911 Emergency Telephone System

Emergency? Call 911 -- for a small fee. Strapped for money to hire additional police officers and firefighters, Ventura will soon charge a monthly fee for emergency calls to help pay for services. Residents in the seaside community will pay $1.49 a month for emergency service access beginning May 1. If they choose to opt out of the plan, they will be charged $50 for each 911 call. City officials stressed that the action is vital to improving public safety services.

If you live in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange or San Diego county and think you are having a heart attack, call 911 rather than have a friend or family member drive you to the hospital. It could mean the difference between life and death. That's the conclusion of a UCLA professor who reviewed data from counties around the nation -- including four in Southern California -- that have implemented a new approach to handling heart attack patients.

Call it a case of drugged dialing. Two men attempted to page their drug dealer from a Pomona pay phone with an urgent "911" order for dope about 3 a.m. Tuesday. Instead, they got through to police dispatchers, authorities said. "No one said criminals are smart," said Pomona Police Sgt. Michael Olivieri. "When they were interviewing afterward, they admitted they were in a hurry for dope and made an error in dialing." The call was traced, and a patrol car sent to the scene.

In the 40 minutes before a woman's death last month at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, two separate callers pleaded with 911 dispatchers to send help because the hospital staff was ignoring her as she writhed on the floor, according to audio recordings of the calls. "My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out," Jose Prado, the woman's boyfriend, told the 911 dispatcher through an interpreter.

The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday announced plans to pursue improvements to the city's 911 system, saying callers in the future will be able to use text messages, photos and even video from cellphones to seek emergency assistance. Officials told the L.A. Police Commission that they were beginning to seek money to install the new system, which they believe could aid crime fighting by providing callers with alternative ways to alert authorities and provide evidence swiftly.

Two dispatchers with the California Highway Patrol initially dismissed 911 calls reporting a fire on the south rim of Lake Tahoe, causing a seven- to nine-minute delay in response, recordings released Friday show. On the tape of five calls answered by the CHP's Truckee field office, dispatchers tell callers the smoke they are seeing is from a controlled burn in the area. The smoke actually was from a fire that ultimately destroyed 254 homes and burned 3,100 acres of wilderness.

Cellular telephone carriers in Riverside will now have emergency calls routed to the city's Public Safety Communications Center, officials said. The move will provide faster response, Riverside Police Department spokesperson Steve Frasher said. Previously, emergency calls from cellphones were directed to the California Highway Patrol in San Bernardino before being rerouted to the proper authority.

An explosion in calls from cellular phones has overwhelmed critical parts of California's 911 system, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lost calls and lengthy waits to reach dispatchers even as crimes or potentially deadly emergencies unfold. Wireless 911 calls statewide have jumped roughly tenfold since 1990, to more than 8 million last year. Cell calls now make up the majority of all 911 calls, and key emergency agencies are struggling to adapt.

The Lake Forest couple were asleep in their house with their two toddlers when a SWAT team -- alerted that a killer was on the loose -- stormed the residence with a helicopter circling overhead and police dogs prowling the perimeter. Deputies handcuffed the couple at gunpoint in their backyard as the night in the south Orange County suburb turned dramatic.

Orange County authorities Thursday released a summary of three previous calls made by the 19-year-old suspect accused of hacking into the county's emergency 911 system. The 911 calls were made to police departments in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Mukilteo, Wash., the hometown of suspect Randall T. Ellis, officials said.