WINNEBAGO COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A jump in accidental 911 calls has several local sheriff’s offices reminding folks to be more careful.
“I would say that we take at least anywhere from 20-50 a day,” said Kyle Nachman.
Nachman is a 911 dispatcher at the Winnebago County Communication Center, where staff responded to 2,038 accidental 911 calls in 2019 alone.
He tells FOX 11 most people who call by mistake quickly hang up, and that’s actually the wrong thing to do.
“If we don’t make any contact with someone on a hang-up call I have to try and contact them back using the resources we have which can take several minutes. If we do have a high-priority incident happening and I’m tied up I can’t help my co-workers because I’m trying to locate a pocket dial.”
With a lot of smartphones having a feature that allows you to call for help with a simple click of a few buttons, placing an accidental call is easy to do.
“The SOS Call is a feature that allows the Apple consumer to create an emergency call by pressing down the volume and the power button,” phone expert Xavier Stringer said. “If you hold them down it will pull up an SOS emergency call slider on the screen.”
Nachman said the feature can be useful, in times of a real emergency and encourages people to use it if they actually need help.
“If you have an argument in a household you may have someone dial 911 or have someone use that feature. Fortunately, we got some GPS coordinates off the phone and sent someone over after hearing an argument in the background.”
But if you happen to call 911 by mistake Nachman says the best thing you can do is to stay on the line until you speak with a dispatcher.
“So we don’t have to track you down and use our resources and send over a police officer knowing it was an accident.”
Click here to learn more about the SOS feature and how it can be deactivated.
