911 misdial, misuse a growing problem

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BANGOR – The voice on the other end of the emergency line with the Bangor Police Department sounded nervous as the woman spoke about being assaulted. Then she hung up.

The call set in motion a procedure that had dispatcher Dan Pugsly call the woman back and send police to her home, thanks to the E-911 system that automatically displayed her address.

In this recent case, the woman’s former boyfriend was arrested for allegedly assaulting her.

But the same system that allows dispatchers to immediately identify where most calls are coming from also has contributed to a growing problem – one that increasingly is taking time away from emergency communications dispatchers and the fire, ambulance or police personnel they send out in response to legitimate emergencies.

Misdialed 911 calls – calls that end abruptly or turn out to be nonemergencies – tie up emergency personnel, preventing them from handling situations where someone may be ill, hurt or in danger.

“Their loved one may be dying and meanwhile we’re taking our time to answer a question” about how to reach another agency or responding to queries that could be easily answered by the caller if he or she simply checked a phone book, said Melissa Bickford, a dispatcher in Bangor for five years.

Bickford estimated that city dispatchers handle 10 or more misdialed calls on any given night, more on the weekends. Last Wednesday, one apparently intoxicated man called the police from a motel courtesy phone six times in 10 minutes, claiming he was dialing the wrong number.

Charges can and have been filed in cases where the E-911 system is purposely abused. But dispatch supervisor Chip Briggs of the Penobscot Regional Communications Center estimates that 20 percent to 30 percent of the calls that come in are simply misdialed.

Call logs for this year show that through Dec. 17, 1,835 misdialed calls were registered on the PRCC system, including calls into Bangor.

Sometimes it’s children playing with the phone. Other times people are trying to reach a radio station, exchange or cellular phone number, using the wrong buttons on the phone keypad.

Pull aside a dispatcher and he likely can rattle off a litany of other excuses heard from someone calling on an emergency line.

Sometimes it’s accidental, other times, people call with law enforcement questions that are better handled on the police business line.

Then there are those who see the agencies as a source of information about events or activities: “What are the starting times for the parade or fireworks?” “What are the road conditions?” Or even, “How do I obtain an absentee ballot?”

“Let’s face it, it’s one of the few places open 24 hours a day,” said Pugsly, who has served as a dispatcher for 10 years, the past two in Bangor.

Dispatchers said there are some callers who aren’t afraid to abuse the system, calling the police to get a ride or even faking an injury in order to get from one side of the city to the other. Bickford said one man last year did that so often he was summoned for abusing the E-911 system.

The more numerous calls, however, are where the line is dead when the dispatcher answers.

Hang-up calls, a call that ends before a dispatcher makes an initial contact, represented another 3,586 calls that Penobscot and Bangor dispatchers contended with over the year through Dec. 17.

Still, with the E-911 system, the number from where the call originated is recorded. Those calls also have to be checked out because authorities say they can’t afford to take chances that there might be a real emergency at the other end.

Although every police agency has its own policies governing how to respond to misdials and hang-up calls, it’s the dispatcher who often provides the key information used in making that decision.

The first thing a dispatcher will do is try to get into contact with the caller.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make contact with someone to make sure everything is OK,” said Bangor police Lt. Ron Gastia, whose services division oversees the Bangor dispatch.

When dispatchers do reach the caller, they talk and listen, trying to ascertain if anything is amiss.

It could be the wavering sound of the caller’s voice, indicating concern, or, more obviously, the sounds of yelling in the background.

“Whatever we can obtain or whatever we think, we tell law enforcement, even if it’s just a feeling,” said Cliff Wells, director of the PRCC.

PRCC dispatcher Jaeme Ahern has gotten good at reading between the lines, but even after more than five years as a dispatcher, she said, sometimes those uneasy feelings don’t always prove accurate. Still, it’s better to err on the side of caution and send help.

She said dispatchers send officers out to check on more calls that “don’t feel right” but turn out to be “OK, rather than the other way around.”

Not every recipient welcomes such attention.

Ahern said some callers are angered when a dispatcher calls back and starts asking questions, trying to find out if help is really needed.

Others are embarrassed when the police show up at their homes after they’ve misdialed 911, some to the extreme that they won’t even answer the door, said Chief Deputy Troy Morton of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department.

Morton can remember several occasions where sheriff’s deputies have had to decide whether to force their way into a home after no one answered the phone or door after a 911 hang-up call was received at dispatch.

Concerned that someone might be inside, injured or worse, Morton said, there have been times when they have forced their way inside and found no one home. Other times the caller was inside, safe but red-faced.

“Sometimes the people are simply inside too embarrassed to admit it was a mistake,” Morton said.

In another case the problem wasn’t so much the dialer as the phone. Regional dispatch over the course of six days received many misdialed calls from a man whose phone was on the blink. Every time he’d dial the number 8, it would dial the number 9, sometimes reaching dispatch. Encouraged by authorities, the man replaced the phone.

Mechanical problems aside, dispatchers said the key is to educate people about when to use 911.

“I think it just comes from a lack of education that it’s an emergency number and not just for general questions,” Pugsly said.