If you ever have an emergency and need help from 911, you don’t just have to call. If you cannot speak openly or safely about your situation, you have another option: texting to 911.
According to Hamilton County Communications Executive Director Mike Snowden, Indiana is by far the largest state in the United States that has a statewide texting solution in which no matter where you are, if you text 911 it will go to a local PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point). That PSAP has the capability of receiving your text and texting you back so you can have the conversation.
“It first started in 2015 in Indiana, but it did not get to be statewide until just recently,” Snowden told The Reporter. “Hamilton County has had the ability to have outbound text messages since February of 2015 and we have had the ability to have inbound text messages since the summer of 2015. That is an important distinction.”
If you pocket-dial 911 and hang up the phone, the dispatch center does not know if it was accidental or if you are having an actual emergency.
“Before texting to 911, we would try to call you and you wouldn’t answer, because no one ever does, and we would not know where you were because it’s a cell call,” Snowden explained. “The level of accuracy on cell locations is wide. Sometimes they are very accurate and sometimes they are not accurate at all. All we could do before was call and then we really couldn’t find you.”
Now, with texting available both inbound and outbound from the Hamilton County dispatch center, it is easier to determine if you are truly in need of help.
“Now when you accidentally dial 911 and hang up, we call you back first – and you don’t answer because nobody ever does – and then we text you,” Snowden said. “We have a phenomenal success rate with texting people. Nearly 97 or 98 percent of the time they will answer us. We will say, ‘This is 911. Is there an emergency?’ They will reply and sometimes it really is, but most often we hear, ‘No it was an accident. Sorry,’ and we are able to get closure to that call. Before text-to-911, we were not able to get closure.”
Hamilton County has many more outbound text messages than we have inbound. In 2017 they received 216 incoming texts and they made 8,096 outgoing.
According to our news gathering partners at WISH-TV News 8, Indiana’s dispatch centers average between 500 and 600 text-to-911 calls each day and the service became available in all 92 counties during June of this year.
“We would much rather you call 911 if it is at all possible,” Snowden said. “The idea of texting to 911 – that’s the moment when you are locked in the closet and the bad guys are on the other side of the door, or when you are in a medical situation where you can’t speak. The other place this is really big is for our deaf and hearing-impaired folks in Hamilton County. This was a huge thing for that community. We are so happy this is available for them. Statewide those folks were so underserved. The ability to have one-on-one communications with a 911 center instead of going through an intermediary has been huge for that community.”