Non-Priority Calls Tie Up 911 Lines, Slow Responses

If you want to find out what time the Los Angeles Lakers’ plane will land or how to get to Santa Maria, DON’T call 911.

That is the plea Mayor Tom Bradley and officials involved with the 911 emergency phone system are issuing to Los Angeles residents.

After a slow start-up when the system became operational last October, the lines are now tied up by callers with questions about how to get a welfare check or the name of a congressional representative, officials said.

“We want people to realize that 911 is for real priority calls--emergencies requiring the immediate dispatch of an ambulance, police officer or fire truck,” Lt. Richard Pooler said Tuesday. He is the day watch commander at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Emergency Control Center, where about 3,000 911 calls are received daily.

“One problem is that a lot of citizens just don’t understand what constitutes an emergency,” Pooler said. “If there’s a car that’s been blocking your driveway and you can’t get out, well, that’s an emergency to a lot of people and they call us about it.”

But such problems are not considered emergencies.

“Routine calls for service should be placed directly to the agency offering the service,” Bradley said in a written statement to city residents. “By using the direct telephone numbers, the 911 emergency line is kept open to help those in life-threatening situations.”

The one critical--but temporary--defect of the 911 system that makes the non-emergency calls more troublesome is that it has only a 15-call capacity, said Deputy Chief Clyde Chronkhite, who is in charge of support services for the Police Department. That means that once the 15 lines are filled, a 911 caller with an emergency will get a busy signal until another line opens, he said.

“We have 60 consoles to handle police calls, but because of the computer set-up now, if a 911 line is busy, all 45 other operators could be free, but they can only receive calls on the seven-digit police numbers,” Chronkhite said.

By next October, a system being tested in Santa Clara will be installed in the Los Angeles area, officials said. This will give all 60 emergency operators access to 911 calls.

Occasionally 911 operators receive obscene or crank calls.

What most of these callers forget is a feature of the system called the automatic location finder.

“When you call 911, your address and phone number appear on a computer terminal at the command control center and on computer terminals in a patrol car, which can then reach the scene of a crime in minutes.” Chronkhite said.

Most of the crank calls are referred to the police criminal conspiracy unit, which often sends officers to talk to the offenders. Intentional misuse of the 911 line is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in prison and a $1,000 fine.