Local Shooting Highlights Limitations of Calling 911

When Dartmouth College junior Meleia Willis-Starbuck was shot Sunday morning on College Avenue, her friends dialed 911 from a cell phone, only to have their call answered not by the nearest 911 center, but by the California Highway Patrol in Vallejo. Willis-Starbuck died before an ambulance arrived.

Authorities and some family friends agreed that the 30 seconds it took to transfer the cell phone call to local police did not lessen Willis-Starbuck's chances of survival. But some friends rebuked the city's emergency services for what they claim are unnecessary hurdles to getting help at a critical time.

Willis-Starbuck's friends had to flag down a police car on the street before paramedics arrived, said Vikki Davis, a Berkeley resident and friend of the family.

The friends criticized Berkeley's current wireless 911 system, which automatically routes all wireless 911 calls made within a mile of the freeway to the highway patrol office in Vallejo, regardless of whether there are local emergency services closer by.

However, Berkeley police Officer Joe Okies called the 30 seconds it took to transfer the call from the highway patrol to the local emergency services a "pretty fast transfer time."

"The first police officer was on the scene well within 30 seconds," Okies said. "We generally have not heard complaints regarding this issue."

San Francisco was the first city in the state to start taking its own cell phone 911 calls two years ago, said Diane Chupinski, a public safety dispatch supervisor for the highway patrol in Vallejo.

Oakland and Berkeley, however, have yet to go online, and are still relying on the Vallejo highway patrol office.

Within the past two months, Berkeley recently updated its technology in order to receive wireless phone calls, said Chip Yarborough, president of the California chapter of the National Emergency Numbers Association, a public safety communications group.

However, Yarborough cautioned it might take up to three months before the city would be able to receive emergency cell phone calls, because maps assigning cell phone numbers to various sectors of the city have yet to be plotted.

"One of the things we tell individuals every chance we get is that it's important to have local law enforcement speed-dialed in," said Sergeant Wayne Ziese, public information officer for the Golden Gate division of the highway patrol.

"Delays up from two to 10 minutes can occur as we take an overwhelming majority of cell phone calls," Ziese said, citing up to 6,500 calls a day.

Due to the recent boom in wireless technology, calls to 911 from cell phones are increasingly commonplace. Of the 190 million 911 calls made each year, more than a third come from cell phones, according to public safety officials.

Ironically, the mobility of the technology has also made it difficult to track. Of all the 911 centers, only 46 percent are equipped to track down cell phone callers in distress within 100 meters, according to Patrick Halley, governmental affairs director of the National Emergency Number Association. More than 40 percent of Americans remain uncovered, Halley said.

With millions of dollars being spent on homeland security, 911, instituted in 1968 as the national emergency number, has received little attention, Halley said.

"No matter what happens, whether it's a daily emergency or terrorism, people are going to call 911," he said.

Last December, Congress passed an act, which, among other things, created a national 911 office to coordinate upgrades and authorized Congress to provide up to $250 million a year in grants for state and local governments to update their systems, Halley said.

The bill requires some of the nation's most prominent cellular carriers-including Sprint, Nextel, and Verizon Wireless-to install special chips by December that would allow Global Positioning System satellites to better pinpoint the location of wireless callers.

"They're getting there," Chupinski said. "It's a process, it just takes time."

A clarification to this article can be found here.

Tags: