Texting 911
Yesterday my supervisor was looking at an advertisement in the Oct 2006 APCO International’s publication ‘Public Safety Communications.’ The advertisement was for a company called PlantCML, who provides all sorts of 9-1-1 and data management for public safety, and they also provide solutions for utilities and other businesses. The advertisement showed a cell phone with the following message:
To: 911
There’s someone
in my house –
I’m hiding upstairs–
Please send help.
It then had a thumb over the ’send’ button on the phone and stated in large, red text:
In the near future, this will become a first-responder’s most valuable lifesaving tool.
That’s questionable at best. I can see several problems with that text message. Assuming that’s the only information recieved, there are a few problems. If I recieved that call on a conventional phone call, I’d immediately ask more questions..just a few for example:
- Where are you (location)?
- How do you know someone is inside your house?
- Are you home alone?
- Do you know who the person in your house is? Are you expecting anyone?
There are others that I’d ask, but those are dependant on what answers I get to the initial questions. Location is paramount, even if I can’t get any other information from the caller, at least then I know where to send LE – which is why it’s often one of the first things asked of the caller. The questions we ask are so that as a dispatcher we can paint a ‘verbal picture’ of what’s occurring, so that the officers, fire department, or the EMS personnel can be best prepared for what they are about to encounter.
It’s often hard to get all the information you need from a caller via the telephone, and even moreso if they’re trying to be covert in order to avoid detection. I’ve done such things on the phone as ask questions and have the caller answer by pressing buttons to answer (press a button once for no, twice for yes). Being creative helps!
All of the ability for a dispatcher to interact with the caller and ask questions essential to providing the assistance that is needed is essentially removed if text messages are used. We don’t accept emails, why should we accept text messages?
Other things to consider would be location – what if the caller did not or could not advise of their location? Is there a way for me to find out? Does the wireless carrier transmit the Phase 2 (geographic location) data so I can find them via GPS? What about call centers that are not yet Phase 2 compliant? What about all the false ‘calls’ that we’re bound to get? Will I be able to respond back? How would a caller know if their text got through? When you call on a cell phone, you know you didn’t get through, but text messages don’t tell you if the recieving party got the message or not.
There’s just too many variables they have not figured out. Accepting help messages via texting will be a nightmare and will not be all that helpful (see the example message from the advertisement). The public is not educated enough about the information that is needed for normal 911 calls, much less something via a text message. I spend more time listening to people scream at me to ‘just send the po-lice!’ and then trying to get an address out of them and what’s going on. I can only imagine having to send friggen text messages back to ask such simple things as ‘where are you?’ only to recieve the same idiot response back: ‘at my house.’