By Eleanor Boudreau
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkno/local-wkno-921650.mp3
Memphis, TN – Former NBA player Lorenzen Wright's call to 9-1-1 just before he was murdered in Memphis in late July illustrates a common problem with 9-1-1: when you dial from a cell phone the dispatcher doesn't know where you are.
In Shelby County, as in most urban areas, more than 60 percent of emergency calls come from cell phones.
And as a result, Shelby County 9-1-1 spent almost all of its $500,000 advertising budget last year on ads that said, "When calling from your cell phone knowing 9-1-1 isn't enough because a call from your cell phone doesn't provide an address."
First vice president of the Association of Public Safety Officials International Greg Riddle says the message isn't getting through, "The public generally thinks because they see it on T.V. that every time you call 9-1-1 from a cell phone we know exactly where you are and that is absolutely not the case."
Tennessee was one of the first states to provide all its emergency call centers with the most advanced technology for locating cell phones.
Leaving the spy movies and T.V. shows aside, here's how that technology works. In Shelby County if you call 9-1-1 from a cell phone, the call will go to a cell tower. It might be the tower closest to you. But it also might not be.
"If that tower is all full they will hand you off to another tower," said Raymond Chiozza, head of Shelby County 9-1-1.
When your call gets to the 9-1-1 dispatcher, all that the dispatcher sees, at first, is the phone number and the location of the cell phone tower. It takes about 15 seconds for the dispatcher to get a latitude and longitude on the cell phone itself. That information is accurate within 50-300 meters.
"It's not like this is an exact science," said Chiozza. "You could be a football field or two away from where they're showing you are."
This is especially problematic if you are in an apartment building. It doesn't matter if you have a smart phone, the information it transmits to 9-1-1 will be the same as a regular phone. And the technology doesn't work if you hang up and the 9-1-1 dispatcher calls you back.
Lorenzen Wright's call was disconnected before the dispatcher could get any location information. When the dispatcher called back, no one answered.
An administrative review launched after Wright's body was found concluded the dispatcher had followed procedure.
"The only other thing that you might be able to do is contact the cell carrier," said Riddle.
But going through the cell phone carrier can take minutes, hours, days, and, even, a subpoena.
Neither Riddle nor Chiozza has any numbers on how many cell phone calls 9-1-1 gets and just can't track. But the dispatcher who took Wright's call said it's "not uncommon."
If the same scenario happened with a land-line phone, the dispatcher would have sent a police car.
"Because they have an exact address associated with that land-line telephone," Riddle said.