By Jesse Dungan, San Jose Mercury News
Original publication date: Jan. 28

Palo Alto, Calif. — The unusual calls to the Palo Alto emergency communications center started two weeks ago Thursday. Around 8:30 p.m., a dispatcher picked up the line to find no one on the other end. Twenty seconds later, the center fielded another phantom 911 call.

It was just the beginning.

The pattern repeated over the next five hours — between Jan. 13 and 14 — with the dispatch center receiving a total of 566 calls from an unsubscribed number, Charles Cullen, technical services director of the Palo Alto Police Department, told The Daily News in an interview Thursday.

“It’s a fairly high volume of calls during what we call swing shift, and usually the calls during that time period are more urgent, I would say, overall,” Cullen said.

Four dispatchers were on the job, however, so the repeat calls were just a nuisance.

Cullen said he doesn’t believe a prankster was responsible, but rather technology run amuck. Dispatchers tracked the calls to a Verizon cell phone tower. They contacted the company, which identified the electronic serial number of the mobile device and banned further calls.

Verizon said the device was manufactured by Continental Automotive Group, according to Cullen. The gadgets are typically installed in Ford vehicles and automatically dial 911 in the event of a crash, he said. However, it’s not yet clear whether the phantom calls actually came from a vehicle or what made the device go haywire.

“It’s not an intentional misuse,” Cullen said, “but it is a technology problem that shouldn’t occur.”

Dispatchers typically aren’t fans of devices that can dial 911 directly, because they can overburden the system, Cullen said. Instead, they favor services like OnStar, which vets calls before putting them through to dispatch centers.

There are also other emergency devices aimed at people with Alzheimer’s or other ailments that call 911 directly.

Cullen sits on the board of the California chapter of the National Emergency Number Association, which has asked the state’s 911 Emergency Communications Office to provide some type of regulation or vetting process before for-profit companies are able to produce devices that directly dial 911.

Meanwhile, Palo Alto may file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission if it determines the calls came from a vehicle, Cullen said.

It is a misdemeanor in Palo Alto to use an automatic dialing service that connects directly to the city’s dispatch center, according to Interim City Attorney Don Larkin.

The ordinance falls under a chapter of the city code dealing with building alarms, but it could be applied to devices installed in cars or other gadgets that directly dial 911, Larkin said. If the problem continues, however, the city could draft a more specific ordinance.

A similar problem was reported by the California Highway Patrol dispatch center in Vallejo on Wednesday, Cullen said. The center received more than 1,000 calls from an unsubscribed number that appear to have originated from a similar device.

About the Author
E-mail Jesse Dungan at jdungan@dailynewsgroup.com.

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Related Links

• “Investigation into Palo Alto Phantom Phone Calls Continues,” By Jesse Dungan, San Jose Mercury News. Jan. 28, 2011.