Accidental 911 calls, especially from cellphones, tax resources

Published 7:48 pm Monday, December 29, 2014

EVERETT — People dialing 911 by mistake, particularly using cellphones, are creating big headaches for Snohomish County emergency dispatchers.

“They clog up our emergency lines and take emergency operators away from being able to respond to real emergencies,” said Karl Christian, SNOPAC operations manager.

The problems are particularly acute when people hang up without acknowledging they’ve misdialed.

SNOPAC is a public safety dispatch center serving much of Snohomish County. They receive an average of 1,500 calls a day for medical, fire, and police assistance.

About 100 calls to SNOPAC each day are unintentional or hangups, officially classified as “abandoned calls.”

Dispatchers have to investigate whether there is an emergency linked to that call.

“An emergency operator will be tied up anywhere between 30 seconds and two minutes determining how to respond,” Christian said.

The level of difficulty depends in large part on what type of phone was used.

When available for the phone service, the Automatic Number Identification, or ANI, is used to call back, checking to see if the call was intentional and that everything is OK. If there is no answer, and the Automatic Location Identification, or ALI, is available, an officer might be dispatched to check in person. Police dispatchers often can be heard asking officers to check the circumstances surrounding “Annie Alley” calls.

When the caller doesn’t hang up and there is an open line, dispatchers listen to what is going on to determine if there is an emergency.

There often is not, Christian said.

“Pocket dials and calls made by kids playing with their parent’s cellphone are common,” he said.

There are calls where the mystery can’t be resolved. Location identification is not available on older model cellphones, for example.

Modern cellphones no longer connected to a network still can call 911, but location and number information doesn’t show up for dispatchers.

Prepaid cellphones present another issue. While they are active and connected, number and location information is not made available as part of their service.

Through September of this year, SNOPAC logged nearly 37,000 unintentional and abandoned 911 calls.

“Snohomish County is now on par with major cities in that more than 70 percent of all calls received are made from cellular phones,” Christian said. “When available, you should use a land line to make emergency calls because the number and location can be immediately determined.”

For open line calls, assessing background noise helps dispatchers determine if the call was made by someone who might need assistance, but might be unable to speak. This is rarely so.

“Unintentional 911 calls take resources away from where they are needed,” said Snohomish County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Shari Ireton.

When an actual emergency is happening, there could be officers nearby who are unable to respond because they are checking on a 911 hangup call. The issue is not just a police problem, but involves other public safety agencies.

“These calls potentially delay police, fire and medical assistance from being dispatched,” Christian said.

In the event of an accidental 911 call, it is better to stay on the line and explain it was unintentional, rather than hang up, Christian said.

Andrew Gobin: 425-339-3000 ext. 5461; agobin@heraldnet.com.