Welcome And Our Disability Advocacy

palmi 0:00

Welcome to our podcast, When Life Gives You Lovements. I'm Kevin.

Kevin 0:06

And I'm Palmy. We consider ourselves disability advocates and intend to highlight some disability issues and things we find interesting that we frequently encounter when we're out and about. Also, some history on disability that we find interesting. This year we're going to include more of the interviews of the people that the disability affects. We hope you enjoy it. Hello there, everybody. I'm Kevin.

palmi 0:41

And I'm Palmi.

The Basics Of Calling 911

palmi 0:43

And today we're going to talk about the 911 system. Now bear in mind that is the system we use in the United States. So if you live elsewhere, not the countries, it's either other numbers or you may not have one yet.

Kevin 1:05

So that is our emergency number if you need an emergency call, um, ambulance, fire trucks, or police stage police calls, that's our number to call for an emergency line.

palmi 1:16

Overall emergency number. So imagine if you help back before we had an emergency number, uh, and this actually uh happened to me being out in the uh somewhat rural area. We called the city police department for uh I don't recall what the reason was, but the police city police didn't want to take our call because we didn't live in the city.

Kevin 1:58

We were outside the city limits. Yeah, we should have called the sheriff's department because we were within the county limits. And they told us no number of how to get a hold of the sheriff's department. So like a half hour went by and we called them again, then you find the lowdown that oh they don't want to respond because we're not the city limits. So that's what you would have had happen prior to the early 60s, right? And if I'm not mistaken, you didn't live in the city either, did you?

palmi 2:34

Mm-mm. I lived in the country.

Kevin 2:36

So you probably were out at similar

Before 911 Emergency Calls Were Messy

Kevin 2:40

experiences or at least were aware of that there was a circumstance.

palmi 2:46

Yeah, I was so young, I don't think we ever called, but yeah. Yeah, I remember during uh even when Rose was young, the magnetic uh thing where you fill out emergency phone numbers. You fill out the police department, the hospital, the uh you know, whoever else was would be on it, the fire department, etc.

Kevin 3:14

And uh it was always 911 first, though, on that magnetic board. For Rose, perhaps, but yeah, uh we had one that was at my house. 911 was an option when you were younger, yeah.

palmi 3:30

Yeah, you were born in 1960. I was born in 1965, so I think I've always known 911. Um, but you're right, it was confusing.

Kevin 3:41

Actually, they uh started discussing their problem of uh not having a central number, a central number in the 60s, yeah. So and then when they did roll it out nationwide, they didn't roll out everywhere all at once, right?

palmi 4:00

There's a lot of confusion within the countries and count within the states, and then also within the cut the counties within those states, right?

Kevin 4:09

And a lot of those based on money addressed basically trial & error because, like uh, for example, when you live in either a small town or a rural area that has to get routed to either to the sheriff's department or perhaps the state police, it's you know there's gonna be some hiccups before you get all those who gets what automatically bound out. Like uh if you work in a small police department for a small town, you might get some uh misdirected. Misdirected. They should be county based on the fact that uh your city boundaries have changed in the last years.

palmi 5:07

So typically each city had its own seven-digit emergency line that would direct you to the police, fire department, uh w emergency lines, that that whatever the delay uh whatever the emergency was. And so because of that, there was a lot of confusion, public confusion, which then caused delays of getting help.

Operators Party Lines And Lost Time

palmi 5:31

Uh there was delays because of missed dials, um, inconsistent access. And also in our when I was growing up, we had party lines, and so a lot of times there you shared a line with five and six people. So you had to get asked for someone to get off the line so you could make an emergency call. Was that similar in your area?

Kevin 5:52

Well, actually, it was we didn't have the party system anymore, but party lines anymore. But we had the basically the trunk card for everybody was just the operator for reality you need to call. That was a lot of delay then. It was a lot of delay. Because you had to tell them where you were from and where you needed to go and what the the problem you were basically taught telling somebody three times what you needed help for.

palmi 6:26

Right. And uh actually it might be even more than three because usually operators are not like a career path to anything, it's a short what people look at as a short-term job. Entry level, entry-level job, and uh yeah, they might move up within the full company, but uh chances are you're gonna get an operator that hasn't been working there that long.

Kevin 7:01

Or it could be their first day.

Speaker 2 7:03

Well, now all the nuances of who you need to get a hold of, or what questions to ask.

palmi 7:09

So they would basically have to ask one of the other operators that's been there longer. So you have to wait while your story gets retold, or you have to retell your story again.

