About six months ago, I was dealing with a similar incident with a kid in Chicago.

I spent two hours trying to get Chicago PD to take an out of town emergency report; They normally only take local "911" emergency calls. A city dispatch center operator couldn't figure out anyone who would accept the report there. They finally told me to give it to my local PD who would send Chicago PD a notification electronically. I think Danny at the Foundation office also got it in that way ahead of me.

"Call the police directly" is fine, if that works, if that's possible. Apparently it is not always possible.

Asking here or elsewhere on foundation or project lists or wiki or IRC for help in such a real life possible emergency is entirely appropriate, and we should not discourage anyone from doing so.

The rate of events like this is low, and even if it weren't, it's important.

****** I was the sysop who blocked that Chicago editor. If I had become aware of the problem sooner I would have handled the police call also, and FWIW will gladly do so upon request in the future if I'm online.

The first incident I handled was from an IP address last December. It was a rather quick process to determine the location and run a Google search for the appropriate jurisdiction. I ended up speaking to an officer from the Pennsylvania state police. He was a bit confused at first, but once he understood who I was and what I was reporting everything proceeded smoothly.

We've gotten three different threats in the last ten months, which really isn't all that frequent for a website that gets 40 million unique visitors a month. When I first dealt with this I adapted some volunteer training and experience to the situation. While I'm by no means an expert on suicide intervention, a few basic principles apply:

1. All suicide threats deserve to be treated as serious until proven otherwise.

2. People who threaten suicide but don't actually attempt it on that particular occasion may be at risk for future suicide attempts. Appropriate intervention may lead them to counseling and other social services.

-Durova