292 911 calls land Florida man in jail
PENSACOLA, Fla. - A man charged with dialing 911 to chat with dispatchers nearly 300 times in the last month remained in jail Wednesday. Cheveon Alonzo Ford, 21, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with making obscene and harassing telephone calls.
He told authorities he began calling 911 because "I have no minutes on my phone and 911 is a free call," the Escambia County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.
Ford was being held on a $50,000 bond Wednesday afternoon.
Officers used GPS coordinates from Ford's cell phone to track his location to the west Pensacola home where he was arrested, the Pensacola News Journal Reported.
"His phone service had been cut off and 911 was the only number he could dial from the phone," said Bob Boschen, communication chief for Escambia County.
Boschen said many of Ford's 292 calls were sexual in nature.
"When he would call and a male dispatcher would answer, he would hang up," he said. "Our policy says that if a caller is belligerent in nature we have to get enough information to process the call and then we can disconnect," he said.
Ford never asked dispatchers for help or indicated he was in trouble.
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