[throwaway09223]

For everyone blaming modern tech: The only time police have ever come to my house from a 911 call was back in the 90s. Some combination of a noisy phone line and a broken 900MHz cordless phone managed to call 911 and they followed up. They said not to worry, it happens all the time and was a notable portion of their calls.

These types of false calls have been happening for a long, long time. We should get more data and fix the system for sure -- but this isn't a new dynamic and the historic baseline before smartphones isn't zero.

[Stratoscope]

Back in 1996, I was living in Almaden Valley (South San Jose) and we had underground utilities. We also lived on top of an underground stream.

After a rainstorm, water got in and intermittently shorted out the phone line. It was clicking like crazy!

I was on my cool new Motorola StarTAC talking with Pacific Bell to report the problem. Then I heard a loud knock on the door: "San Jose Police. Open up!"

I asked the officers what the problem was and they said "We got a 911 call with no one on the line. We tried to call you back, but no one answered. So we had to come out and investigate."

I invited them in and said, "I think I know what happened." They followed me over to the landline speakerphone in the kitchen and listened to the clicking.

Then I explained, "You remember the old rotary dial phones? They worked by making and breaking the circuit, just like this clicking. Even if we all have touch-tone phones these days, the phone lines are still compatible with the rotary dial. So somewhere in the midst of all this clicking, there were nine fast clicks in a row, and then one click, and one more. And that dialed 911. Sorry about that!"