Is this common knowledge? I've lived all over the US and this is the first time I've ever heard of this.

Yes, every township/locality will have a switchboard. In larger cities it could be zone based. But "911" always has a second # that can directly connect you, ending in 911.

Usually for each NPA (the 3 digit # after the area code) anything ending in 911 redirects to that locality's 911.

This was used by griefers on the early net. You say "you wanna call me up huh go ahead my phone number is XXX-XXX-X911" and they get connected with the police.

Do you know of any place these numbers are commonly available? I can't find anything similar on my local municipalitiy's site, but that doesn't mean anything (the site is terrible). I'm curious though, as the published non-emergency numbers don't follow this pattern.

The police department web site

That's absolutely not true. I've checked websites for every PD I've ever lived in and not one mentions an emergency number other than 911.

I'm not going to out myself by listing my local PD, but I can see a 9 digit number that, when I've called in the past, routed me to dispatch.

If 911 is down, you should call a specific police station. They will be broken down into zones or districts in larger cities, and I can see phone numbers for zones in two cities I've lived in on their sites.

>Yes, every township/locality will have a switchboard. In larger cities it could be zone based.

That much is obvious. A single switchboard can also cover multiple towns in some circumstances.

>In larger cities it could be zone based. But "911" always has a second # that can directly connect you, ending in 911.

I'll take your word for it since I'm obviously not going to check... I just checked my local PD and I can't find any mention of this whatsoever on their website.

It doesn’t always end in 911, that can also fwd to a #.

You can always call the police dept. their # will be on their site

There are a number of numbers (there is a pun in there somewhere), but most people never use them or bother to look them up. At the same time, a good chunk of the phone network in general was down, so knowing the alternate numbers doesn't do you much good if you can't call at all.

Ah sorry to hear that.

Often in America a "911 outage" is really just an outage with the forwarding, but you could call a specific department.

The problem is in some places there is no city/county system.

Ex: in the suburbs of some cities you'll hit 3 townships in 3 miles, and knowing who to call is not easy even for long time residents.

There may be an alternate number, but it doesn’t include 911.

Any string of numbers that includes 911 dials 911.

Ending in 911, not just including.

I can confirm. Otherwise it would dial emergency services when calling Taiwanese mobiles, which are in the format +886 911 ... ....

Thanks for the correction