CHP, City Tussle Over 911 Calls

The California Highway Patrol (CHP) wants local cities to begin handling the wireless 911 call that are made in their city, to help reduce the enormous workload in their comm centers. But the cities are balking, for the same reason.

Budgets and staffing are in short supply at the CHP’s regional comm centers around the state, but local cities are also facing budget cutbacks and dwindling staffs.

The situation arises from the way wireless 911 was implemented in the state back in the 1980s. At the time, cellular phones were installed almost totally in vehicles, making the CHP the appropriate agency to answer 911 calls.

However, as cellular handsets have almost totally replaced in-car phones, fewer 911 calls are reporting incidents on the state’s Interstate and state highways.

Within the past five years the technology of antenna sites has advanced to allow intelligent routing of 911 calls based on the specific antenna that received the call, and its coverage angle.

The routing is never perfect, since radio signals can travel to a distant antenna tower or a call might be captured by an alternate antenna at a nearby site. But the technique helps to separate out the local calls from highway-related ones.

Based on this technology, the CHP received approval to begin moving wireless 911 calls from its centers back to local cities. The process in on-going, as each city must study antenna maps and jointly decide with the CHP which comm center should handle each tower sector.

The Los Angeles region CHP comm center is perhaps the busiest in the state, handling over two million calls a year. The average wait time for a 911 caller is 46 seconds, despite a goal of answering 90 percent of calls within 10 seconds.

The CHP and wireless carriers have been slowly converting 911 systems to route calls to local cities. Los Angeles switched in 2007, and officials reported that their call volume went up 300% to 400%. The city of Riverside said their volume went up 30 percent after the change-over, while the Los Angeles County sheriff (LASO) says they received 32 percent to 40 percent more 911 calls.

Long Beach faced a $17 million budget shortfall, and initially resisted taking on the additional 911 calls. It’s the largest city in southern California not to take its own 911 calls.

“Our Police Department has real concerns about the impact on the services it provides,” said Reginald Harrison, deputy city manager. He said city officials don’t want residents “moving from one queuing line with the state to another queuing line with Long Beach.”
The city operates separate police and fire comm centers, and is considering merging their operations to save money. The city council is also considering many other cut-backs, including closing libraries.

City officials say the CHP can’t provide them an estimate on how many more calls they’ll receive. Harrison said one person has suggested a 35 percent increase.

LAPD Lt. Diljeet Singh said his agency handles about 2 million calls a year, with about one-half from wireless phones. He said the comm center gradually adjusted to the higher workload, and is nearing compliance with their call-handling goals.

Sixteen of the LASO stations answer cellular 911 calls directly, and six others plan to make the switch. Sheriff’s Lt. Mitchell McMahon said emergency calls have increased up to 40 percent, but staffing has remained the same.
After some public scrutiny, Long Beach police chief Anthony Batts announced his comm center would begin taking cellular 911 calls directly in early 2009.

“Long Beach prides itself with having some of the fastest response times to emergency calls for service within the State of California,” said Batts. “Adding this level of assistance for wireless customers demonstrates our progressive nature in providing our residents with excellent customer service.”