Some Winnipeg 911 calls being incorrectly routed to RCMP

A city committee is asking Winnipeg police to look into problems with 911 calls being incorrectly routed.

The citys protection and community services committee met Monday to discuss problems with 911 calls made from cellphones near the outskirts of the city incorrectly routing callers to a central call-centre in Brandon and then to an RCMP detachment.

Coun. [Russ] Wyatt had heard from constituents that when they were calling 911 in the city of Winnipeg there was some confusion. There was time lost because they were talking to a 911 centre in Brandon before they realized this was in fact, a Winnipeg call, saidCoun. JeffBrowaty.It happens, I guess, somewhat regularly and they do have the capability of transferring the calls again in emergency circumstances sometimes seconds are very costly."

The committee passed a motion to have Winnipeg police provide a report on the calls that were being incorrectly routed after Wyatt raised concerns he had heard from his constituents.

Wyatt said a family living in the east end of Transcona had called him after an attempted break and enter at their home. Three men allegedly tried to break into the home while the family was home, and when their daughter called police from a cell phone, she was incorrectly routed to RCMP in Oakbank.

The mistake meant a 15-minute delay before the family could get in touch with police in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg police aware of problem

Winnipeg Police Service isaware of the problem, and it's one that jurisdictions across Canada are dealing with.

Officials with the Winnipeg police said, "The system is working as designed.When any person makes a 911 call from a cell phone, whether the phone is a registered or an unregistered phone and with any phone provider,the signal looks for the closest tower with which to transmit to ensure that 911 call is answered as quickly as possible. With any call made closest to any jurisdictional boundaries that call has a likelihood of hitting a tower that is not necessarily pointed to the correct jurisdiction where the event is occurring."

The further apart towers are, the more likely it is a cell phone tower will ping one outside of the city. When that happens,the 911 calls get re-routed to Brandon's call centre.

The Winnipeg Police Board did provide a briefing on the issue for councillors on Friday and said the problem can be compounded by a lack of digital information on boundaries between municipalities.

"There is no software or provincially-owned mapping system that provides accurate boundary information for who is responsible to attend," officials said. "We need to manually and verbally get as much information as we can and then redirect to where we believe is the correct agency."

No date set for report

The next step will be for the Winnipeg Police Board to request Winnipeg police produce the report on misdirected calls.

I dont know if this will be a written report or an oral report, but were going to get some answers on it, said Browaty.

He said they may need to talk to different telecom providers to get further answers.

That could prove difficult, though, as Winnipeg police can't track how often this happens.

"We regularly transfer calls between 911centresfor a variety of reasons, and do not have any data available that tracks why a call is transferred," officials said."Our current statistical package does not allow for this type of query, but our future upgrade (in 2015) will allow for more detailed reporting."

So what should you do?

Wyatt saidpeople living near the outskirts of town should try to make any emergency calls from a landline, or immediately identify that they are calling from inside city limits.

Winnipeg police said that whenanyonecalls 911, it is importantthey state what the address is of the emergency, and that they stay on the line for the call-taker to verify the location.

"The 911 operator answers all calls with '911 What is the address of your emergency?'If someone is calling from a landline, the infrastructure used to relay the call is different from a cellphone call, and Enhanced 911 provides the registered address of the landline to the 911 operator," officials said. "The 911 operator will still verify the location of the emergency with the caller."