There are emergencies where calling 911 isn’t possible.
“An example we had in 2021 was [a] passenger with a drunk driver,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Raquel Zick told the Sun. “They can’t just say, ‘Hey, this person is driving me down the San Marcos Pass and they’re drunk’ … situations where someone is within earshot and they want to reach out for help.”
Power outages can impact cellphone towers and people can’t call, but they can still text. These circumstances prompted all of Santa Barbara County’s law enforcement agencies, including the Sheriff’s Office, to allow people in emergency situations to text 911.
“It’s widely available; it’s available in all states except for New Mexico, that’s what was shared with me, but the local agencies have to opt in to accept the text messages,” Zick said, adding that if a jurisdiction hasn’t opted in, the texter will receive a bounce-back message.
Santa Barbara County opted in to the text feature in 2020, she said. As of Dec. 12, the Sheriff’s Office has had 115 text-to-911 discussions versus 4,243 voice calls this year. While previous years’ data isn’t available, Zick anticipated a steady incline in texting as people become more aware of this option.
“During an emergency is not a time to try and educate somebody; we are not currently in an emergency so this is the time to educate people,” she said.
Prior to taking on her role as the public information officer, Zick worked as a dispatch officer and still steps in to serve in dispatch part-time, and she’s had people in emergency situations call the non-emergency line, email her, and message her on social media. In some of her experiences, she’s lucky to catch the emergency-related messages within minutes. Others have sat for hours before she can address them.
In those situations when someone is contacting through a non-emergency means, Zick will transfer the information to dispatch who will handle the situation.
“When somebody is having an emergency, it’s not necessarily a teachable moment. … If there’s an opportunity afterward, we circle back,” she said. “You go into that lizard brain when you’re in an emergency and it probably makes sense to them in the moment, but when you’re not in the moment you’re just thinking, ‘Why would you think that’s OK?’ But that’s for another time.”
The text feature also presents another option for people who might be more comfortable texting rather than talking over the phone.
“It’s a very helpful service; one of the downsides, which feels very obvious, is there is a bit of a delay. They do have to type out the message and wait for a response; there is a bit of a volley,” she said. “[If] the options are a slow volley or non-reporting, this is far better.”
Texting also doesn’t pinpoint an exact location in the same way a phone call does. Landlines are the best because dispatchers can get an exact street address; a cellphone gives an address within a certain perimeter.
“A text is a general distance from the nearest tower, and that can be quite a needle in the haystack,” Zick said. “One of the very first things you can lead with is you can start with your location. Location is everything when sending an emergency response; we can send all the disciplines of help to an address when we’ve got it.”
While locations may be more general now, dispatch technology is always evolving and improving.
“There’s always something new in that world that you would otherwise think is a bit static … but it’s definitely there and definitely what they are navigating,” she said.
At this time, the text feature is only available for emergencies. People can report non-emergencies to the Sheriff’s Office by calling (805) 683-2724.
Highlight
• CommUnify recently announced its first-ever Upward Mobility Summit to be held simultaneously at Santa Barbara City College and Allan Hancock College (connected digitally) on Jan. 24 from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The Santa Barbara County nonprofit will be leading a consortium of 15 local public and private organizations to increase awareness of the high level of poverty in the county. The summit will kick off a two-year initiative to reframe the narrative around poverty by using the Upward Mobility Framework created by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., which creates a foundation for “efforts to advance upward mobility and racial equity for people and communities,” according to the institute’s website. Santa Barbara County is a member of 26 localities across the U.S. that have joined the Mobility Action Learning Network to receive training and technical assistance to incorporate strategies and solutions that promote mobility and equity in their communities. Visit communifysb.org/upward-mobility-summit for more information and to register for the event.
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at toconnor@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 19-29, 2024.
