Menlo Park promises faster handling of emergency calls Menlo Park promises faster handling of emergency calls (December 28, 2005)

** Menlo Park starts new cell-phone service. Atherton, Woodside and Portola Valley stay with routing cell phone calls through Vallejo.

By David Boyce

Almanac Staff Writer

Cell phone calls to 911 in Menlo Park should have much faster response times now that the city no longer has the calls taking a roundabout route through a California Highway Patrol dispatcher in Vallejo, says a Menlo Park police official.

"This will completely eliminate call delays and you'll get someone immediately," says Janette Lanier, Menlo Park's police communications supervisor.

Palo Alto is into its third year with "enhanced 911" service and handles most emergency cell phone calls in under 5 seconds, well below the average on-hold time of 40 seconds for the 7 million to 8 million calls routed through CHP dispatchers every year, says Charles Cullen, the Palo Alto Police Department communications manager.

"I think it's a vast improvement over what we used to have," he says.

In Atherton, Police Chief Bob Brennan says he is taking a wait-and-see attitude. His concerns: a deluge of 911 calls (many not for real emergencies), the need to hire more dispatchers, and putting callers on hold.

"We're going to see what (Menlo Park's) call volume is after several months (and) see if they have to increase staff," he says.

Such concerns will also delay the service in Woodside and Portola Valley, which contract with the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office for police services, says Jaime Young, the county's director of public safety communications.

About half of the 90 police agencies in the nine-county Bay Area use the "enhanced" cell-phone service, including eight of the 19 agencies in San Mateo County, she says.

The number of cell phone-originated 911 calls in Palo Alto has gone up by about 25 percent since the service was introduced, but the department hasn't had to hire more dispatchers, says Mr. Cullen.

A local emergency can elicit a flood of calls that can sometimes create a queue, but the technology has proved "beyond a doubt" that local agencies need to take the calls, he says. Emergency calls to CHP routing centers have been known to be on hold for 10 to 15 minutes, Mr. Cullen says.
Location info sent

The "enhanced" service sends caller-location data to local dispatchers. Cell phones equipped to identify themselves to global positioning system satellites can be located within 150 to 300 feet, Ms. Lanier says.

For phones lacking a GPS feature, the system compares signals from nearby cell-phone towers to estimate a caller's location. Cell phones over two years old tend not to have GPS capabilities, says Ms. Young of the county.

In Menlo Park, the new service is currently available only to Verizon and Cingular/AT&T customers. Other local cell phone service providers -- Sprint, Nextel, T-Mobile and Metro PCS -- are expected to convert from CHP routing in coming months, says Ms. Lanier.

It took about a year for Palo Alto police to establish the service with all six companies, says Mr. Cullen. Setting up to receive the calls takes time because each company must first map its service area with the city or town served by the police agency, he says.

Because the CHP has jurisdiction over the state's freeways, calls made from a freeway will go to a CHP call center.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.