Translators Help During 911 Shooting Calls

When a gunman opened fire last week at a Korean religious retreat outside Temecula (S. Calif.), several persons dialed 911 and reached Riverside County sheriff’s dispatchers, who had to use translators to gather critical information. The comm center uses the Language Line service, which quickly put Korean translators onto the line to help determine what had occurred and who was shooting at the rural facility. Trained to strictly relay information back and forth between the 911 caller and the dispatcher, the translators in this case had to also provide reassurance to the callers, some of whom had been shot and were distraught. Read more about the language situation here, and listen to the 911 calls here.