Here ya go John:

[San Francisco Paramedic here. We get many many many calls every day for unconscious homeless people. Some of them are actually sick, most of them are drunk or just sleeping. Many of the homeless people that citizens call 911 for are just their normal level of drunk/high and do not need to be transported to an emergency room. A lot of these people cannot go a day without being extremely drunk or high, and if they quit drinking, they will literally die from withdrawals, so its pretty normal for them to be sleeping in the middle of the day on the sidewalks. People calling 911 from their cars driving by a homeless person, or calling for homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk causes inefficiencies in the EMS and hospital system, puts the public at risk, costs taxpayers a TON of money ($1500 for the ambulance ride, thousands more for the ER visit). My advice is this; If you see a person laying on the sidewalk and are concerned about them, see if you can wake them up and ask if they need an ambulance. If you can't wake them up or if they tell you they need help, go ahead and call 911. If you are worried enough about someone to call 911 because you want to help them, you should at least be able to approach them and try to communicate with them first. Otherwise you get 2 firetrucks, a captain, and an ambulance racing across the city for a "possible cardiac arrest", and we arrive to find someone simply sleeping. We call the folks that call 911 without checking on the person they're worried about "cell phone heroes", and it drives us crazy.(https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/3u5oef/unconscious_homeless_people_when_to_call_911/cxc7ljo)