I work in 911 dispatch, there is an audible groan whenever anyone here gets a text to 911
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that it’s a tool that’s available, there are certain cases where it can be really useful, domestic abuse situations where you’re unable to make a voice call because you’re abuser is in the room or car with you, an active shooter situation where you’re hiding and don’t want to give away your location, people with hearing or speech issues, etc.
That’s almost never what it gets used for.
Most of the time it’s someone calling in some non-emergency. I suspect in their minds it’s probably quicker and more convenient for us to get a text, but it really isn’t. We’re not multitasking and taking other calls at the same time we’re on the text, when we’re on the text, that is what we’re doing, same as if we were on a regular 911 call. And that first text usually is missing some crucial information about what is going on, and it takes a whole lot longer to go back and for asking questions and waiting for an answer by text than if you just made a phone call, if they even reply at all to answer my questions, very often they put their phone in their pocket and never look at it again for the rest of the night. We can’t even call them back because we don’t know if it’s safe for them to speak on the phone, we just have to sit there for 5 minutes waiting for a reply that isn’t coming before we can disconnect.
I’ve also definitely had at least one instance where the caller was definitely texting while driving, and not for anything remotely urgent enough that they couldn’t have found somewhere safe to pull over first.
Agency policies will vary on how texts to be handled, I can only really speak for where I work.
Most calls, even a lot of actual actual emergencies, if my caller is cooperative and knows where they are, and the situation isn’t actively evolving while I’m on the phone, I can handle in about 2 minutes or less, sometimes I can even get it down to less than a minute. I’m going to easily spend twice that on most text conversations, and often I’m going to be tied up on it significantly longer.
Technology also varies a bit from one place to another, but we also don’t get the same kind of location info with a text like we do on a regular phonecall (and even on a call our location data may not always be super accurate or useful) we did recently get some of our systems updated, and we get more information than we did before, but it’s still less reliable than on a phone call.
And we also can’t transfer a text like we can with a voice call, so if you’re texting regarding something going on at your grandma’s house in another state (we get calls like that all the time, where someone tells a friend or relative about something going on, but can’t or won’t call 911 themselves) we have to either A convince you to take a voice call so we can transfer you, or B make a call to them while still texting you, and play middle man relaying questions and answers between you and the other dispatcher, so you’re tying up dispatchers in 2 jurisdictions on your call (it used to be that we weren’t able to make an outgoing call while we were on a text, so we’d have to have 2 dispatchers at our center tied up on these texts, one to message back and forth with you, and another to relay the info to the correct agency by phone. We’re a pretty well-funded county, so I’m sure there’s a lot of dispatch centers still out there where that’s still the case)
I already occasionally get people trying to send us pictures and links with no explanation (pro-tip, we can’t see your pictures or open your links with our current tech, and even if we could opening links would probably be a no-no from a cyber security standpoint)
If at all possible, please just make a voice call, it will be quicker. If you genuinely cannot make a voice call, at least make sure your first text contains the correct location (address, municipality, nearest cross street, apartment number or name of the business if applicable should cover your bases pretty well) and a good description of what is going on. Then please keep your phone with you and try to answer any follow up texts we send you quickly and succinctly.
And again, don’t get me wrong, it really can be an amazing tool when it’s needed, but it’s a massive pain in the ass for us when people use it when it’s not necessary and usually makes just about every part of our job harder and slower, which means slower responses to your emergency.