After the Dane County 911 Center revealed the mishandling of a call from homicide victim Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone the day of her death, many UW-Madison students are questioning the center's ability to provide proper emergency response.
I understand they probably had a bunch of calls that they were dealing with, but it's kind of a big failure of the part of 911 to do what it's supposed to do,"" UW-Madison senior Gabriel Endres said.
At a news conference Thursday, 911 Center Director Joe Norwick said a dispatcher mistakenly thought Zimmermann's call was an accidental or ""hang-up"" call. When a hang-up call is made from a cell phone, center policy dictates that the dispatcher call the number back to verify that there is no emergency, but Norwick said police are not dispatched because technology cannot locate an exact address from a cell phone.
Madison Police Department policy, however, says that the technology has been available since at least 2006, with upgrades allowing dispatchers to receive the ""subscriber name, phone number and location from where the cellular call was made.""
LeeAnn Krieg, first vice president of the Wisconsin Emergency Number Association, said 2005 legislation used a monthly surcharge on cell phone bills to develop more precise locating technology.
Krieg said the fees are collected then distributed among counties to implement their technological upgrades. Despite the push for improvement, Krieg said current technology is limited in its cell phone locating abilities.
""The technology is there, but with the way the technology is right now you can still only get [the location] within a certain area,"" Krieg said.
Krieg said the current technology lacks the ability to vertically locate people who live in multi-floor residences, such as high-rise apartments or dormitories. Endres, however, said technological imperfections should not hinder an emergency response team's efforts.
""I feel like it would just be a huge step even if they can find where generally you are, that's good enough that they should be able to do their job and figure out [a location] beyond that,"" Endres said.
