By Ethan Tan
Staff Writer
The San Gabriel Police Department (SGPD) on Dec. 27 became the latest police department in the Los Angeles County (LA County) to offer text-to-911 services. As part of LA County’s new initiative, tax dollars were put into the department to upgrade equipment so that the dispatch center could receive 911 texts.
The LA County program is part of Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) vision to make the text-to-911 program national. In 2012, the FCC along with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon started to develop the Next Generation 911 network with enhancements such as better location accuracy and faster response times along with the text-to-911 feature.
Although this program is still considered a pilot program by the FCC, citizens will now be able to text their emergency to 911 in most areas of LA County.
SGPD noted in a press release that citizens should follow the rule “call if you can, text if you can’t,” since it is faster and easier to tell a 911 dispatcher about an emergency than it is to text the situation to the dispatch center.
Text-to-911 was designed to make it easier for the hearing impaired to reach 911 in an emergency situation as well as to give citizens an alternative to reach 911 if calling 911 will put them in danger.
The Los Angeles Police Department noted in a 2015 press conference that the text-to-911 feature helped resolve a domestic violence dispute when the female victim texted her situation and her location to 911 allowing police to rescue her and to arrest the suspect within minutes.
“We know that most young people now a day carry cell phones and we wanted to add one more way to reach 911 in an emergency,” stated SGPD Lieutenant Fabian Valdez.
The SGPD notes that currently, the system is English only and that messages should not contain abbreviations, emojis, photos or videos. Authorities also note that if there is a bug in the system, an automatic bounce-back text will be sent notifying the user that they should call 911 as the text message was not received.
“Although we were late adopters, I’m proud our department now has the text-to-911 capability,” stated SGPD Chief Gene Harris in a press release.
For more information and/or updates regarding text-to-911, please visit https://www.fcc.gov/text-to-911.
