A 25-year-old North Lauderdale man was arrested in Pompano Beach on Tuesday night after deputies say he called 911 six times claiming he had seen a corpse in a state wildlife officer's truck and more dead bodies lying beside a nearby road. When BSO deputies checked the area, they found no state officers or bodies — and when they warned him to stop calling, he dialed three more times anyway.
Christopher Cunningham was arrested by Broward Sheriff's Office deputies in the 2400 block of North Powerline Road in Pompano Beach, according to TAPinto Pompano Beach. Dispatchers began fielding calls from Cunningham at about 9:25 p.m. Tuesday, with the outlet reporting he claimed to see a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission vehicle hauling a corpse, along with additional dead bodies lying beside the road.
Deputies responding to the area found no state officers and no bodies anywhere nearby. They tracked Cunningham down in the same stretch where the calls had originated, at 2400 North Powerline, per the same report.
Warned, Then Called Again
A BSO deputy told Cunningham directly that continuing to call 911 could lead to criminal charges for misusing emergency services. According to the report, Cunningham made three more calls anyway after receiving that warning. Deputies ultimately charged him with misdemeanor misuse of 911 services.
A System Already Strained By Bogus Calls
Cunningham's arrest lands amid wider documented strain on Broward County's emergency dispatch network. The Broward Sheriff's Office runs three regional 911 call centers that handle both emergency and non-emergency calls for every municipality in the county except Coral Springs and Plantation, according to Firehouse. That trade publication reported that abandoned 911 calls in the county rose 26% between 2019 and 2021, with nearly 30,500 calls going unanswered by an operator in a single month, December 2021. The outlet also noted the call center missed its 10-second answer goal on 13 of 28 days during one February reporting period, a shortfall the sheriff's office attributed to staffing shortages, retention problems and COVID-19 surges.
Nuisance and false calls are not unique to Broward County. The ASU Center for Problem-Oriented Policing divides 911 misuse into unintentional and intentional calls, and notes that estimates from various organizations and agencies suggest the problem is widespread nationally. The group cited National Emergency Number Association data showing phantom wireless calls alone can account for between 25% and 70% of all 911 calls in some communities, out of a system that fields roughly 500,000 calls a day — about 183 million a year — across the country.
Historical snapshots cited by the same policing research group illustrate how often emergency lines get tied up with calls that aren't emergencies at all: Pinellas County's Emergency Communications Center logged 20,646 misdial calls in 2000, about 4% of its total volume, while 40% of 911 calls in Jefferson County, Kentucky, that same year were determined to be non-emergencies. San Diego's sheriff's department reported in 2001 that more than half its 911 calls were frivolous.
Florida law requires that 911, E911 and next-generation 911 service be used solely for emergency communications, according to bill text from the Florida Senate. The excerpt does not spell out the full current penalty structure or how it applies to Cunningham's case specifically.
Misuse arrests tied to repeated 911 calls have also surfaced elsewhere this year. In Evansville, Indiana, a man was accused of calling 911 seven times over roughly two hours before his arrest, according to a July report from 14 News. In Laredo, Texas, a man was arrested earlier this month on a 911 misuse charge tied to repeated calls, KGNS reported. No further case details were available for either comparison.
