*677 Urban Legend?



This is probably the 5th time I’ve received the email below and I’ve always question its validity. I’m not saying that this incident has never happened, but is *677 a legitimate mobile number?

Being both a husband and father I worry about the two most important women in my life. Not that my daughter is old enough to drive since she’s only 2, yet she does wreck havoc on her Dora trike. At any rate I decided to call this number and see what kind of response I got. Note that I’m on Cingular in Dallas and your results may vary.

When calling the number there was a delay with no dialtone. After a few seconds I got the infamous jingle and the message “Your call cannot be completed as dialed”. Go figure and I hope nobody ends up in the situation where they have to rely on this tactic.
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MUST KNOW *677

I knew about the red light on cars, but not the *677. It was about 100 p.m. in the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. *Lauren’s parents have always told them never to pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather to wait until they get to a gas station, etc *

Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called 677 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she and there weren’t, and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back up already on the way.

Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her.
One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground. The man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes.

I never knew about the *677 Cell Phone Feature, but especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car. Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going to a safe place. You obviously need to make some signals that you acknowledge them (i.e. put on your hazard lights) or call *677 like Lauren did

Too bad the cell phone companies don’t generally give you this little bit of wonderful information.

*Speaking to a service representative at **Bell** Mobility confirmed that *677 was a direct link to State Police Dispatch.

So, now it’s your turn to let your friends know about *677.

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2 Responses to “*677 Urban Legend?”

1. Austin Mills says:

   February 9, 2006 at 3:33 pm

   There’s a Snopes page on this — http://www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/fakecop.asp .
   Basically, the story’s gone through several versions, none of them substantiated, and while various codes work to get you police numbers in various areas — *677 being *OPP, useful if you’re a Bell Mobility (aka Bell Canada’s mobile division) customer wanting to get in touch with the Ontario Provincial Police but not so much otherwise — calling 911 is probably your best bet.
2. Constance says:

   May 30, 2006 at 10:17 am

   *677 (*OPP) works anywhere in Ontario, Canada and is used instead of the 1-888-310-1122 and gets you in contact directly with the Communications Centre. It is used instead of the 911 for non emergancy situations, ie. report Impaired Drivers, disabled vehichle on side of road, suspicious activities, etc.