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Friday, Jul. 16, 2021

Does calling 112 provide a direct link to ‘state trooper info’ in all 50 states?

Kaiyah Clarke, Lead Stories
no

The official local and nationwide emergency number in the United States is 911, while 112 is a global emergency number primarily used in European countries.

The claim in a social media post that calling 112 brings help in the U.S. and is a way to verify if an unmarked police car is legitimate is false on both counts. The 9-1-1 Association (the National Emergency Number Association, or NENA) debunked the claim as long ago as 2013, with that organization calling it "bad advice."

The post lays out a dramatic purported scenario of a woman being followed by what could be an unmarked police car, she calls 112, help arrives and it turns out the car following her was being driven by a criminal. But the scenario lacks any details of date, location or police involved.

The post simply urges readers to share its bogus information.

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

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