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Muncie part of national 911 issue locating cellphone users

MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) - Dispatchers in Muncie are among those nationally who often aren't able to quickly pinpoint the location of many 911 calls from cellphones.

According to a recent investigation by USA Today, dispatchers often only see where the nearest cell tower is, if they get any information at all. Muncie Police Sgt. Joe Krejsa told The Star Press (http://tspne.ws/1EaCPaL ) that problems with locating 911 callers using cellphones has led officers to show up at wrong addresses.

"It happens fairly frequently from serious things, on down to criminal mischief," Krejsa said. "Burglaries, fights, you name it. We're trying to find the location where the person in need is, we go to the wrong address, we call the person back and try to find them, we lose time."

The 911 system, which was built for landline phones, doesn't have direct access to smartphone location data like applications do. Dispatchers must rely on relays.

New rules from the Federal Communications Commission would require carriers to transmit location data in 40 percent of cellphone calls to 911 by 2017. That would be bumped up to 80 percent by 2021.

Delaware County's 911 system has mapping software, but dispatchers often instead use workarounds. Dispatcher Andrea Serf says she has found it's faster and more accurate to plug latitude and longitude coordinates from calls into Google Maps.

"A good 75 or 80 percent of the time, I'm able to get someone in that general vicinity," Serf said.

Krejsa said people calling 911 should tell dispatchers their location, rather than depend on technology.

"Now that most of the world is on cellphones, dispatchers can't tell where you are," Krejsa said.

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Information from: The Star Press, http://www.thestarpress.com

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