Surviving the (Romantic) Suspense

As a romantic suspense author, I spend a lot of time writing about ladies in peril. And by that token, I have to get them back out of it. So I'm going to use one day a week to talk about self defense and protecting yourself in various ways. Hopefully it will be useful; possibly it will even be amusing!

This week I'm going to highlight something pretty basic (read: boring) but very useful. Did you know that if you need the police but you're not in the middle of an emergency, there's other numbers you can call? This is important because it clears up traffic and backlog times for people who actually are experiencing emergencies.

311 is a non-emergency city services number that a lot of cities in the US and Canada have available. In addition, every city and town has their own particular non-emergency line that you can find using their website.

The rest of these you have to find for your individual city or town:
Anonymous Tip Line
Anonymous Text Tip Line
Child Abuse Hotline
Hate Crimes Hotline
Corruption Hotline
Crime Solvers Hotline

My favorite is the Crime Solvers Hotline. Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? Like you'll call up and turn into Encyclopedia Brown or something.

Make no mistake, this is serious business.