Greetings, Tribe!
My heart is incredibly heavy with this post, but I need to vent…
As many of you know, just over a month ago I had to call 911 because of very close gunfire in my neighborhood. Long story short, I wanted on hold for over 25minutes before hanging up. I contacted the sheriff’s department the next day and was informed that there was no record of my call. Since then, I have been pressing for answers and have been waiting for a while.
Sunday evening I had to call 911 again for close gunfire. I was on hold for 6 minutes before anyone answered. It was about 30minutes later when the police arrived that I learned the gunfire was coming from a couple feet from my home. That’s right, I was on hold with 911 dispatch for 6 minutes when there was several shots being discharged on my property.
I started this post yesterday and just today I received the following email from the Sheriff’s Department:
Shannon,
I’m sorry this explanation took so long but the issue was complicated and we have just recently tracked down the problem.
When you called 911 your call was routed through INDigital. INDigital is a service contracted by the State 911 Board. The Indiana State 911 Board is responsible for all 911 calls. INDigital then routes 911 calls to the appropriate agency. This all happens in a fraction of a second. At that time there were only 16 trunk lines for Marion County. When more than 16 cell calls were sent to Marion County they received a busy signal and were eventually rerouted to a backup phone system (MEVO Phones). We have the MEVO Phones but they were disabled due to a phone outage earlier and other issues with that system. Once we found out about the calls being rerouted to MEVO we had them reactivated. This immediately caused a problem in our center. The MEVO phones were ringing constantly. We finally discovered the issue of the 16 trunk lines. As of yesterday INDigital increased our trunk lines to 32 and we believe this solved our problem. In the event we receive more than 32 calls at a time they will roll over to the MEVO phones and we will answer them.
I know this took a long time to resolve but there are a lot of players and it was imperative we get it right. I am confident we have this issue resolved.
Thanks for your time. Without your complaint this may have gone on longer and we may have missed more calls.
Bart
While we are still weighing options on our living situation, I am feeling better about being able to get help when needed.
Finally, in this quest to reach answers, I learned that texting 911 will get a faster response than calling. The Sheriff’s Department still requests that you call as you can provide more information that way, but if you can’t get through they encourage you to text. Not all areas offer the texting option, but here is a link of where you can text and it is updated monthly: https://www.fcc.gov/files/text-911-master-psap-registryxlsx
Stay safe and stay vigilant!
Happy trails!
