The 911 system was originally meant for landlines, and pinpointing a location on a wireless call can be a bit more difficult. Nebraska Public Service Commission is trying to find out why it took 40 minutes to locate a cell call that eventually left John and Jason Edwards of Papillion, NB, fatally shot on February 12. The brothers were helping their sister move out of an ex-boyfriend’s house near 140th and Miami Streets in unincorporated Douglas County, according to Omaha.com.
Information as to the location of the call by one of the brothers was transmitted to the Douglas County 911 Center, but Omaha.com reports that it may have gotten “hung up” before it got to a dispatcher. The brother could not provide the address, and the center could not track the location with technology that “should have been available on the cell phone and the cell tower that received the call.” This information is part of Verizon’s “Phase II” technology, but a Verizon official said that the data was “hung up.” Therefore, the 911 operator only received “Phase I” information “that gave the location of the cell tower that received the 911 call, which was a mile away from the shooting scene,” Omaha.com reports.
Phase II technology would have pinpointed the location within 300 yards. However, an operator had to call the brother back to get a more precise location and the shooter’s name, which possibly saved the sister’s life. “He didn’t pick up the first call, but answered the last three, providing the name of the shooter in the last call, which allowed the dispatcher to discover the address of the shooting scene and send help,” according to Omaha.com.
Mission Critical Partners has been hired to investigate the issue, including making calls from the shooting scene “to test if area cell phone towers are performing within FCC standards.” Douglas County 911’s call records have been requested, to see how many Phase II calls make it through.
Omaha.com reports that in 2015, Douglas County’s 911 center received 536,729 “911” calls. Of those, 75.4 percent were from wireless phones, but only 42 percent of those wireless calls initially provided the more-precise Phase II data.
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