February 16, 2018 rang-in the 50th Anniversary marking our nation’s very first 9-1-1 call. As the Sarasota, Florida sheriff’s office wrote on their social media page heralding 9-1-1’s birth: “Technology may have changed but callers are our constant. Thank you to all those who serve so selflessly by picking up the phone on the worst day of people’s lives.”
The kudos given in that last line go to the country’s public safety dispatchers who answer the call when trouble is brewing. Before my sworn police career commenced, I was one of those individuals hooked up to a headset and dispatch console, hearing horror on the daily — more on that later.
The official 9-1-1 roll-out occurred in Haleyville, Alabama and then spread to points across the United States.
The official 9-1-1 roll-out occurred in Haleyville, Alabama and then spread to points across the United States…until the entire nation was linked-in to emergency service provisions via a universal three-digit phone number.
The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) —also known as the 9-1-1 Association— chronicles all things 9-1-1. NENA’s “9-1-1 Origin & History” page dials-in to where it all began:
- Congress backed AT&T’s proposal and passed legislation allowing use of only the numbers 9-1-1 when creating a single emergency calling service, thereby making 9-1-1 a standard emergency number nationwide. A Bell System policy was established to absorb the cost of central office modifications and any additions necessary to accommodate the 9-1-1 code as part of the general rate base.
- With Enhanced 9-1-1, or E9-1-1, local PSAPs are responsible for paying network trunking costs according to tariffed rates, and for purchasing telephone answering equipment from the vendor of their choice.
- On February 16, 1968, Senator Rankin Fite completed the first 9-1-1 call made in the United States in Haleyville, Alabama. The serving telephone company was then Alabama Telephone Company. This Haleyville 9-1-1 system is still in operation today.
- On February 22, 1968, Nome, Alaska implemented 9-1-1 service.
- In March 1973, the White House’s Office of Telecommunications issued a national policy statement which recognized the benefits of 9-1-1, encouraged the nationwide adoption of 9-1-1, and provided for the establishment of a Federal Information Center to assist units of government in planning and implementation.
The crux of 9-1-1 was for a simple and easily-remembered number used when anyone needed emergency help from any among the police-fire-medical public safety assets.
To show you how good we’ve got it, a woman in Honduras explained how the advent of 9-1-1 started only three years ago in her nation. Lina Caraz said, “In my country it started like three years ago. Just with the police. Now FD is in 9-1-1. I am not sure about medics.”
Ms. Caraz elucidated how it was prior to her nation’s public safety jumping on the 9-1-1 bandwagon: “Before, we [had] to dial a land line phone for each agency.” By that, I assume she means physically dialing a long number individually for each of the public safety provisions. Time-consuming and more laborious at a time when ease is more conducive and highly necessary. Therein are the benefits of our 50-year-old 9-1-1 system.
Today’s 9-1-1 Infrastructure
Among the approximately 18,500 law enforcement agencies throughout the US, many are deemed “small” in size and scope; therefore, tax bases ill-afford PSAPs. How it generally works is, the county’s larger government agency (usually the county police or sheriff) will receive calls and dispatch the smaller agencies’ cops and fire-rescue personnel for a contracted annual fee.
Albeit deemed a small agency by national (FBI) standards, my agency had healthy tax dole revenues to afford our own in-house PSAP. (In retrospect, I felt like the most inept human being when I took the PSAP seat and fielded 9-1-1 calls for the first time. There are no do-overs. There is no room for error. There is no pace-setting button, just in-your-face/ear humanity gone awry. Ultimately, it helped me be a better cop down the road.)
When I started in public safety dispatching, E9-1-1 was implemented. E for Enhanced 9-1-1 was engineered to route every 9-1-1 caller’s location to the most appropriate phone service answering point (PSAP).
