‘Colony of Hell’: 911 Calls From Inside Amazon Warehouses

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Dozens and dozens of times over five years, calls were made from Amazon warehouses to 911 dispatchers about men and women on the brink.

There was the suicidal employee in Hebron, Kentucky, who police said “is pregnant and threatening the baby” in December 2016. The 22-year-old woman in Joliet, Illinois, who said she wanted to “stab herself in the stomach” that same month. And the young man who threatened to “jump from [the] second floor” of the warehouse in Chester, Virginia, in January 2015. 

Between October 2013 and October 2018, emergency workers were summoned to Amazon warehouses at least 189 times for suicide attempts, suicidal thoughts, and other mental-health episodes, according to 911 call logs, ambulance and police reports reviewed and analyzed by The Daily Beast. 

The reports came from 46 warehouses in 17 states—roughly a quarter of the sorting and fulfillment centers that comprise the company’s U.S. network. Jurisdictions for other Amazon warehouses either did not have any suicide reports or declined requests for similar logs.
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