John Rodger Fellows has been put under arrest for what officers say is wasting their time. The Cape Corporal man has called 911 every day for the past one month. All the calls made were non-emergency. Further, police officers have reported that Mr. Fellows has called the police ten times since March 1.
Corporal Phil Mullen who works with the Cape Corporal Police Department said the calls should have been directed differently to law enforcement. “‘My neighbor is mowing the grass for too long’ – I’ve actually had that; that’s not an emergency. If you’re saying, ‘My neighbor is annoying, and they’re not actually here right now, I’m not in any danger,’ OK, so could you please call the non-emergency number?”
Mr. Mullen further said that the police had warned him on past occasions on the use of the law enforcement’s number. Fellows has acted against those warnings many times in the past. “This particular arrest, he was warned, the officers left, and they barely made it out of the area, and he was calling again,” he said.
Police officers are required by law to give warnings before arresting individuals on dialing 911 for non-emergency reasons. “Misuse of 911 has to come with a lot of warnings. Usually, we give one, two, maybe even three warnings for them to stop and then it can result in an arrest,” Mullen explained.
Apart from complaining about his neighbor’s lawn mowing, Fellows’ previous complaints have included his wife planning his murder and the connection to his phone’s line being cut. Further, Fellows had also asked for an ambulance when he was not injured.
Fellows’ neighbors have also expressed dislike in seeing law enforcement around their neighborhood every other day.
Even on false alarms, officers are sent to the caller’s area so as to find out more about the report.
“I’d be extremely upset, you know, if we God forbid had an emergency, and they were tied up with you know useless calls,” Greg Shayer said. Mr. Shayer is Fellows’ neighbor. “Horrible waste of resources. Aggravating for the neighborhood,” he went on to say.
Cape Corporal’s Police Department has confirmed that the report of a false alarm does not stop them from answering calls to other potential emergencies. However, it does prevent police officers from undertaking other activities. If the case is a false alarm, the officers could instead be doing something more useful elsewhere. False alarms mean that other areas are put lower on the police’s priority list when they deserve to be attended to first. “If 911 is not needed in that case, officers could be going to other 911 calls, taking burglary calls, doing traffic enforcement,” Corporal Mullen said.
Mr. Fellows’ behavior has raised questions from some of the public who claim that his behavior is as a result of having mental health issues. Some of these members have argued that the fact that Mr. Fellows’ claims are as far-fetched as they are, combined with the frequency of his calls show that he is in distress.
Currently, Fellows is still behind bars.
