
NYC that the NY Times uses it in headlines:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/nyregion/the-sidewalk-
shed...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/nyregion/the-sidewalk-shed-
ubiquitous-new-york-eyesore-gets-a-makeover.html)

The dispatcher had no idea what a "sidewalk shed" was. I explained what it was
in some detail, after which the dispatcher still didn't get it, and thought I
was talking about a shed like you'd have behind your house in the suburbs.
This person may well have been working in Brooklyn, but surely hadn't lived
there any length of time. Indeed the city employee residency law doesn't
require any "warm up" period--you can move in any time within the first 90
days of your employment.

~~~
CPLX
I have lived in NYC for 17 years and you are the first person I have heard use
the term sidewalk shed.

~~~
qSP7n2cupP8iIpM
Here it is used by the New York Times, described as "ubiquitous":

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/nyregion/the-sidewalk-
shed...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/nyregion/the-sidewalk-shed-
ubiquitous-new-york-eyesore-gets-a-makeover.html)

The New York Times has lived in NYC for over 160 years.

~~~
simtel20
Perhaps it is familiar to newspapers and people in public service? As a
lifetime NYC resident, I'd like to add a data point: I am familiar with the
sight, but I have never heard the term before.

------
rayiner
The article's focus on the private equity boogeyman is misdirected, for
reasons that become apparent if you read far enough:

> Private equity gained new power and responsibility as a direct result of the
> 2008 crisis. _As cities and towns nationwide struggled to pay for basics_
> like public infrastructure and ambulance services, private equity stepped
> in.

The budgets of state and local governments around the country are tapped out.
Often, that's the result of problems that--though exacerbated by the financial
collapse--have been in the making for decades.

The relevant question isn't whether private-equity backed police and fire
services are better than well-funded public ones.[1] It's whether they're
better than the poorly funded or unfunded ones that states and municipalities
are able to afford given their budget constraints.

[1] Not only is that not the relevant question--it's one the article does not
even answer. Nowhere does it provide any concrete analysis of the performance
of private versus public fire or ambulance services.

~~~
URSpider94
There's more than enough blame to go around. Part of the issue is that private
firms come in and pitch an option to cities and towns by which they can get
out of their budget scrape by privatizing schools/fire/jails/traffic
enforcement in return for granting a monopoly to a company and allowing them
to charge new fees. This looks like an attractive option, rather than raising
taxes, but I can't think of a time when I've heard of it working out.

~~~
Lazare
A lot of privatised systems work very well. Denmark has an almost entirely
privatised emergency system; one company alone runs 65% of their fire brigades
and 85% of their ambulance services, and it seems to work great.

Frankly, this story seems to be "terribly run towns that mismanaged their way
almost into bankruptcy and can no longer afford to provide critical services
are _also_ terrible at negotiating other contracts too!" Which, you
know...yeah?

~~~
dredmorbius
What are the regulations on those emergency services?

------
arcanus
> A man in the suburban South watched a chimney fire burn his house to the
> ground as he waited for the fire department, which billed him anyway and
> then sued him for $15,000 when he did not pay.

Is one typically billed when you have the fire department arrive? I thought it
was a public good.

~~~
illumin8
It's a good question, but many of these rural southern towns are very poor,
and governed by conservative ideologues that have privatized all non-mandatory
services.

These towns are required by federal law to provide school service to children
within them, however, anything else like police, fire, and ambulance services
are not required.

I think it's truly a shame that this has led to predatory practices by private
companies who charge "fire insurance" rates of $500 a year, and charge
exorbitant rates to people who might innocently dial 911 while their house is
burning and don't have insurance.

For what it's worth, this is not normal practice in most civilized parts of
the US (pretty much anywhere on the east and west coasts), but if you get far
enough into the poor rural southern states, it really is like a 3rd world
country.

~~~
TruthAndDare
> predatory practices by private companies

It does sound awful not to have access to fire service to someone like me who
is used to it,* but then again, have the company done anything wrong by
offering the service? Starting no company at all and offering no service at
all would have been acceptable, right? I mean, that's what most of us do.
Then, is there really anything wrong with offering people a service, even at a
high price, if you don't take away any alternative they already had (which in
this case would be to let the house burn)?

* I haven't actually ever used the service, but I count on that they will come if I call. I count on the fire department coming more than I do the police, because if there's a fire, other people's stuff and lives are on the line. When it's just about me, I'm not as sure that I am considered worth the cost. For the record, I'm in Europe.

~~~
andrepd
That's a very simplistic way to do things. If there were no private
firefighters then it wouldn't take long for there to be enough public pressure
for a firefighting force to be financed by the state. Because these predatory
companies are already in place, the government won't bother and will just
shrug. So the alternative to private firefighters isn't no firefighters.

