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Making Sure 311 Isn't Abused
By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 22, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 22, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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Your 311 calls are not as anonymous as they seem. The City Council is looking at some legislation that would prevent 311 abuse, as in making false complaints to have a city employee dispatched to the scene. An example of a scenario would be the resident who thinks a neighboring restaurant that isn't terribly noisy, but it is very annoying, so the resident calls 311 to make a false noise complaint. The lawmakers are thinking about requiring people to give their name and phone numbers, and it turns out that 311 calls even be traced if necessary (City Council member Margarita Lopez, who represents the East Village and Lower East Side, sponsored the bill, saying that many business in her district have been targetted). And some people have been arrested "for using 311 to make threats against a public official." Hmm, does simply asking Mayor Bloomberg to leave the city count as a threat? The Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications' Dean Schloyer says that taking away anonymity might discourage people from calling; he also said that 70% of calls are for "simple information on government services." Gothamist confesses that we LOVE 311. Broken street lights, non-working traffic signals, huge mess on the street, guy who seems to be OD'ing on heroin - we call 311 for it. If they took names and numbers of callers, would the DoITT start keeping lists of people who call the most, under the code word "Gladys Kravitz?" We're just interested in making sure the city is better...
Do you call 311? Gothamist on 311.
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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