Nonemergency calls tying up 911 lines

Jennifer Kho

NEWPORT-MESA -- The telephone rings.

It’s one of the 911 lines.

Police dispatchers are quick to answer because it could be a heart

attack, a fire or a gunshot wound.

It could be a chance to save someone’s life or an opportunity to stop

a crime in progress.

But it probably isn’t.

“There’s a big spider in my house,” the caller says. “Could you send

someone to get rid of it?”

The call is one of the memorable 911 calls that Costa Mesa Police Lt.

Dale Birney said dispatchers get every day.

“Bumper to bumper” calls about power outages, barking dogs and the

swap meet across the street are among the many calls creating telephone

traffic jams in the city’s emergency 911 lines, he said.

City residents have been calling “an inordinate number of times” for

nonemergencies, Birney said.

“When the power went out, the board lit up with people calling to ask

why their lights went out,” he said. “People call wondering if their

trash will be picked up that day, they call to tell us the crows in their

yard are too noisy or because ‘there’s a big spider in my house.’ One

dispatcher got a call [this week] asking what time it was. You name it,

we get it.”

The number of 911 calls has been fairly consistent every year, said

Olivia Ramirez, the department’s senior communications supervisor.

Emergency calls number about a thousand every quarter and nonemergencies

fluctuate between 7,000 and 10,000 each quarter, she said.

Of the 7,596 calls police received on the six 911 phone lines in the

last three months of 2000, only 1,081 of them were emergencies.

That means more than 85% of the 911 calls in October, November and

December were nonemergencies.

Nonemergency 911 calls are also frequent in Newport Beach, said Lt.

Doug Fletcher with the Newport Beach Police Department. According to the

department’s estimates, they make up between 80% and 90% of the 911

calls.

The problem is that people with real emergencies could have trouble

getting through, Birney said.

“People are calling in for all these different reasons, and we’re only

dispatching a handful of total calls on emergency responses,” Birney

said. “If someone had an actual need for an immediate response,

dispatchers could be tied up answering questions like, ‘What is the

bright light in the sky?’ or whatever else.”

Cherie Pittington, Costa Mesa’s dispatch communications supervisor,

said she could not recall a specific occasion when the nonemergency calls

were detrimental to someone with an emergency.

“It doesn’t happen that often, but it could happen,” she said. “If all

of the lines are being called by people with questions about a power

failure, the lines would be tied up for an emergency not related to the

power. That person might not be able to get through -- momentarily, of

course.”

Pittington said dispatchers can view the addresses of all incoming

calls and can pick which ones to answer. That ability helps because they

can try to give priority to calls outside of an area where the power has

failed, for example.

But even though dispatchers try to educate nonemergency 911 callers by

asking them to use another number -- (714) 754-5252 -- in the future,

dispatchers don’t refuse to answer nonemergency questions on the 911

lines, she said.

Ramirez said the city is not trying to discourage anyone from calling

911.

“What may not be an emergency to us could be to someone else,” she

said. “Sometimes when you’re involved in a situation personally, it is

hard for you to distinguish between what’s an emergency and what’s not,

and that’s fine. We’ll take any kind of call.”

People sometimes call 911 on purpose because they think they will get

a quicker response, Pittington said.

“They don’t realize we’re in here answering all the phone calls for

all the lines,” she said.

Many people also call the 911 emergency lines by mistake when they may

have intended to dial a similar international phone number or 411, the

information service, she said.

Birney said people should call 911 is someone’s life or well-being is

in danger, or if they are witnessing a crime in progress, Birney said.

People should avoid calling 911 if they are having a power outage or

if they just felt an earthquake, for example, unless they have an

emergency related to those occurrences, he said.

“Did we just have an earthquake?” Pittington said. “We get that one

all the time. If it’s raining, they’ll ask if the swap meet is open.

They’ll complain about their neighbor’s barking dog. These questions are

really not relative to an emergency.”