Dial 911 by mistake? Don't hang up

[FF402 133]

Dial 911 by mistake? Don't hang up

Rockland, Putnam police often dispatched on misdialed 914 area code

LoHud.com

Rich Saccomanno, owner of two delicatessens in Carmel, was in his Fair Street store one recent afternoon when he picked up the phone to call his bread supplier in Yorktown. But instead of dialing the 914 area code for Westchester County, he accidentally dialed 911.

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[SOUSGT 357]

When I was on still on the job, we would receive a lot of misdials from people trying to call overseas. (The overseas area code is 011). As well as hang-ups. The problem with 911 hang-ups is what is your policy?

At the time when I will a sergeant, if the dispatcher could not call the person back and receive an assurance that everything was alright, we would dispatch two cars to the scene and attempt to make contact. If we were met with no answer at the door, a supervisor was dispatched to make a determination. If the site was an apartment and a super with a key could not be located, the door was taken down. Houses were a little different in that sometimes you could see into the house. If not an entry was made.

The end result was that we made a lot of entries to people’s dwellings because they would not answer the phone or left the dwelling after dialing a wrong number.

This is a dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t situation of the first order.

If you receive a 911 call and don’t enter the premises and Mrs. Smith dies because she was just able to punch in the 3 numbers and passed out and you don’t make an entry, you are wrong. If you break into an apartment because you John Jones left after misdialing and cause $1000 in damage to the front door, you are also wrong. Also do you have to baby sit the residence because you broke down a door and it can’t be secured? As you can see, all departments should have a 911 response policy including hang-ups.

Now let’s throw another wrench in the works. Telephone service is migrating toward VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and wireless. A larger portion of phone service is using the internet or cable as a carrier. Services such as Vonage, Cable providers and FIOS are using this technology. The days of POTs lines are coming to close. This may mean an end to the traditional pair of wires from the Central Office directly to a fixed location. The location of the origin of a call placed will become harder to determine. Also Vonage provides an “alternate 911 service”. In that the customer enters the address of the phone location through a signup process. If you don’t complete the sign up, no 911 dispatches are provided. Vonage has an answering service that receives 911 calls and transmits them to the local authority. Vonage uses a router that is portable and you can take with you and make calls anywhere you can connect to the internet. In other words, if you plug in a phone to your Vonage router that is connected to the internet to a hotel in Florida and dial 911, the service thinks that you are calling from your home in New York.

The moral of the story is people should be instructed (or reminded) that if you dial 911 by accident don’t be embarrassed, stay on the line and give the dispatcher honest answers. If they decide to send a car, wait for them to arrive. The consequences for not answering could get expensive. Also if you have a nontraditional phone service, keep you information up to date and if you move, advise your carrier

[sfrd18 360]

This actually happened to me once when I was a kid. Instead of 910 I dialed 911, then hung up. A cop still showed up anyway. It's always good to stay on the line and assure the dispatcher that you're alright, and everything's fine. Even a simple, "sorry, mistake" will do. It may be a hassel, and the dispatcher may ask some questions to be sure, but it's better than having a cop or fire truck or what have you show up for nothing when they're needed elsewhere.