Why One Number Saves Lives

palmi 7:22

So early calls for reform were by police chiefs and safety advocates pushing for a single number.

Kevin 7:29

And that kind of makes sense because in that yeah, for like if you want to call a report a murder, say or one currently happening. It's uh yeah, it's something that's already happened. People really call the report a murder in progress. Well they that's just uh one of the top things. Robbery, yes. Uh other crimes, yes, but murder is like low because most of the time in premeditated murder, one of the first things the murderer plans out is where he can do this murder out of sight and have you know people not getting all up in this business and saying, Oh, you're trying to murder that girl, or you know, what have you.

palmi 8:31

They're just but then it also um with the case of the Kitty Genevieve case.

Kevin 8:39

Okay, we haven't got there yet, dear. Okay, okay, but in the cases of accidents or fires, something that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. And the more time people spend trying to report a fire or an accident, is time that those first responders could have used to uh save Lyce or save a bull. Every second counts. Every second counts. And so they were the main advocates for one national number where it's very simple. If somebody has a problem, they call one number, and the dispatcher basically decides, okay, is that the fire department? Is that the hospital? Is that the private ambulance service? Is that a trow truck? Is that you know a police officer? Usually a dispatcher will automatically nowadays dispatch a police unit to the scene anyway. Right.

palmi 9:56

And then there was advanced uh training once 911 got established, they started it uh training 911 operators exclusively for the that action. Correct.

Kevin 10:07

Yeah. See, that way uh with the system now them sending a police officer out. If sometimes, like uh in the case of an accident, say you're in Chicago where they have a high high incidence rate of gunfire. Uh if the victim has been shot, well you want to secure the area first. So that is why there's always a police car that goes in front of whatever, or they will go ahead and dispatch a police officer as well, just to make sure that the rest of the first responders are not walking into a active shooter type crime scene. It's you know kind of safety of first responders, if you will.

palmi 11:04

So in 1960, the pressure was building for this to start to us for us to have a 911 system, and it was because of the confusion. Um the advocates are are asking for this number because of all the confusion that was happening, the lack of uh being able to help people, and the fact that in some cases uh people are afraid to report things because we they see things but they're afraid to report them because they know who you are when you're reporting them. And I just mentioned the can I mention the kitty Genoese case

Kitty Genovese And Reporting Anonymously

palmi 11:40

now? Sure. Okay, so in uh the Kitty Genoese case is a rape and murder where there was it was reported that there was very there was a lot of people that were aware that the uh incident was happening, and some people did report it, but they it was not reported properly to the right people, and there's so there was a lot of confusion. The woman was killed, eventually killed. And so again, it highlights the need for faster ambulance and faster access to these things. Um federal agencies began to explore a universal universal number, and they came up with 911, but why did they come up with 911?

Kevin 12:26

Okay, the reason they came up with 911 was very simple. It was not in use at the time. And back then we it was it was considered to be a three-digit number, easy to remember.

palmi 12:44

And back then you have to remember there was only one telephone company. It was ATT. Yeah, there was only one company that handled all of telephone to all telephone access. And the technical and logistic reasons behind the choice was because it was short, unique, and it was fast, and it worked on a rotary phone and not used anywhere else. See, back when this was first adopted in the 60s, push button phones were non-existent, they didn't come out to like so we're talking mid-60s where you put your finger through a little dial and it clicked, it was clicking. So, um, and so it became the number became official. And in night February 16th of 1968 was the first 911 call. Can you guess where it was, Kev? Um, yeah, but I wanted to talk some more about the Kitty Genoese case.

Kevin 13:47

Okay.

palmi 13:48

One of the uh problems that people have had historically in large urban areas is they just don't want to be involved. 911 gives you a pretty limited uh ability to keep your identity anonymous. I worked for a while, a short while as a 911 operator. The first thing you ask when you're an operator is what's happening? Okay. In this case, you would say, okay, this gals get raped. Okay. Well, obviously you want police for that. Later on, it was I I believe she was injured, so you wanted EMS to respond also. But uh, you know, that's if you're well you want the location probably first, yeah. Yeah, but what I'm saying is okay, you asked for location who's involved, descriptions, if you don't know the names, etc., for whoever's responding to the call, they know where to go and who's involved and what they did interjet themselves into. Uh and 911, once you've got like the details of what the responder needs to know, that's when you start asking, okay, verify your phone number, uh, what's your name again? And you know, at that point, if you're one of those people that just don't want to be involved, you say, I just want to report this, I don't want to be involved, I want to remain anonymous, and you hang up. And uh the display on the 911 operator will tell where that call's from. During that time and date, we're probably tagging phone calls from phone booths or perhaps a landline, but cell phones were not a thing yet. So nowadays I think you have a little bit less leeway with uh because uh investigators will have access to 9-11 logs, which had the phone number and would have that mobile number if you're that's what you're using. But if you're using a uh publicly accessible phone, it's kind of luck of their draw whether or not they can identify you. Well, I think they still honor it though. If you say you want to be anonymous, they still honor that, don't they?

