HEBER SPRINGS, Ark. (AP) -- Police say they'll ask a prosecutor to file 355 misdemeanor charges and nine felony charges against a 13-year-old boy the officers accuse of making 364 calls harassing dispatchers and reporting fake emergencies.
``We told him plenty of times what would happen to him if he got caught,'' said Roberta Henry, a dispatcher with the Heber Springs Police Department.
The stiffest penalty the boy could draw would be fines and time in a juvenile detention center. Police declined to release the boy's name because of his age.
Heber Springs police intend to ask Michelle Harkey, deputy prosecutor for Cleburne County Juvenile Court, to file 354 charges of harassing communications, one misdemeanor charge of communicating a false alarm, and nine felony charges of communicating a false alarm.
After a first charge of communicating a false alarm, subsequent counts are considered felonies.
Sgt. Chad Meli, an investigator, said he will turn over the case file to Harkey on Monday. Police say the boy called the department 364 times from May 22 to June 14, mostly on a deactivated cell phone.
The youngster used profanity and played music in many of the calls, police said. The boy reported at least 10 fake emergencies, such as medical crises and fires, Meli said.
Meli said in late June that dispatchers eventually learned to recognize the caller's voice, and would only put emergency response crews on standby while an officer was sent to check out the purported emergency. Heber Springs, with a population of roughly 6,400, has 11 patrolmen.
Henry said the boy called the 911 emergency line 10 to 15 times during one of her work shifts. Sometimes she heard music and other children in the background. Once she thought she heard an adult in the background and then the phone went dead, she said.
Meli has said the boy's parents, as well as a grandfather who had charge of the youngster at times, were unaware of the phone calls.
Dispatchers told the boy that officers would eventually catch him and he would respond, ``You're not here yet,'' Henry said.
Police took the boy into custody June 14 after he called 911 to say his father was having a heart attack, which officers later discovered was false.
The phony phone calls were disruptive when the dispatchers were busy, Henry said, because 911 calls must be answered immediately. She said she was relieved when officers took the boy into custody, because dispatchers wouldn't have to deal with the nuisance calls anymore, she said.
Police confiscated the cell phone and released the boy to his family's custody.
Heber Springs authorities haven't determined how much restitution they would like the boy to pay to cover the police department's expenses in investigating the phony phone calls.
