An Oregon man named Raibin Raof Osman was arrested and charged with a misdmeanor for calling 911 to get the police to resolve a dispute over a botched fast food order. Osman ordered food, took it home, and then concluded when he was home that the order was wrong (including missing some orange juice, apparently). So he went back to the McDonald's with his receipt, but the manager said that the order was given correctly. Osman refused to leave without his orange juice, and the manager threatened to call the police. Osman said to go ahead. When the police didn't arrive, Osman called 911 and asked for police assistance. Osman apparently did not misrepresent his identity or describe his situation inaccurately: He just thought it was ok to use 911 to get the police to come and get them to resolve the problem. You can listen to the 911 call here.

  The 911 operator dispatched the police, and when the police arrived, they explained that it was wrong to call 911 over a dispute like that. Osman didn't see the problem. The police then arrested Osman for improper use of 911, a misdmeanor. The statute, O.R.S. § 165.570(1)(a), states:

A person commits the crime of improper use of an emergency reporting system if the person knowingly . . calls a 9-1-1 emergency reporting system . . . for a purpose other than to report a situation that the person reasonably believes requires prompt service in order to preserve human life or property.

What do you think -- should the charges stick?

  If you're curious, there has been only one Oregon case interpreting the statute. In In re Strickland, 339 Or. 595, 124 P.3d 1225 (Or. 2005), bar disciplinary proceedings were brought against an attorney who had made a bogus 911 call as part of a broader fraud scheme. The lawyer had been charged and convicted of violating § 165.570(1)(a), and the Supreme Court of Oregon was considering the consequences of his conviction for whether he had committed professional misconduct. The court commented:

A criminal defendant acts “knowingly” when he “acts with an awareness that [his conduct] is of a nature so described or that a circumstance so described exists.” ORS 161.085(8). In other words, the accused's conviction demonstrates, at a minimum, that the accused understood that he was using the 9-1-1 system to report activities that he did not reasonably believe required prompt emergency service “in order to preserve life or property.” ORS 165.570(1).

Given the facts as stated above, has Osman violated the statute?