Directory Mix-Up Snags Calls to Sheriff’s Department

OK, for the record, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s new phone number is(213) 526-5541.

But for the last week, you couldn’t have learned that by calling directory assistance.

Pacific Bell operators were giving out the department’s old number--(213) 974-4211--which was answered by a recording saying it had been disconnected, with no referral.

A directory assistance supervisor earlier this week blamed the glitch on the Sheriff’s Department, saying: “They’ve given us no new number.”

But a sheriff’s spokesman said that after the department moved its headquarters from the Hall of Justice downtown to the Ameron building in Monterey Park in April, it acquired a whole series of new numbers, and the telephone company knew what they were.

Emergency 911 lines were unaffected by the snafu, because they are automatically connected to an appropriate number. But non-emergency calls placed through 911 are not put through, so someone trying to reach the department on a non-emergency basis was not connected.

Kate Flynn, a Los Angeles spokeswoman for Pacific Bell, said Thursday that when the Sheriff’s Department moved, it authorized a tape-recorded referral from its old numbers to its new numbers for only two months. And she said the telephone company’s directory department had never been notified of the new numbers by the Sheriff’s Department.

So when the referral period expired, there were no numbers for the operators to give out, she said.

“I don’t know that it’s anybody’s blame,” she said.

On Thursday, Flynn said, the Sheriff’s Department reordered and extended referrals on hundreds of old numbers and steps were being taken to see that directory assistance operators received new numbers.

Sheriff’s spokesman Capt. Douglas McClure said there have been no complaints about the directory assistance problem.

That’s not surprising, perhaps, since no one could get through . . . unless they already had the sheriff’s new number.