911-Please Hold!!

Southeast Portland is no Beverly Hills and the other day I had a choice experience that proves the validity of my statement. So I work in a less desirable part of Portland and as my friend and I were carpooling home in her car, we stopped at a red light just blocks away from my work site. Low and behold across the street were 3 guys, most likely in some gang, weaving in and out of traffic on FOOT. Yes, on foot. The perpendicular lanes were also at a red light and two of the guys were chasing the other man trying to bust him up with a baseball bat. The poor people in the cars, surrounding these ridiculous heathens, were so afraid that either themselves or their cars were going to personally meet this "metal Louisville slugger" and bust their face or their window. It was scary, and as a passenger not more than a crosswalk away, I couldn't believe my eyes. As we kept "rubber necking" our way to the best view, a man in a big truck finally got out and faced these punks. As we neared the scene I noticed the truck guy had a pistol that seemed the size of a cap gun from the dollar store, and he was pointing it at these hoodlums. It finally struck me that I needed to call 911. I'm a virgin 911 caller..never done it. So I called and I was put on HOLD. That threw me for a loop. Then a nice recording came on and said, "Say emergency, if it's really an emergency." So I yelled, "EMERGENCY!" I then was back on hold. It was only when, moments later, we flagged down a police officer driving next to us, that an operator came on the phone. Since we had just told the LIVE officer where the beatings and pistol fighting were happening, I told the operator to forget it...IS THAT CRAZY. Never knew I'd be put on hold, asked by a computer if it really is an emergency, and then put on hold again, and then finally get a real person on the other line. I could be dead by then. Awesome. I didn't hear anything on the news about the bat fighting and if anyone got hurt...but I did feel pretty cool to be an eyewitness in a random bat battle and a little weirded out by the slothfulness of the 911 operator.