By Kelsey Bray, Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (Cheyenne)

CHEYENNE – One local woman used to call 9-1-1 every day to ask what time it was.

Last summer, a child playing with his grandparents’ old cellphone called 9-1-1 47 times in one day, sometimes reporting fake emergencies like a fire or shots fired.

The last couple of weeks, people have been calling 9-1-1 to ask when a snowstorm will stop or when their roads will be plowed.

Local dispatchers get thousands of these abuse, misuse or hang-up calls a year. Laramie County Combined Communications Center Director Glen Crumpton said of the 46,851 calls in 2012, 5,247 were improper calls.

The calls range from people calling about animals in town to people who call regularly with non-emergencies.

“We get a lot of repeat callers who sit at home and call one, two, three times a week,” Crumpton said.

One of the biggest problems for Laramie County dispatchers is hang-up calls. In 2012, there were 2,939 cellphone hang-up calls.

“One of our bigger hang-up cellular phone calls is children playing with old telephones,” Crumpton said. “Every telephone has the ability to still call 9-1-1.”

He said abuse and misdial calls typically take less time to deal with. Dispatchers can talk to the person and determine if they need emergency services.

“Most of those abuse calls can be handled short and quick and redirected to a non-emergent number,” he said.

But 9-1-1 hang-up calls aren’t so easy.

“We burn a lot of time,” Crumpton said. “On all of them, we have to try to re-establish contact, so we’re calling the number back.”

When someone calls 9-1-1, dispatchers automatically get the caller’s number and address. If it’s a landline, they see a home address, while a cellphone shows the address of the person the phone is registered to.

Dispatchers can get the latitude and longitude of the caller, but only if the phone has the ability and the caller stays on the line.

So when people hang up, dispatchers call them back to get a location and find out what’s happening.

“A lot of people are embarrassed, so they won’t answer,” communications center shift supervisor Rick Fisher said. “Then they end up with officers at their house.”

If the person doesn’t answer, the dispatcher tries to find their location through the cellphone company, checks their call history with the center and may send responders to the area, Crumpton said.

Last year, the Cheyenne Police Department was sent to 176 of the abuse, misuse or hang-up calls, and the Laramie County Sheriff’s Department was sent to 92. About 75 percent of those turned out to be accidental or the officers couldn’t contact anyone.

On each of these calls, two officers respond.

“We send two officers because we treat every 9-1-1 call as an emergency until we determine otherwise,” Cheyenne Police spokesman Dan Long said. “It takes away two officers that could be taking other calls.”

And these improper calls add up. Fisher said they can get up to 40 a day.

“If 15 of those are just straight hang-up calls, that then entails a dispatcher spending five or 10 or 20 minutes calling the cellphone company and getting the information off that phone to send someone,” he said. “While it doesn’t seem like it’s that big of a deal, it does take up a lot of time in the room when you’re trying to deal with medical calls, other 9-1-1 calls, ambulances on the radio, police on the radio.”

It can also affect people who are calling in with true emergencies.

“We only have a certain amount of lines for homes and for cellphones,” Fisher said. “And if we have those lines being taken up, they’ll get a busy signal, which is truly disconcerting if you’re calling for help.”

To help, Crumpton said to stay on the line or answer when the dispatchers call back. People should also take the battery out of an old cellphone before letting a child play with it.

He added people should understand how their cellphone works and consider locking the screen or putting it in a case if it is easy to misdial 9-1-1.

What also helps is knowing when to call 9-1-1 and having the non-emergent number – 637-6525- readily available.

“Know when to call 9-1-1 means calling when a person is hurt or in danger – when you need police, fire or ambulance,” Crumpton said.

Copyright © 2013 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.