Lynchburg dispatchers cutting the line on wireless 911 hangups

Each call to the Lynchburg Emergency Communications Center is treated like an emergency until proven otherwise — even unintentional 911 calls from wireless phones where the dispatcher can hear the driver singing along to the car radio.

These calls — almost 4,000 of them a year — can tie up a dispatcher for more than 10 minutes as well as send police officers on a needless search for the non-emergency.

Monday, though, the policy will change. If a 911 call is received from a wireless phone where the caller doesn’t communicate with the dispatcher and there are no audible signs that someone who is unable to talk is trying to communicate, the call will be terminated and emergency personnel will not be dispatched to investigate, said Bill Aldrich, director of the communications center.

If a caller hangs up before a dispatcher answers, then the dispatcher will call back one time. If no contact is made with the caller, nothing further will be done.

“When we can hear them, singing in their car to the music, it’s frustrating and it’s frustrating for the officers,” said Donna Ragland, supervisor. “The officers are asking us questions trying to locate the caller and they know it’s not an emergency. …

“This will be a huge change for us. We have always gone with the assumption that something’s wrong.”

The change in policy has been under discussion for more than a year, Aldrich said. The difficulty was in determining what would cut down on resources consumed during the calls without compromising public safety.

The current policy requires “extraordinary measures” to investigate each wireless hang-up call, and staffing demands are making that difficult to maintain, Aldrich said.

“We have a limited number of wireless trunk lines coming into the center and on some of these unintentional calls, we stay on the line upwards of 10 minutes,” he said. “During the time that line is tied up someone may get a busy signal. That’s somebody with a medical emergency. That’s somebody with a police emergency.”

Aldrich said the change was made in consultation with the Lynchburg police and fire departments. It aligns the center with the best practices standard set by the National Emergency Number Association. The change applies only to wireless phone calls, not calls made from land lines.

“We are not doing this haphazardly,” he said. “We are trying to make sure we are using our resources appropriately. …

“The unintentional calls are a problem.”

Lynchburg’s communications center receives more than 65,000 calls to 911 per year and about 60 percent of those come from wireless phones. Ten percent of those are unintentional or hang-up calls.

Aldrich said it’s important for callers to tell a dispatcher early on where the emergency is so some kind of help can be sent right away if the call is disconnected.

He also said if you accidentally call 911, don’t hang up. Just wait until the dispatcher answers and explain it was a mistake. That keeps from tying up resources trying to find out if the caller really has an emergency.