Over the years, there have been many instances of Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) being down for maintenance or crashing leaving millions of users stranded. Although individuals can get their social media fix from Twitter, Instagram or Google+, users insist that Facebook is their primary choice. This means that even when it’s down, they’ll resort to any tactic to ensure it goes back up, even calling the police.
That’s right. It was reported Friday that Los Angeles County residents telephoned the police when the social network was down for a few hours. Facebook apparently announced that it was suffering from an outage, but users couldn’t be able to live without it or think of any other way to cope.
However, the local police departments weren’t pleased with the influx of calls. They were so dissatisfied with the number of calls it received over Facebook that one detective went to Twitter to vent his frustration.
“#Facebook is not a Law Enforcement issue,” tweeted @LASDBrink, aka Sgt. Burton Brink, on Friday morning, “please don’t call us about it being down, we don’t know when FB will be back up!” He later tweeted: “We get calls all the time like this – cable TV, all sorts of things not working, they think we control.”
#Facebook is not a Law Enforcement issue, please don't call us about it being down, we don't know when FB will be back up!
— Sgt. Brink (@LASDBrink) August 1, 2014
The Sheriff’s Department’s website lists Sgt. Burton Brink as its community relations sergeant, and @LASDBrink is a verified account.
The sergeant’s tweets went viral, and a large number of people commented on the matter. Many individuals posited that the future seems bleak, that the tweet was a prank and suggesting these people should contact the NSA. There were also pleas to release the 911 recordings to the general public.
It should be noted, though, that the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed that it did not receive any 911 calls regarding the Facebook outage. The LAPD does cover certain jurisdictions within the Sheriff’s Department’s realm.
Soon after the outage was noticed, a Facebook spokesperson issued a statement:
“Earlier this morning, some people had trouble accessing Facebook for a short time. We quickly investigated and are currently restoring service for everyone. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
Facebook experienced a similar issue after it went down in the middle of the night last month due to a software glitch.
The LAPD estimates that more than two-thirds of its calls are non-emergency. For instance, one man had called 911 to complain that he did not receive cheese on his hamburger – an abundance of these types of 911 calls can be found on YouTube.
Nevertheless, as CNET wrote: “The inability to one-up one’s friends with a pulsating status update may have caused more than one incidence of psychological trauma and even incendiary intentions.”