Kevin 16:38

Yeah, but a lot of people nowadays don't go through the I like drawing anonymous. They just hang up. Okay. So it's like okay, since they've never expressed its desire, let's get the investigators to interview whoever this was and uh find out what the deal is, what they were concept. Hopefully, the fact they want to remain anonymous will play into it later after they've got the information they need, i.e., find it out what was going on, how it started, timelines, etc.

palmi 17:22

Okay.

How 911 Evolved Into NG911

palmi 17:23

Getting back to uh the first 911 call, it was in Haleyville, Alabama. It was a historical moment and um it spread very quickly after that. Um the second system launched days later in Gnome, Alaska, which makes a lot of sense because I imagine trans communication in Gnome, Alaska is hard. Yeah, especially when you consider that uh probably lack of people, lack of communications as a city while you know it's not extremely big, but that would have a lot of people that call gnome. He got hold of police because people that are near gnome would not know to call a sheriff or a state police organization. Right. So in it the nation nationwide expansion was between 1970 and 1999. Um, it was a slow adaptation from city to city. It rolled out uh in the enhanced 911, uh, which means autom an automatic number and location identification. Um that was during that time. Uh Canada joined in 19 joined 911 and became the the Nash North American standard. So both nine 911 is shared by America and Canada.

Kevin 18:56

I didn't know that.

palmi 18:57

I didn't either. Um, I do remember when we got a 911 uh in my area, again, that very same rural area I grew up in. And uh it was kind of funny because like beforehand, okay, this is another pre-911 story. You'd actually get people directions to your house because we didn't have being you know, living out the rural areas, you don't really have an address, so to speak, or roads are not marked very well. So you would say something like uh go down this road, which would have a name posted, and then take the third dirt road on your right and follow it all the way to the end. That's how you would give directors my house. Then you describe the house, and oh, it's a white house, it's got green trim, and no other houses on that street. Just they didn't sorry, yeah. The different color schemes going on. Um, during the digital era, the next generation of 911 was the NG911 and it transitioned to IP-based systems, text to 911, critical for uh accessibility and safety. Uh photos, videos, and real-time data uh was included. How modern dispatch centers uh operate like what you were at in Florida, you did the 911 in Florida, right?

Kevin 20:56

Yeah, but I wouldn't call it a modern dispatch center beat.

palmi 21:00

Well, modern to what it was prior to that, I assume is what they're saying. Location act uh accuracy improvement, the GPS was uh added, uh Wi-Fi and uh device-based routing. Well, again, you're looking at uh a the location you were at was in a very small county, country county, small town, large county. Um how 911 changed the America. Uh it gave universal access, one number for all emergencies, it incre it increased faster response times, standardized dispatching. Um it calling 911 became part of the American life. So challenges and the future.

Kevin 21:50

Okay, one of the things I recall. I want to give an example here. They started working on the This idea in the 60s. Okay, I joined the army and had basically a year off. Back then it was uh just after the Vietnam War, they just annoyed the trap draft, and they gavesees a lot of different things that weren't available till then. One of them was you could list, take year off, and then report in a year later, up to a year later. Um, and that option I chose. Uh, but it wasn't until right before I get left for DRB in 1979 that uh we got 911 because we had to change our address. It was through a longer one box H.

palmi 23:06

It was, you know, whatever's an address number, like two three four five county road or something like that. Yeah. Something like that. And with an actual zip code, because I think the zip codes came in at the same time as 911. I think that coordinate core came together. Oh no. Where I n That might have been a place-by-place roll-off thing where everybody didn't do it at once. But uh we hit a zip code because I had a hard time memorizing that as a kid. I don't remember now that you said that, but I remember we had to change ours too.

Kevin 23:49

I still remember it. I had to work rather hard at it. 32771. That's your if you live in 3271's up code, hey, there's your name. You were neighbors. That's where I grew up. Anyway, I say, where are we at?

Funding Cybersecurity And Future Fixes

palmi 24:11

Okay, funding was a big thing because of course whatever you have something new, somebody's gotta pay for it. And usually uh government, whether it be local, state, or federal, or federal, it doesn't matter.

