Published: September 30, 2006 11:49 pm         

Police chief on wireless 911: ‘It will save lives’

Enid Police Department Chief Rick West sees approval of a 50-cent fee on the Nov. 7 ballot as something that would make Garfield County safer.

The fee would enable the Enid/Garfield County 911 Call Center to receive more information about cell phone callers, including their name and location.

Citing a report that says Oklahoma is 49th in the nation as far as wireless enhanced 911 service, West said he wants to bring the county’s call center — located at Enid Police Department — up to meet to higher standards.

“I can’t emphasize enough the importance the passage of the fee is,” he said. “A lot of the public doesn’t understand, when they call from a cell phone we don’t know where you’re at.”

West said an increasing number of calls to the center are coming from wireless phones, giving dispatchers little information.

The current system used by Enid/Garfield County 911 Center was developed for standard or land-line phone systems. Wireless 911 calls go through the center through administrative, not emergency, lines.

When a call from a land-line phone is made to the center, the system provides dispatchers with information including the resident’s name, address, telephone number, and type of structure (residence or commercial) and lists appropriate emergency responders who provide service to that area of the county.

The information received by dispatchers from a cellular 911 caller is a number, and that number may not be displayed based on services offered by the caller’s cell phone provider.

With an upgraded system, dispatchers could receive the number, name of the caller, location, which cell tower is handling the call and which emergency responders to send.

A measure that allows communities to vote on a 50-cent fee to fund wireless en-hanced 911 systems, Oklahoma House Bill 1751, requires cell phone providers to charge the fee to wireless users’ bills. All of those fees would go toward funding a wireless enhanced 911 system. The 50-cent fee cannot be raised or lowered without voter OK.

The fee will help sustain the budget of Enid/Garfield County 911 Center, and HB 1751 would require audits of the fees collected for the wireless system.

“Fifty cents a month or $6 a year isn’t that much to pay for the service you’d be getting,” West said. “It will save lives.”