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911 texting service rolling out slowly [Chicago Tribune :: ](Chicago Tribune (IL) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 11--Taylor Roylance was sleeping over at a friend's house when the slumber party was disrupted by two masked, armed strangers who burst in and ordered the girls to hand over their phones. Taylor's cellphone was hidden under her pillow on the floor where she was sleeping. So when the burglars left the bedroom to find the friend's parents -- who were then tied up while the intruders ransacked the house for valuables -- Taylor worked up the courage to dial 911. But the teenager from west suburban Lombard was so frightened that they would discover her that she couldn't bring herself to talk to the dispatcher. "I'm terrified, and I don't know what they're going do," recalled Taylor, 14, who was on a visit to New Mexico in July when the robbery occurred. "I couldn't be loud enough for them to hear me." Though the home invasion ended without serious injury, Taylor wonders if police could have stopped the crime in progress had she been able to send a text message to 911. Advocates say the ability to send text messages to 911 is crucial, if not overdue in today's tech-savvy world. Most of the country does not yet have the capability for 911 texting, with just 128 dispatch centers in 18 states running the service so far, according to the Federal Communications Commission's latest listing. In Illinois, several Chicago-area municipalities have begun to offer people the ability to communicate with an emergency dispatcher via text. Many law enforcement and other emergency officials in Illinois say they support the move to integrate 911 texting and expect that, eventually, the capability will be broadly available. Yet implementing the change is costly, and while it could provide another tool in an emergency -- especially when speaking out loud could threaten a crime victim's safety -- dispatch agencies say it's generally better to be able to talk to someone in real time than through texting. Still, the husband of the Chicago actress who died last week in freak accident during an intense windstorm also said he wished he could have texted 911. Joe Foust was bicycling Friday with his wife, Molly Glynn, in a forest preserve in north suburban Cook County when she was fatally struck by a falling tree. Foust said he had to call 911 three times and repeat himself over and over to dispatchers. He said there was so much background noise in the phone connections that it was as if he were talking into a fax line. It's unclear whether he would have been able to access the texting 911 service that day. Nor is it clear that it would have hastened the emergency response or changed the horrible outcome. But just knowing that there might have been another avenue for getting help for his wife was difficult to ponder, Foust said via text. "Can't bear to think if things would be different," Foust said. Advocates for expanded access to 911 texting say the ability to summon police in a more discreet way during domestic incidents, hostage situations or mass shootings is just one advantage. Many younger people, who only know of life with smartphones, already assume they can text to dispatchers as they can to their friends and family. Officials often cite the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre as a technological wake-up call, as students said they tried texting for help while hiding from the shooter. Texting 911 is also a valuable tool for people who have hearing or speech disabilities. In Illinois, three agencies covering parts of suburban Cook County have recently started accepting text messages but are introducing the new service with many caveats on ability, boundaries and usefulness. The Cook County sheriff's police quietly launched the service Sept. 2 for those in unincorporated areas who have cellphones with Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile service. Cook County hasn't announced the program publicly because the remaining large carrier in the area, AT&T, isn't hooked up to its system yet. It is expected to join the other carriers soon, county officials said. As of Wednesday, the first and only 911 text the Cook County sheriff's dispatch service has received was for a report of a dog inside a locked car. Dispatchers handled it by first asking if the texter could call, which is the standard first message in an exchange. A call to the phone number where the text originated followed, but the texter never responded. Arlington Heights-based Northwest Central Dispatch System started testing texting in December and now has all four major cellphone carriers on board within the 11 northwestern suburbs it serves. The first 911 center to offer the service in Illinois has received about a dozen text messages, said Cindy Barbera-Brelle, executive director of Northwest Central Dispatch. Half were "mistaken," meaning they weren't intended cries for help -- similar to the prank or accidental calls they get through traditional landlines or cellphones. And just as dispatching services had to adjust to wireless technology -- making sure that 911 calls from mobile phones were routed to the appropriate agency -- Northwest