Governor asks for examination of state's 911 systems

Missouri's 911 centers receive more calls than ever from wireless systems, but few in the state can respond to a caller using a cell phone.

Cape Girardeau County 911 director Dave Hitt is hoping a special legislative committee requested by Gov. Matt Blunt on Wednesday to investigate the state's 911 systems could bring some attention to the problem.

Blunt is asking for a series of hearings to be conducted by the committee to gather information from local first responder communities to assess current systems' capabilities, ways to extend coverage to regions without 911 service, advancing access for the deaf and hard of hearing, consolidation and regionalizing efforts and mapping systems to identify wireless coverage.

Hitt said the mapping systems for wireless coverage would be at the top of his wish list.

Hitt estimates the Cape Girardeau County 911 call center, with locations in the Cape Girardeau and Jackson police departments and the sheriff's department in Jackson, receives about half of its emergency calls from cell phones. At best, cell calls can be tracked to a tower, but that may be miles from the caller, he said.

Missouri is the only state without a way to recover 911 cellular calls, Hitt said.

Twice voters have rejected a proposed tax on cell phones that would be used to upgrade the state's 911 systems to pinpoint wireless calls, he said.

Hitt thinks a cell phone tax is inevitable for the state's emergency call centers to respond to wireless users.

It's not necessarily the technology that's holding Cape Girardeau County back from pinpointing wireless calls as much as the money needed to contract with cell phone carriers to get telephone numbers to track, Hitt said.

He said the county's equipment is up-to-date, with a current project ongoing for about a year to upgrade the system.

"Our equipment is about as new as you can get," he said. "I feel comfortable with our equipment."

A mapping system is being integrated into the county's 911 system now that will enable dispatchers to see where a call is coming from -- provided it's from a land line and not a cell phone.

Currently, when a land line is used, the telephone number is displayed to dispatchers, along with the name and address of the person the telephone number is registered to.

Telephone customers pay an 8 percent tax on their basic telephone service that is used to provide 911 service, Hitt said.

Capt. Ruth Ann Dickerson of the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department said responding to wireless calls costs the county money because the expense of tracking cell phone calls is not funded by a tax. The effort put into locating those calls comes out of the sheriff's department budget, she said, and the cost is growing.

Last week, Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin said he will support a request by an association of emergency responders to tighten requirements on how accuracy in tracking 911 calls is measured.

CTIA, the nation's top wireless industry lobbying group, has reported that 230,000 911 calls are made from cell phones each day.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

carel@semissourian.com

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