And maybe the caller is actually in Brooklyn, on 3rd Ave, standing next to the 4th St Basin, and that's what they mean by "4th St" (because they are from out of

And maybe the caller is actually in Brooklyn, on 3rd Ave, standing next to the 4th St Basin, and that's what they mean by "4th St" (because they are from out of town, and saw that on a sign). Remember that not everyone who calls 911 in New York City is a local. In fact, given the tourism in the city, I suspect a large fraction of 911 calls are from non-locals (a local is gonna walk right past a drunk sleeping on a bench... a visitor might call it in as a "person down"). Verifying the location of an emergency is literally step 0 in dealing with it. Spending 10 seconds asking some "dumb" questions to rule out confusions that have come up in the past can save a significant amount of time overall.