There is need for more awareness about accidental calls to 911 dispatchers. Every call to 9-1-1 is considered urgent. The problem is the common occurrence of pocket dials. There are days when there are more mistake calls than actual calls for help.
Numbers from a couple of Southern Colorado agencies offer perspective."I can tell you just in our dispatch center, yesterday, 62 of our 911 calls were pocket dials," said Natalie Sosa with El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. There are even more at the larger Colorado Springs Police Dispatch. "In April of 2018 we received just over 20,500 911 calls. For that month alone, of those, just over 4,000 were what we call abandoned or dropped 911 hang-up calls," said Sergeant John Koch.
Dispatchers have to find out if there an emergency or not for every call. "It does create an impact on the incoming calls. It also creates an impact on the resources," said Sosa.
