Unknown caller
By Kalen Ponche
If you call 911 from a cell phone, don't assume dispatchers will know where you are. If you're in St. Charles County, they won't.
St. Charles is one of several counties in Missouri where 911 dispatchers are unable to pinpoint automatically the location of someone calling from a cell phone.
This can be a problem when the person calling isn't sure where they are, said Lt. Steve Roach, communications director for the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department. All 911 calls made from cell phones are sent to dispatchers at the sheriff's department.
Roach said his department receives calls on a daily basis from people who don't know their exact location, especially if they are driving on Interstate 70 or Highway 40.
One time a man flipped his car on Highway 61 and wasn't sure where he was, Roach said. Dispatchers sent ambulances out to search for him and stayed on the line until the man heard the sirens, he said.
"We found the guy, but only through perseverance and due diligence," Roach said. "The guy was ready to pass out. It took a while (to find him)."
Inconsistent 911 coverage is a statewide issue, said Steve Makky, St. Charles County communications officer and 911 coordinator. He recently testified before an ad-hoc legislative committee appointed by Gov. Matt Blunt. The committee held hearings through the summer and fall to address the issue of 911 coverage.
In Missouri, about 21 counties have no 911 service at all, according to the Missouri 911 Infrastructure Assessment released in 2006.
Many counties across the state can't locate a cell phone caller because they lack wireless phase one and phase two of enhanced 911 service. With phase one, cell phone companies provide 911 dispatchers with the phone number of the cell phone that's calling. With phase two, companies also send the location the call is coming from.
The Federal Communications Commission requires wireless telephone carriers to provide the number and location of a 911 call made from a cell phone if a Public Safety Answering Point or a municipality requests it. It also allows wireless carriers to pass along the charges for this capability to the PSAPs or municipalities.
St. Louis County was one of the first counties to request wireless phase one and phase two information from wireless telephone carriers, so it has provided it for free, said Tom McCormack, 911 coordinator for St. Louis County Police.
"At one point, one carrier told me 'It's time for you guys to pay,'" he said. "I said, 'We don't have any money to pay for it.'"
AT&T spokesperson Chelsey Ilten said AT&T has followed the FCC's recommendations to determine what costs municipalities are responsible for.
St. Charles County 911 dispatchers don't have wireless phase one or phase two because they don't have the money to pay for it, Makky said.
Right now, St. Charles County 911 service is funded by a 2 percent tariffed base rate tax on landline telephones.
But the number of people with landline phones in the county is shrinking despite the growing number of people living in St. Charles County. Makky said he's seen funding decrease. About 60 percent of 911 calls come from a cell phone, but none of them is helping pay for the 911 service, he said.
"What happens is, we've got a finite amount of resources, and we've got a very large call volume from cellular (phones)," he said. "And them not paying means we can't look at things that are going to bring up our costs. We can't identify what number someone is coming from, and we can't locate them."
Missouri is the only state in the country that does not have a tax on cell phones to fund 911 service. Missouri voters twice have rejected a 50-cent tax on cell phone bills, once in 1999 and once in 2002.
Makky said he'd like to see the Legislature pass a tax for cell phones but said he's not sure it would.
"I'm not sure if anything climate-wise has changed except that people are pretty certain that there's a problem," he said. "There are some people that wouldn't support any type of tax. A great deal of public education really needs to be done."
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