~~~
dexterdog
But does the public version cost less than the private one. I would be shocked
if it did.

~~~
Klinky
You'd have to analyze it on a case-by-case basis. The hope would be that
public programs have less of a profit incentive to gouge people. That said,
public programs are often bloated. However, that bloat often comes from
contracting out to private entities with connections. Going pure private,
profit motives may cause an entity to strive for efficiency, or it could make
them strive to have a monopoly stranglehold on a market and gouge customers as
much as possible.

~~~
selmat
Similar situation here in my country (middle Europe). There is one big
corporate connected to some political representatives. They bought few
hospital, 112 ambulance service (equal to 911 service), pharmacies, some local
medical centers, they even have one health insurance company (one of three
acting here).

They have great diversification. In some locations they have monopoly. If you
need immediate help (you see or are member of accident, you have strong pain
no matter where (head, teeth, back)) you have almost no choice. You are still
calling emergency and/or paying to one pocket.

From one side, public hospital all very old and incredibly indebted, outdated
medical devices, buildings are old and need renovation. Mentioned corp
invested huge amount of money in renovation, improving environment and
business process. People have better services and new private hospitals has
very good financial health and level of customer services.

On the other hand, very sad thing is that public representatives are able only
talk about nothing and perform reformation feasibility studies and studies
about studies. They are not able to get needed public services to desired
level. If private corps will own entire public health-care system this will be
an issue. Charging for services will not limited at all. There is almost no
competition in this area since have huge entry difficulties. And even someone
would be able to get into competition with this shark corp. they simply buy
him.

------
nkrisc
Privatization sounds great when you can afford your own private services.
Otherwise, tough luck, pull on those bootstraps harder.

~~~
stevendhansen
The only alternatives to privatization I can see are:

1) force the population to collectively pay for these services or 2) force
specific individuals to provide these services for free

Option 1 is morally questionable and option 2 is a type of slavery, so it
seems privatization isnt quite as bad as the alternatives. At least with a
privatized service those who wish to opt out, can.

~~~
arcticbull
Remind me, how is the collection of taxes to pay for services in the public
interest 'morally questionable'? The fire department in particular is such an
obvious case because a fire affecting one property can easily spread to the
next -- and so on. Is that something you want to happen because the property
owner of the first house couldn't afford the fire department? That's morally
questionable.

~~~
jschwartzi
Moreover, given a choice, a lot of people wouldn't pay ahead of time for a
private fire service, leading to the kind of bankruptcy situations the article
is describing. Some localities solve this problem by levying a property tax
and using it to maintain public emergency services, so that anyone who would
benefit from their presence in a catastrophe has already paid for the service.

This whole article just discusses the consequences of not wanting to pay taxes
on anything. It perfectly described a libertarian paradise of private, for-
hire, emergency services.

------
hackuser
Free market enterprise requires, AFAIK, 'creative destruction' (business
failure, freeing resources for new enterprises) and distribution of goods to
those who can pay more.

Therefore, I don't think it's a good solution when the specifications are that
the institution cannot fail (e.g., you can't have the police department go out
of business or otherwise fail to provide services), and when its good should
be distributed regardless of ability to pay (e.g., voting, fire protection,
etc.).

~~~
humanrebar
So why not fix the problem at the demand side and not the supply side. If
people can't afford essential-to-life services, isn't that the problem?

While I'm on the subject, centrally planning and allocating the services
doesn't really solve the problem of whether it's worth the cost to have one
ambulance to serve a town of five people who live in the middle of nowhere.
Someone still has to make the decision. We can contrast the ways to make the
decision.

In one proposal, the consumers of the services pay free market suppliers for
emergency services. Various suppliers compete on features and price for
servicing Buford, Wyoming (population 1). It turns out the resident of Buford,
Wyoming needs to pay six figures per year to pay for his services. Either he's
a Walton and it's not a big deal or he's a normal person and has to move
somewhere that normal people can afford to live. Or maybe he signs a waiver
stating he understands his home is outside the normal emergency services
areas.

In another proposal, everyone gets emergency services no matter what. If a
town can't afford it, they lobby up (county, state, nation) to a bureaucracy
to get the subsidies they need. Eventually the money gets allocated as a line
item in a pork barrel rider on the Save Kids with Cancer Act. From then on
it's political suicide and a huge waste of political capital to cut the
Buford, Wyoming Fire Department from the budget since, relatively speaking,
there's not much to gain by being sensible at this level of detail. The guy in
Buford, Wyoming gets a permanent six-figure-a-year subsidy for having
absolutely no neighbors.

