Hands off the Phone
Video Transcribed: This is Stuart Ericson, an Oklahoma lawyer. Today we’re going to talk about a misdemeanor.
The charge is interfering with an emergency call. So that is a crime in Oklahoma. It’s found in Title 21 of the Oklahoma statute, section 1211.1. This crime contemplates an emergency situation, say it’s domestic violence, spouses, and one spouse tries to call 911, it’s an emergency situation. The call is started or attempted to be called, the phone is grabbed, and the person perpetrating the violence knocks the phone out of the hand, breaks the phone, hangs up the call if it’s a landline, if those even still exist, pulling cords from the wall. Anything to interfere with an intended 911 call or an in-progress 911 call is a misdemeanor. It carries up to one year in the county jail a fine of up to $3,000 or both. Again, it is a crime to interfere with an emergency call under those circumstances where 911 is being called.
Again, everything will be fact specific and that’s where reaching out to a criminal defense attorney is going to help you. I would get all of the police reports, which would include all of the written statements. At this point, there may be a partial 911 call log. Maybe the voice started, so I’d get all the audio recordings, get all the witness statements that they wrote and all the police reports, and with every person charged with a crime that I represent, we would go over it all. I would listen to the entire story from my client and we would discuss all of the police reports, and all the evidence that the state of Oklahoma says that they have because again, it’s not always true. Alleged victims aren’t always truth-tellers. Sometimes they have an ax to grind, they want some to get somebody in trouble so you just don’t know.
We’ll always have two competing interests. It’ll always be the police reports and what law enforcement says and the alleged victim says, but then the person accused or charged needs to talk to their attorney and give all the facts so the legal process can be maneuvered because again, we don’t want charges to be filed or we want them to be dismissed if they are charged or to fight it all the way if need be to a jury trial or if there is some level of guilt and culpability, then maybe a plea bargain. But again, that’s always something we will discuss, criminal defense attorney to the client to come out with the best outcome that’s possible.
Interfering with an emergency phone call is a crime that is charged in counties in Oklahoma, and it is a misdemeanor, so if you have any questions about this, reach out to me, Wagoner criminal defense attorney Stuart Ericson at wagonerlawyer.com.
