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ARMONK, N.Y. Consider this: The North Castle police 911 dispatcher picks up a call and theres no answer on the other end.
The dispatcher calls the number back to ask if there is an emergency. No one picks up. What should the police do?
A 911 hang up may be an emergency or may be a mistake. Regardless, North Castle Police Department Sergeant Regan Hufnagle said they will send a squad car to your door.
If they hang up well reach out to them and even if we speak with the person and they say its not an emergency well send a squad car out to check just to be safe, Hufnagle said. We would rather deal with it that way than have it end up being something that we didnt respond to and should have.
Hufnagle said 911 calls dialed in error are not uncommon in his department and on average happen multiple times a day. In the past two weeks, the North Castle Police responded to 23 accidental 911 calls, or about five percent of their total calls during that span.
It would save police resources if people would just admit it if they've made a call in error, Westchester County Police spokesperson Kieran OLeary said.
We prefer people to stay on the line if they do dial 911 when they dont mean to, OLeary said. Because if they freak out or get embarrassed and hang up, we will send police to their door.
New York State Police Lieutenant Hector Hernandez said the Hawthorne headquarters receives around 1,200 abandoned calls a month, including misdials, hang-ups and disconnected calls from cellphones. The number is so high because the state police dispatch for all 911 cellphone calls made in Westchester County, and also dispatch for the towns of Somers, Cortlandt, North Salem, Lewisboro, and Pound Ridge.
In 2009, the Westchester County Police received 92 calls in error, O'Leary said. In 2010, the numbered jumped to 107. By 2011, the number spiked to 317 when the county began patrolling Ossining. Through May of 2012, the department received 105 calls.
Westchesters area code, 914, is just one digit away from the universal emergency number, but that may not be a factor in the large number of misplaced 911 calls, O'Leary said. However, the telephone system in local businesses may play a factor.
At some businesses, in order to make an outgoing phone call, you need to dial the number nine first, then the number one, and then the ten-digit number you want to call, OLeary said. So naturally people dial the first two numbers and accidentally hit the one twice.
Most police department policies require a patrol check on any 911 call that is not resolved in case a caller in trouble cannot speak over the phone. More often, it's a young child who dialed the number while playing with the phone. Still, OLeary said, it is better to be safe than sorry.
It comes with the territory; we dont view it as an inconvenience, OLeary said. Its our duty to make absolutely sure that the public is safe so its not any sort of burden to us.
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