Just to expand on this post about calling 911 and asking for a pizza to secretly ask for help:
The post is based on a Super Bowl commercial, which itself was based on a Reddit post thatās never been verified as true.Ā
There is no actual pizza code with toppings and shit that dispatchers are trained in. If you come across someone who has heard of the commercial, they might understand. If you come across someone whoās never heard of it, they might think itās a prank call and hang up on you.
A piece of actual advice to help you in this situation is to dial 911, then hang up without speaking, then turn the phone off. 911 will attempt to call you back, and when theyāre unable to reach you, theyāll dispatch a unit to your location under the assumption that you need help and your call was interrupted. This will work 100% of the time, whereas the pizza trick will only work if the dispatcher has heard of the commercial/urban legend.
Also, the toppings thing was a complete and total fabrication and whoever wrote that should be ashamed of themselves, tbh.
as a dispatcher, i need to correct you here, because calling 911, hanging up, and then turning off your phone will, in fact, work 0% of the time.
in my center, when we receive a 911 call from a cell phone, we do not automatically know your exact location. it doesnāt work like that, contrary to popular belief. the only thing we know for sure is the address of the cell phone tower your phone is connected to. cell phone towers cover huge areas, you could be anywhere in that huge area. if you absolutely canāt talk at all, if you canāt even hold the phone to your face, enable the speakerphone and start crying, or yelling, or even whispering, if you can.
also, as i said in my last reblog, most 911 centers in the US these days have text-to-911 capability. canāt call 911? text 911! itās as simple as that. just be sure to include your address/location in the first text you send, because if you canāt send any more texts after the first one, at least weāll know where to send help.
OP is correct, however, about the pizza thing. there is noĀ āsecret pizza codeā or anything like that among dispatchers. i wasnāt trained on anything like that, none of my coworkers were trained on anything like that. it doesnāt exist. if you call 911 and say you need to order a pizza, our very next question will be,Ā āyou called 911. did you mean to call 911?ā and if your answer is yes, the next question will be,Ā ādo you need help?ā orĀ āare you in trouble?ā pretending to order a pizza is a good way to give us your address, because when you call 911, an address is the most important thing to give us. we canāt help you if we donāt know where you are.
iāll just say that again.
we cannot help you if we donāt know where you are.
we are trained professionals, but weāre not psychic.