Kevin 24:31

They give you the money, but it's not evenly spread out.

palmi 24:34

Somebody comes up with an idea like this, and they say, Okay, great, we'll pass it. It's a good idea.

Kevin 24:42

Now we gotta pay for it.

palmi 24:44

But who's gonna pay for it? And we're kind of doing that now with VA programs, uh a lot of other stuff. Oh well, I can speak specifically for VE programs. Uh to refund, re do a refinance on a VA loan. Yeah, that that wasn't possible when I retired. Now you can. So that is a program I consider to be new, maybe several years old. But uh we haven't looked into it until just recently, so yeah, that's what I started paying attention is when I found out, oh wait, oh, I need to know this. Okay, but uh that is what I mean by funding, okay. What they did is came up with a very bad plan to finance it and institute this new program. Well, it passed the House and made it the Senate, and by that time all the returns rolled in and said, It's a very bad plan for funding this. Please vote no. So they did, in fact, vote no. They went back to the house when something is rejected in say the House versus the Senate, it goes back to where the bill originated, and they can like adapt it or modify it.

Kevin 26:30

So it are you talking about VA?

palmi 26:32

Talking about the VA refinancing.

Kevin 26:35

We need to get back to the 911.

palmi 26:37

Uh we're going thither, but like I said, funding in the United States is very problematic when you don't have money to fund it. It's like okay, this only went through it so quickly because it had a funding source predetermined. It was a bad funding source, but it had a program where the funding that would pay for it was already identified. When they took away the funding and said, no, we objected unless it's being funded, and they had to go back and rework it, they had to spend a couple weeks coming up with another bad plan. It wasn't as bad, but it's still bad. And I'm not sure where it stands now, but anyway, uh now we'll get back to 911.

Kevin 27:37

911 did not have funding, so it's not evenly funded, state uh supported, so it has uneven uh money support throughout the states.

palmi 27:48

Well, some states, like uh okay, I'm gonna use modern times here, like uh New York and Illinois, I believe, and California are all running deficits. So it's like they have no money unless like uh a federal agency like the FCC is going to fund this. This is not something they'd partake in right now. They'd want to be one of the later adoptees of this system.

Kevin 28:28

They also because of um modern times, there's cyber um security risk um with the 911. It they need additional protection for a digital um protecting the digital info um in infrastructure.

palmi 28:42

Well, sure. Whenever they added the uh digital aspects like Wi-Fi and text to 911, all that digital stuff then is no matter how tight you like it now, it's accessible to somebody who has unlimited money and unlimited time.

Kevin 29:09

Right. And then also the nationwide NG 911 completion still need uh is still need still incomplete and still needs to be completed. So closing this out, um how we all agree that the 911 was a good idea. Uh there is some uh things that need to be fixed on it, um, but in all in all, that was the right way to go. And the text to 911 is now available, which is the right way to go.

palmi 29:44

And there's also a human element that doesn't always work correctly, right? Uh the example they give here is how dispatchers handle the impossible.

Kevin 29:57

Sometimes they don't do that very well, sometimes they do it amazing, and there's amazing um dispatchers out there, so don't you know well they this is a they handle emergencies on a day-to-day basis, so and everybody has a bad day. So I don't think you can criticize someone like that, but there you can always have more training for for sure.

palmi 30:20

Back before every cop was wearing a body cam, there used to be uh popularity of YouTube videos that would show or highlight, if you will, uh bad 9-1 dispatch calls. Right.

Speaker 2 30:40

You know, like uh everybody's a critic, though.

palmi 30:43

Yeah, everybody's a critic, and you're not in that moment. So when you are a 911 operator, of course you get prank phone calls, so you get you know a 911 dispatcher who's not taking a 911 call seriously because he or she assumed it was prank calls or wrong number or wrong number one. Yeah. In America, we also have the information number, the TDD number, and they're all something one-one. So, like for example, information is 411, which is like if you want to know somebody's phone number that kind of we used to have what was.

Kevin 31:32

And there's kids that do just prank call and just do prank calls, yeah.

palmi 31:36

Yeah, and yeah, they don't realize uh their address prints out on 911. Right. But hey, that's all part of growing up. They learned a lesson from cabishes up later on. Yeah.

Kevin 31:52

All right.

Schedule Changes And Batman Wheelchair Contest

Kevin 31:53

So do we have any housekeeping this podcast?

palmi 31:56

We kinda do.

