911 dispatch tells NC man deputies are ‘tied up’ when he reports break-in

PINK HILL, NC (WCTI) — A Duplin County man is upset after he says he called 911 over the weekend to report a break-in, only to be told officers were tied up on another call.

NewsChannel 12 was able to obtain the 911 call, and in it, dispatch tells Jan Friis there is no one to respond to his call at that moment.

“What’s going on?” asks the 911 dispatcher. Friis responds ” My house is broken into.”

Friis says what dispatch told him is unacceptable.

“We’ll give it to an officer,” the dispatcher said, “but right now they’re all tied up with something else.”

“I didn’t know if the people were still around, I was here by myself with two kids trying to make it safe for them,” Friis explained.

Friis adds he got a call back from a deputy hours after he made the initial call.

“The deputy called me, he asked me to call back in the morning when the day shift was on,” he said. “I got angry about that, he had told me they had a car chase, and they didn’t have more than three cars, and that Highway Patrol hadn’t helped them, and they just didn’t have anybody to come and take my report until the next shift came in.”

Captain Scott Kennedy with the Duplin County Sheriff’s Office said that there had been a car chase which had tied up deputies.

Read more here.