HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — 911 Operators in Hernando County can now receive text messages.
Sheriff Al Nienhuis said on Wednesday his county is one of only eleven in the state of Florida where that is possible. Nienhuis says the system upgrade has been in the works for about a year.
The software change for the 911 system will allow operators to see text messages and respond directly, but Nienhuis points out voice calls are still the preferred method of contacting 911.
“We’re not going to be able to tell what’s going on in the background. When we are talking to somebody, a citizen on the phone we sometimes get as much information from what we hear in the background as we get from the actual caller,” said Nienhuis.
911 operators also won’t see an address of where the texter is and will have to rely on a positioning system from the texter’s phone service provider to find out where they are.
“Sometimes we just get a proximity of where the 911 call or text is coming from, sometimes feet, sometimes yards and sometimes a little bit more than that, sometimes it’s several yards,” said Nienhuis.
Niienhuis is also urging texters to use clear and concise language and not to use abbreviations, slang or emoji’s when texting a 911 operator.
“When you are dealing with a 911 operator, you want to leave those out, you want to be very, very clear and make sure the message is being transmitted appropriately, because something that may be very common slang to you, the 911 operator may not understand what you are talking about,” said Nienhuis.
Still, there are some cases where calling a 911 operator may not be possible and a voice call may even be dangerous for people in some situations. “You will have the secrecy of the caller where they could call without the suspect knowing about it and that may get us there quicker and that would be better,” said Hernando County Communications Manager Steve Porter.
Sadly, the recent mass murder at the Pulse nightclub revealed a disturbing fact about most 911 call centers in Florida; they are not set up to receive text messages. In the case of the Pulse nightclub shooting, several people texted loved ones and asked them to call 911 because they did not want gunman Omar Mateen to hear their voices and know where they were.
Porter says the Hernando County system upgrade cost just over $33,000 and is already online for anyone in Hernando.
