We’ve taken a look at some of the silliest, most misguided instances of people calling 911 for the wrong reasons. And there’s nothing wrong with taking a few minutes every now and then to sit back and enjoy a funny story..

But the truth is, there’s a downside to those abuses of the 911 system that isn’t nearly as visible. The fact of the matter is, when you look at the time and money that these nuisance calls can waste, it’s not that funny at all.

A recent extensive study of 911 abuse by the U.S. Dept. Of Justice came upon some disturbing information, made perhaps more surprising because there typically hasn’t been a great deal of data collection on 911 abuse.

But what they discovered was truly an eye-opener. The study, written by Rana Simpson, differentiated between “misuse” and “abuse” of 911, categorizing accidental dialing or multiple reports of the same accident differently than those calls that were intentional.

Looking at data from different cities around the country, they found a startlingly high rate of 911 abuse in many places. For example, in Jefferson County, KY, they discovered that a whopping 40% of the calls that came into 911 for a calendar year were intentional abuse calls - either prank calls, people reporting non-emergencies, or asking non-911 related questions like football game-times.

40% is a staggering number, and though that statistic certainly doesn’t apply to every city or county, it’s a sign that a lot of time and money are being wasted by 911 abuse.

In terms of money, it’s hard to tally a total, but we may have some clues. In 2014, a Memphis TV station did a news report about 911 abuse and estimated that each unnecessary dispatch of a police officer cost the city around $90.

That might not seem like much until you consider that the city of Memphis estimated they answered around 230,000 abusive 911 calls each year. If police were dispatched to just half of those calls, the cost is around $10 million.

And you can rest assured that a great deal of that expense is often passed on to the taxpayers - the people who need help from 911 in the first place.

And that’s to say nothing of incidents where the Memphis fire department was dispatched. That cost the city around $250 for each time the fire department was called in, so you can imagine how much of a financial burden that kind of 911 abuse was on the city and the taxpayer.

Then you have to consider the amount of  time that is wasted responding to pranks, mistakes or non-emergency calls. It’s more difficult to quantify exactly how much time is lost, because there’s no default amount of time that dispatching the proper public safety workers and resolving the situation is going to take.

But in the same television report we mentioned earlier, the station spoke to the Memphis Fire Dept. Director Alvin Benson, and he succinctly summed up the issue in a way that should give anyone who hears it pause for thought.

"If you call us for a stubbed toe,” Benson said, “your grandmother perhaps won't have us available for a heart attack."

If that doesn’t bring home the potential disaster that 911 abuse can cause, nothing will. But the fact of the matter is, Benson is correct. Any time someone calls 911 without considering whether their situation merits it, or to play a prank, or to ask a non-911 related question about the weather or the time, or simply because, as has happened in some cases, they were lonely and needed to talk to someone, lives are put at risk.

911 is an emergency service and should be treated as such, or people will suffer in one form or another.

To learn how KOVA is helping emergency workers and public safety officials do their work as efficiently as possible, read “How Public Safety Technology Can Be a Cost-Effective Way to Improve Your Department’s Efficiency.”