Central has also picked up 911 texts from just outside its coverage area. In those cases, Northwest Central routed the information to the appropriate authorities, as is the protocol. A text message in April came in as a domestic dispute and was handed to Cook County Sheriff's Office, which was not yet offering text service. Martin Bennett, who oversees the Cook County sheriff's dispatch center, said the new service is still in its infancy, with startup complexities. The challenge will be to educate the community on texting 911 without overselling its usefulness. "It's only an option," Bennett said. "It's not bulletproof." The message exchanges are not in "real time" as an oral conversation is, and they don't provide dispatchers with the clues they're trained for, such as distressed voices or background noise. Pinning down the location is also less accurate than with a phone call, according to Bennett. Added to that is the complication of a service and capability that is not uniformly available. For it to work, the texter must be in the coverage area of a dispatching center offering the service to begin with, and then the texter must also be using a cellphone with a wireless carrier that is synced to the dispatch center's system. Roaming is also still a kink to be worked out, officials said. After the dispatcher ends a text exchange, the texter may not be able to reach 911 via text anymore if he or she has traveled out of the original coverage area and into one that doesn't have the service. The FCC has mandated that if someone attempts to text 911 where the service is not available, he or she should receive an automatic text response to that effect. And that's likely to occur given that some of the largest players in the area, including Illinois State Police and Chicago police and fire dispatchers, do not accept texting. A Chicago spokeswoman said the city is sitting out on the new technology for now as it continues to evolve. Dispatch centers are not mandated to offer texting to 911. The movement, however, has been aided by recent federal regulations that require all wireless carriers to offer the capability should a dispatching agency request it. Brian Fontes, chief executive of the National Emergency Number Association, credits the new rules for a turn in the tide and said he expects the service will be widespread within the next five years. "We're just at the beginning of the adoption curve," he said. "I think it will be skewed to the front end. (In) the next two to three years, you'll see a large number of (dispatch centers) that will enable texting to 911." It will also be an easier transition for urban areas, said Sandy Beitel, 911 coordinator for the Ogle County Sheriff's Office in north-central Illinois. Rural areas are more often served by smaller wireless carriers, she said, which have been slower to move on the service. Ogle County is lobbying for money to overhaul its equipment to offer texting down the road -- an undertaking that Beitel said could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And then there's the matter of preparing the staff for a cultural adjustment. "I have a dispatcher who is 65 years old, and she doesn't text. This is going to be a whole new learning curve," she said. And though a shift is likely coming, officials say texting to 911 is not expected to replace actual phone calls for help. Fontes points to Vermont as a case study. The state was an early adopter of the service but hasn't been flooded with 911 texts, he said. "It's a natural instinct. If you can speak, you are going to call out for help," Fontes said. "That's the way we've been trained. That's the way you feel you get immediate feedback (and) you know help is on the way." Similarly, the northwest suburban Rosemont Public Safety Department has yet to receive a single text message since it launched the service in June. Still, with as many as 80 percent of all 911 calls already being made on wireless phones, Fontes said, texting is a natural next step. "Texting is just part of our society. It's part of the way we communicate, so it's only fitting that 911 centers be enabled to communicate the way the public communicates," he said. Laura Roylance, the mother of the 14-year-old Lombard girl who survived the home invasion ordeal in New Mexico, believes texting 911 might have made a difference. So far, that state doesn't offer the service. "I think they would have caught the people in the house. I think the police would have come during the home invasion and they would have caught them," she said. "It presents a good case for the ability to text 911 and to make it known when people can text 911." The robbers, who took off in the family's car, also got away with electronics and items from the house after punching out the friend's father and threatening the parents with a machete, according to a police report. Police there said Wednesday there has been no arrest in the crime. "If (texting 911) is a possibility, then I would like to know before an incident like that happens," Taylor said in a recent interview. "Most people I know (are) pretty proficient at typing quickly and secretly." [email protected] ___ (c)2014 the Chicago Tribune Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |