WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2004
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
3A
PHONES: Big 12 universities use for multiple purposes
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
numbers will go down or up," said Elizabeth Phillips, assistant director in the KU Public Safety Office.
Capt. Schuyler Bailey of the KU Public Safety Office attributed the increase in calls to higher student awareness. His office has advertised the phones through the KU Public Safety Web site, wwwku.edu/-kucops/, student orientation and safety meetings in residence halls such as the one that Beadles attended.
Security officers check the phones once a week to make sure that they are working. Phillips said. She said these calls were not included in the above numbers. Dispatch officers receive calls from the blue phones for many reasons. Students have used the blue phones for car problems, needing directions and asking for an escort or taxi service. Crimes and emergencies are also reported, she said.
"We once had a student run out of a building that was on fire and use an emergency phone to report the fire," Phillips said.
"I'm a tiny girl and it's pitch black and I can't get into my car," O'Neil said into the emergency phone.
Nocturnal nightmare
Susan O'Neil, Overland Park sophomore, used a blue phone when she had car trouble last semester. She returned to her car after a night class to find her car alarm malfunctioning. It would not stop sounding for two hours, she said, and her key no longer unlocked the doors. She was scared and frustrated.
"I started crying because I didn't know what to do," she said.
The dispatch officer told her that if she wasn't blocking traffic, he couldn't help her. O'Neil was glad she had a cell phone. She didn't know who to call so she called her dad. He drove out from Overland Park to help his
daughter. Two police cars drove by while her father was working on the car but never stopped, she said.
Dispatch officers will not help students get into locked cars, Phillips said. Locks on cars have become more difficult to break into without damaging the car, she said.
"We are not professional locksmiths," she said. "But the officer should have offered to call her a tow truck."
The Public Safety Office does not have a breakdown of the kinds of calls readily available. Each report would have to be looked at individually. It would take several weeks to get that information, Phillips said.
At the University of Colorado the number of calls made has increased from 339 last year to 434 this year through October. The school has 60 outside emergency phones around campus. An estimated 5 percent of the calls made on these phones resulted in police intervention of a crime, said Lt. Tim McGraw of the University of Colorado Police Department.
Securing the Big 12
Iowa State University's 14 outdoor emergency phones received 517 calls last year. This year the number of calls is consistent with pervious years and is not increasing. For 9-1-1 calls, students are using cell phones instead, said Jerry Stewart, director of the Iowa State University Department of Public Safety.
The increase in calls can be attributed to six new phones being installed last year, but the calls made on the phones were not always for emergencies, he said.
"There are hundreds of false calls each year, which can be a bit of a nuisance," McGraw said. "But as a whole we view the emergency telephones as a viable asset."
"I cannot recall an instance where an outdoor emergency telephone was actually used to report a crime." he said.
be used to request escorts, Stewart said.
Using the emergency phones to request escorts is exactly what Capt. Troy Lane of the Kansas State University Police Department wants students to do. Kansas State has 32 outdoor emergency phones and encourages students and visitors to use the phones to ask for escorts, directions or to report an emergency. Lane could not give out the number of calls. The department no longer keeps those numbers, he said.
At the KU Public Safety Office, no one knows when the first phones were installed, but the original 12 emergency phones were on campus before 1978. That was when Phillips started working as a dispatch officer. She said that the phones were a good resource.
"The more eyes and ears you have the better." she said.
Instead the phones are more likely to
'More eyes and ears'
Phillips is now one of the people who oversees dispatch officers. A dispatch officer's duty is to answer calls made from the emergency phones along with calls from radio traffic, police security, fire safety and overflow calls from the county 9-1-1 center. Officers also answer emergency calls for the Parking Department and Facility Operations after 5 p.m. The calls can increase depending on what is happening on campus. The office can get up to 25 calls for one incident. Phillips said.
"You have to learn to prioritize," Phillips said. "It's stressful, but you have to answer all of the calls."
Courtney Kuhlen/KANSAN
At least two officers answer the calls, but these days the Office has only one dispatch officer on duty at a time because it is short-handed.
Making cents of it all
Chris Janish, Wichita junior and chair of the Student Safety Advisory Board. He had proposed that the board put in a new emergency phone behind JRP Hall in response to vehicle vandalism earlier in the year. The board is asking for funding from Student Senate for the new emergency phone but has yet to figure out who will pay for the estimated $30 monthly phone line service fee.
The last emergency phone was installed in August 2003 at Eaton Hall, located north of Allen Fieldhouse. Information Services has instituted a new policy to pay for the phones. Now, if an office or department wants a blue phone in a certain location, it must pay for the installation and the monthly service fees along with any maintenance. Those departments - other than KU Public Safety - include the Parking Department, Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, Recreational Services, Watkins Memorial Health Center, Athletics Department and Hilltop Child Development Center. All the calls made on the blue phones are routed through the Public Safety Office, which has budgeted $11,988 for the emergency phones for the 2004-2005 school year.
Outdoor emergency phones are located in heavily populated and low-lit areas. The University has 47 outdoor phones.
"If it helps save one person or deter another from committing an act of violence against a person, it is more than worth it," Janish said. "Money should never be an issue when in contrast with safety."
This financial responsibility according to department was new to
NUMBER OF EMERGENCY PHONES AT BIG 12 SCHOOLS
Students have come to Janish with suggestions where new emergency phones should go during this semester, he said.
Source: Universities' official Web sites.
"This shows that they actually notice them and would be prepared to use them if necessary," Janish said.
Edited by Steve Schmidt and Ashley Doyle
Baylor University 25
University of Colorado 60
Iowa State University 14
University of Kansas 78
Kansas State University 32
University of Missouri 152
University of Nebraska 40
University of Oklahoma 134
Oklahoma State University 73
University of Texas 106
Texas A&M University 90
Texas Tech University 66
Emergency routing problematic
BY NIKOLA ROWE
nrowe@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
This is a problem with using cell phones in an emergency, said Capt. Schuyler Bailey of the KU Public Safety Office. But with the blue emergency phones students are a directly connected to the Public Safety Office.
Using a cell phone to call 9-1-1 can be unpredictable. The person making the call has no way of knowing which police department he or she will be connected with.
Until there's a national program to route 9-1-1 calls to the nearest police department, Bailey said, the best way on campus to call for help was to use the blue emergency phones.
But changes are in the works for emergency calls from some cell phones in Douglas County. Verizon Wireless is working on a request from county officials to update its emergency call service.
County officials requested in September that Verizon Wireless update the county to phase two of emergency call service.
There are three phases of emergency call service. Phase zero, which is where Douglas County is now, is when any police department can pick up a 9-1-1 cell phone call and no information about the caller is given to dispatch. Phase one is when the cellular tower site is provided and the cell phone number. Phase two includes phase one and a longitude and latitude within 100 meters of the caller.
Verizon Wireless will work with Douglas County and a third party vendor to be determined to get to phase two of services. All three parties will try to decide which police stations will receive emergency cell phone calls.
The upgrade is scheduled to be complete in March, said Cheryl Armbrecht, spokesperson for Verizon Wireless. "I wouldn't get rid of the emergency phones," she said. "I think they are still a good idea for more local situations."
Armbrecht added that if you are not near an emergency phone your cell phone will be good to use for 9-1-1 calls come March for Verizon Wireless customers.
- Edited by Steve Schmidt and Ashley Doyle
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