Telecommunications towers dotting the American landscape receive a 9-1-1 caller’s signal and are engineered to transmit that call for service to the nearest PSAP. If the person calling 9-1-1 is in a jurisdiction other than where the actual emergency is transpiring (that happens frequently), the public safety dispatcher has to figure out which other, of-jurisdiction PSAP the caller needs to connect with.
Naturally, a PSAP in Portland, Oregon or Anywhere, USA is not going to have every single PSAP in the nation nor the capacity to easily transfer the call accordingly. That would be ideal, but we are not quite there yet — too monumental in scope. In such a case, the PSAP 9-1-1 operator takes all pertinent information and uses non-emergency phone lines to transfer information regarding the call for service. That receiving agency’s dispatchers then pick up the ball and send out their resources.
Notwithstanding the enormous sizes of some public safety communications centers in our nation, there are limitations. Despite “Enhanced 9-1-1” provisions enabling public safety assets to respond immediately, there is no national board which lights up every PSAP in our country.
Believe it or not, our nation is not entirely 9-1-1 enabled. “Approximately 96 percent of the geographic US is covered by some type of 9-1-1,” NENA claims. That means that 4 percent of our progressive populace is without the ease of quick-tap dialing for emergency response.
Whether one uses soup cans and string or smoke signals or a message in a floating bottle or a verbose parrot…public safety will heed the call however it is received.
That is hard to fathom, but I suppose those who deeply desire living off-the-grid fall into this category, likely where no infrastructure exists and that is the accepted (comfortable enough) norm. Nevertheless, whether one uses soup cans and string or smoke signals or a message in a floating bottle or a verbose parrot…public safety will heed the call however it is received.
9-1-1 Users and Abusers
In a nutshell, every single phone account in my city’s jurisdictional responsibility rang in to our communications center whereby a public safety operator fielded the call: “9-1-1. What is your emergency?”
Sadly, that basic greeting at any PSAP is the norm not only because that is the sole intended purpose of 9-1-1’s existence…but also because some folks somehow find it okay to call thee emergency number with non-emergent interests and curiosities.
Any public safety dispatcher can share with you countless stories of this person or that person calling 9-1-1 asking for the number to the local Pizza Hut or when the next city council meeting is scheduled or to report Cujo barking down the street. The term “9-1-1 abuse” is real. And that is why states have laws against callers dialing 9-1-1 with what they think is (ahem) urgent need-to-know inquiries. Typically, there is alcohol involved…and Captain Morgan did not dial 9-1-1. Well…kinda.
In Florida, state statute 365.172 addresses 9-1-1 abusers: Subsection (14) “MISUSE OF 911 OR E911 SYSTEM; PENALTY.—911 and E911 service must be used solely for emergency communications by the public. Any person who accesses the number 911 for the purpose of making a false alarm or complaint or reporting false information that could result in the emergency response of any public safety agency; any person who knowingly uses or attempts to use such service for a purpose other than obtaining public safety assistance; or any person who knowingly uses or attempts to use such service in an effort to avoid any charge for service, commits a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083. After being convicted of unauthorized use of such service four times, a person who continues to engage in such unauthorized use commits a felony of the third degree.”
In my law enforcement career, I’ve been on both sides of the coin wherein callers played on 9-1-1 lines. As a dispatcher, I had to handle such nonsense while other 9-1-1 lines were blinking all over the console. Conversely, once sworn, I had the distinction of responding (per dispatcher declaring/recording 9-1-1 abuses), investigating, and arresting folks for such waste thereby creating danger to public safety personnel. Never had a court appearance on any 9-1-1 abuse case either — public safety telephone lines are all recorded and thus provide substantive, admissible evidence.
Quite often, false 9-1-1 calls originate at the fingertips of a child playing on the phone while parents or babysitters are who-knows-where. That could be called 50 years of chasing phantoms, too.
It must be said, our 9-1-1 system’s birthday is worthy of celebration akin to the under-heralded public safety dispatchers answering the call and sending help. I say they get to cut the cake.
