I stalked/followed a black kid!

[TorchTheWitch]

59. no, not all of them do

Ours and others in my area do not have a direct line to police after business hours and a recording instructs you to in future call 911 and the call is then automatically forwarded to 911 dispatch. During regular business hours they have both an emergency regular number that goes directly into the police station and a non-emergency number that does the same. If the emergency regular number is busy or is not answered after three rings the call gets automatically forwarded to 911 dispatch.

When 911 was first established in our area everyone got a notice about it in the mail, and at that time there weren't plans to have any regular emergency number that went into the police station at all whether during business hours or not, but as it turned out there weren't enough 911 operators when it was first started, so they had to revert to having the regular emergency number that went into the police station but only during regular business hours and rig the phone system to forward to 911 if the regular emergency police station number was busy or wasn't answered after three rings. They never got rid of the regular emergency number and the temporary system they had to establish has stayed the same for many years now. I guess they figured with our well-staffed police service and boring township where not a whole lot of crime happens it was more feasible to keep it this way than hire and train more 911 operators.

Our township police are well-paid and well-staffed especially since nothing much happens around here. For police stations that are understaffed and/or busy with a lot of crime that goes on in their area it's most likely that they have no emergency regular number that goes directly into the police stations and calls go directly to 911 to free up their officers from having to deal with emergency phone calls. After all, this is why 911 dispatch was invented and wanted in the first place.