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Bridging into E911 Calls May Do More Harm Than Good

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September 17, 2012

Bridging into E911 Calls May Do More Harm Than Good

By Steve Anderson, Contributing TMCnet Writer


When a business starts looking to put in an E911 system, one line that often comes into play with the RFI (News - Alert) (Request for Information) or the RFP (Request for Proposal) documents is the ability to bridge into an outbound 911 call. There are several reasons to have this capability -- sometimes managers or the like may be able to supply dispatchers with more information about a call and need to be able to get in on the call to do so -- but the practice itself may do more harm than good.


While the idea makes some sense on a certain level, the fact that it may actually cost lives doesn't often come into play until later. The more callers on a line, the counter-logic goes, the more likely it is for extraneous audio to find its way into the conversation between the 911 caller and the 911 dispatcher, and this in turn opens up the potential for incorrect information reaching the dispatcher, and thus interfering with the process that may save lives.

One critical point came in the consideration that 911 dispatchers are trained to listen for certain "audio cues" like those given off by weapons being primed (a revolver hammer being clicked back, a shotgun's pump action being racked and the like), or by struggles ensuing. With a second person bridging into a call, it increases the potential that those audio cues will be missed. In one case, the Clark County Sheriff's Office actually found that it was unable to hear six shots being fired thanks to the level of ambient noise during a call.

Additionally, some have requested the ability to record an outgoing call to 911, with the stated reason being the ability to "know exactly what was said" and protect the business "from liability." Given that call recording is a standard feature at the 911 dispatch level, why a business would want a redundant recording smacks of sheer nosiness at the least.

Admittedly, it's easy to see, from at least one angle, why having the ability to break into a 911 call may prove useful, and it's often better to have an option that goes unneeded or unused to not having an option that would have proven useful or necessary if it were there to use. The same goes for call recording; having that ability has often proven useful in the past, so why not here? But when it's viewed from a different perspective, in both instances, it has the potential to cause much more harm than it should, and so, having the option to do so may be an option that's best left out of the equation.

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Edited by Rich Steeves







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