Hold on, you say, in proposal B you can have qualified bureaucrats (sorry,
experts) picking which towns get services and which don't. In this case, we
get to blame 'heartless republicans/democrats/whatever' instead of 'creative
destruction'. People still have to decide some towns aren't worth it. But it's
no longer people paying for what they use. It's someone you need to hire
lobbyists to talk to.

~~~
hackuser
You created a fictional scenario and fictional people taking fictional
actions, and then object to it all. I'm not sure that represents (other than a
frustrated narrator).

I don't have the expertise or time to evaluate ambulance services, or water or
police or road safety or much else; I have my own job to do. I don't want
direct democracy, which is effectively what the comment describes (voting via
checkbook). I like the republican model, where I elect representatives who
study and decide these things for me. I call it "government".

~~~
humanrebar
What makes you think elected representatives have more expertise and time to
evaluate ambulatory for every municipality in the country? In reality they
don't. They rely on (unelected, rarely held accountable) bureaucrats and
lobbyists to make those decisions.

As to fiction... the town is a real town. The programs are fictional. But
there are actual examples of where the 'experts' are completely absent or
otherwise less qualified than the average voter: bridges to nowhere;
destroyers and jets built for the last war; subway tunnels that take 100 years
to build; veterans hospitals that don't provide treatment; crop-specific
agricultural subsidies. The list goes on and on. No president or congressman
gets fired because they played favorites or funded even a multi-billion-dollar
failed product. People vote on bigger issues (war, 'the economy') and
identity.

I don't know why calling those perverse incentives 'republican' or
'government' should make me feel better about it.

~~~
hackuser
> What makes you think elected representatives have more expertise and time to
> evaluate ambulatory for every municipality in the country?

They are experienced, full-time professionals in running government. I'm an
experienced, full-time professional in IT; I know far less than they do about
governing. Like any executive, they don't need expertise in every field under
their purview - that would be impossible. But they know what goes into the
executive-level decision; they have experts to advise them; they have aides,
time, and other resources (e.g., funded studies) to study the question; and
they are experts in and practitioners of the highest-order issue of every
question, the politics.

Not all of them are good at their jobs - which is no different than people in
private companies (and in IT). That's the inescapable nature of humanity and
human institutions, including voters and also the consumers you have so much
faith in, until our AI overlords take over.

------
JshWright
Interesting that the article doesn't mention the fact that Rural Metro (the
second largest commercial ambulance service in the country) was recently
bought by Envision Healthcare Holdings, the parent company of American Medical
Response (AMR), the largest commercial ambulance service in the country. Rural
Metro operations across the country are now in the process of getting their
green/yellow ambulances painted AMR red.

It remains to be seen what impact this has on EMS in the US, but many folks in
the industry were surprised that the sale went through as easily as it did.
They were already #1 and #2 by a wide margin, the new combined company is
staggeringly huge, with no real national competitor (granted, it does have
local competition in most markets).

------
mschuster91
This is so utterly disgusting.

The US should look at Germany, once again: we do have private companies
managing medical services - usually awarded in 3-5 year contracts, and e.g. in
case of Munich, there are multiple companies in addition to the various NGOs
(Malteser, Red Cross, Johanniter). All of them have to provide a standardized
set of equipment and education for the personnel.

Oh, and there's a law that mandates that on long-term average, every caller
has to be served in 10 minutes from call. This is called "Hilfsfrist" and is
mandatory for firefighters, ambulances and cops.

911 responders are always in government hands, though.

~~~
wojcech
Amen, but I am starting to think that this is a cultural thing... civil law vs
common law, rhinian capitalism vs Anglo-Saxon capitalism. German private does
not mean American private, and that is good in my opinion. A lot of people
moan about regulations and strong unions(like with the train conducters
recently), but forget how important they are society wide

~~~
mschuster91
> but forget how important they are society wide

Even in Germany, the train conductors got a lot of hate, even though Germany
has by far the lowest amount of strike days per worker...

------
arca_vorago
Back when I was contracting I got a gig to install and update 911 in cities
within about a 50 miles radius. I was appalled at the state of 911 once I saw
it from the inside, even with the new system I was installing, which was
running on Windows Server 2003 and was obviously poorly secured and tossed
together by someone in Dallas who knew .net and knew the old boy system to get
the contract.

This is one more reason why I try to explain to people that you need to be
prepared to take of a problem yourself, because cops and ambulances will just
show up and either take you to the hospital or draw chalk around your body.

Self defense is an inherent natural right and its one more reason the right to
bear arms is so important.

------
xivzgrev
I did not realize fire protection was uncovered by taxes.

"Many homeowners in Rural/Metro’s jurisdiction did not realize they had to pay
for fire protection separately"

------
njbooher
In Ithaca, NY, Bangs Ambulance Inc. is next door to Bangs Funeral Home.

~~~
JshWright
That's actually not uncommon. Many of the early ambulance services in the US
were run by funeral homes, as they already had vehicles capable of moving
people lying down.

That being said, Bang's is far from a "Wall Street" operation. Like the vast
majority of ambulance companies, it's a pretty small mom n' pop shop.

------
doctorstupid
Lynn Tilton may very well be a sociopath.

