Recently, 911 dispatchers have been facing an issue across the nation.

Adair County Sheriff Jeff Vandewater says he’s seen postings from several different law enforcement offices around the nation that unintentional 911 calls from wireless devices were becoming an issue. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio that he screens all calls for the weekly report he sends to media sources so he decided to see if this was something that was affecting his office as well.

“So I went through for just this last week, and I would say over half of our 911 calls that came in via cellular device, the user unintentionally dialed 911, or the phone kind of may have been activated in such a way to automatically call 911.”

Vandewater explains that these unintentional calls lead to the issues that law enforcement have been seeing. He mentions that the biggest issue is the time that dispatchers spend responding to the calls.

“It does tie up the 911 dispatcher, having to call back that number to try to verify if there is an emergency or if there’s not an emergency. And sometimes that can take quite a few minutes and multiple phone calls to verify the existence or nonexistence of an emergency.”

Vandewater adds that one of the biggest ways to work on solving the issue, could be to familiarize ourselves with our phones.

“Our smartphones have become so smart and have so many features, that they’ve become difficult to operate or to understand how they work, and all the settings. So I think the biggest thing is just to become familiar with your own device.”

Vandewater tells Raccoon Valley Radio that if you do accidentally call 911, don’t panic and hang up, because the call will still register with the dispatcher. He says the easiest way to help the dispatcher is to just stay on the line, and when they answer, explain what happened and that you aren’t in danger or in an emergency situation.