FRANKLIN COUNTY - A Franklin County man faces charges of 911 abuse after allegedly calling law enforcement repeatedly without cause.

Roger F. Moore, 46, of Orient was recently charged with abusing the 911 system after reportedly calling both 911 and the Franklin County Sheriff's Department numerous times without appropriate cause.

Franklin County Court records state that the charge of false alarm ambulance, a Class 4 felony, was filed against Moore on May 8. He is scheduled for a first appearance on that charge at 1:30 p.m. on June 3.

West Frankfort Fire Chief Wes Taylor said he was unable to comment on Moore's case in particular, because of privacy laws, but noted that the department does experience regular calls of a non-emergency nature through use of the 911 system.

"Obviously, that depletes our resources," Taylor said. "We have an ambulance tied up on a call and that cuts our manpower in half. Our turn-around time for a call is about an hour. When we had an emergency room here in town we could be more lenient. But now, once an ambulance leaves, we know we won't see it again for at least 30 to 45 minutes."

State laws mandate that 911 service providers respond to all 911 calls. Taylor said with only three men working on a regular shift, false alarms require unnecessary money to be spent on bringing in additional people to cover the station in the event that two calls occur at one time.

"It doesn't seem to be a major problem we have," said Ryan Buckingham, Public Safety Answering Point manager for Franklin County Central Dispatch and director of the Franklin County Emergency Management Agency. The 911 line "is supposed to be for emergency only. We get a lot of calls that aren't of an emergency nature. But, what is an emergency might be different to you and to me," he said.

Buckingham said common sense should be used when dialing 911, rather than a seven-digit number for a law enforcement agency.

"They need to, instead of automatically picking up the phone and calling 911, reserve that for just their emergency situations," he said. "We like to reserve 911 for when you need something of an urgent nature."

Buckingham said residents calling 911 for non-emergency police matters has become a growing issue in the county.

"Some people use 911 as a hotline for their local police department," he said. "They might have just a general complaint. We had one guy call 911 to say that his neighbor was blowing grass into his yard. We have limited 911 lines."

Franklin County court records show a number of previous charges against Moore, including a charge of phone harassment and threatening to kill, filed April 28.

Moore's record also shows two 2001 charges of aggravated assault of a fireman and an additional 2001 charge of aggravated assault of a correctional employee. The charge of aggravated assault against the fireman was dismissed by a state motion but Moore was found guilty of assault against the correctional employee and received 12 months conditional discharge and 24 months probation.

tara.fasol@thesouthern.com/351-5824