Kevin 31:58

I think we should announce that uh we might have like a weird schedule at this point, right?

palmi 32:05

Well, we might we've had some family illness, family deaths, and we apologized in advance. Our podcast schedule gets interrupted, but that's not always the highest priority we got to deal with.

Kevin 32:26

We're relocating, and so uh we'll do our very best to keep in the same podcast schedule, but it may vary a little bit.

palmi 32:36

That one I think we can handle simply because we can plan for it. Whereas other stuff tends to just jump up, say hello when you least expect it. But anyway, I wanted to mention we we had an idea for a contest that we're talking about on our Facebook page. And if you don't know what that address is, it's just Facebook.com is a public group called When Life Gets You Lemons. Uh the idea was to take a con like a concept car here, uh, something at the stage for artists and digital creators to design a wheelchair that is Batman themed. Something everybody can kind of relate to. Um I realize all disabilities are not utilizing wheelchairs, but usually if there's a universal uh layman compatible symbol for a disability, it involves a wheelchair. So I want you to take the most common disabled thing that we could, you know, digitally or artistically manipulate and make it into a Batman themed thing, which is now for clarity. I'm gonna say this. I think the uh Facebook group already understands this. We're not talking reality. If you only have a machine gun button on your, you know, some control panel or whatever, or spraying gas or oil like uh James Bond cars used to, that's fine. But uh you need to make it so that the user maybe make a an operating manual as a second badge of details what the buttons do if they're like recessed into something or not really apparent, or it just looks cheesy in your opinion to put it on the diagram of the wheelchair. If you have buttons or hidden features on there or features that don't stand out well, make sure you put a description of those in addition to your artwork, if you will. Okay, so the the challenge right now the challenges for art for digital creation, either a digital picture, or if you don't have uh digital creation in your resume, or it's not something you feel comfortable with, if you draw it, if you draw it, that's great.

Speaker 2 36:11

And submit it. Yeah, is there a timeline?

palmi 36:15

Uh well, first off, let's talk about uh how you submit things. Okay, the digital stuff could obviously go via email. Uh go to our website, you get and both Palmy and I have email addresses listed there. W dot when life gives you lens all when word.net. What I'm thinking is if you have to draw it, get somebody, one of your friends or one of your family members or yourself, like I said, that's all the events. Take a uh text, a photo of it on your camera, and you can send that to us via email. This way nobody has to pay postage, is what I'm thinking. We don't have like uh we just sent a letter to Kenya, it's been three weeks, and we still haven't. The guy we sent it to has still not received it, so it's like okay, we don't want to get messed up in postal delays and stuff for you people. They're gonna send us a letter from Rocco. Uh go ahead and send us a picture of it, and it will sort out the uh the mailing process later on a case-by-case basis. Um, it shouldn't be expensive to mail, just mail a piece of paper. Uh, so we're not worried about you shipping it to us per se. Just normal postage. And uh obviously that's a lot cheaper. If you're in the US, it's whatever a stamp costs nowadays.

Kevin 38:23

And uh but at this point, you just wanted to email it to you.

palmi 38:26

Yeah, at this point, just email it to us, and you should get an email back from myself or from Paulmy. And if we have, you know, like a I need to see purpose or questions. Questions we can get back in contact with you with the email you send us.

Kevin 38:49

And so who will be the winner?

palmi 38:51

Uh what we're gonna do is uh between Palmy and I, we're gonna wheel it down to like uh, and this kind of depends on how many people enter this contest. Uh we're gonna wheel it down to say five or ten or three. Yeah, if we only have three people enter, we're gonna submit all three. If we have five people enter, we're gonna submit all five. If we have five hundred people at her, we're gonna wheel it down to ten. And then I'll post those pictures on Facebook, and the Facebook users can vote on it. We'll post it as a poll, you know, so you can see the progress is pictures ahead of somebody else's picture, all that stuff if you want to. It will have like a I don't know, say a two or three-week period to vote on it so you don't have to rush over there and get on the page. Well, that's unfair to you, Fonny.

Kevin 40:06

Yep. What's the price?

palmi 40:10

Oh, I've rarely come up with the prize.

Kevin 40:13

Okay. Next podcast will come up with a prize.

palmi 40:16

We'll we'll give it a thing. Next podcast will try to come up with the start thinking up your design. Uh you close. Recommend a prize too. We're not offended in any way by that.

Kevin 40:30

But we are limited on money.

palmi 40:32

Just yeah, just bear in mind the prizes will be cheap.

Kevin 40:38

All right.

Final Takeaways And Goodbye

Kevin 40:39

So when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Bye now.

palmi 40:44

See you next time.