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Police: 5 killed in early morning shooting at nightclub at Mexican resort

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<p>Luzerne County&#8217;s 911 center received 493 messages seeking help or reporting problems in 2016 through a new texting option, county 911 Director Fred Rosencrans said last week.</p><p>The county started accepting texts in July 2015 as an alternative for the hearing impaired and those unable to speak due to a medical condition, home invasion, abduction or other situation where talking out loud could endanger them.</p><p>Some of last year&#8217;s texts came from victims of domestic violence, but Rosencrans said he was not aware of any cases involving victims hiding from intruders.</p><p>The texting is part of a national &#8220;Next Generation 911&#8221; initiative for emergency response to keep up with communication technology used by the public.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s another way for people to get through to us,&#8221; Rosencrans said, noting senders must type 911 in the recipient box of a text to initiate an emergency text.</p><p>He stressed people should call when possible because oral conversations allow more interaction and engagement with 911 telecommunicators. Texting should be reserved for &#8220;extreme cases,&#8221; he said.</p><p>In addition to the texts, the 911 center in Hanover Township received 434,942 calls last year, which is &#8220;in the ballpark&#8221; of the number in previous year, he said.</p><p>Misuse of the emergency call-in services remains a problem, despite years of public warnings, he said. Rosencrans tries to staff more telecommunicators during bad weather and holidays but said there are times when the lines get &#8220;extremely overloaded.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Our service is for true emergencies, not to find out what the weather is or the road conditions on the interstate or to get a police phone number,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We&#8217;ve had intoxicated people call us to ask the police department to give them a ride home from a bar.&#8221;</p><p>In past years, 911 officials have cited cases of people calling 911 for directions to cook their Thanksgiving turkeys.</p><p>The center holds public education sessions for elementary students explaining when they should and should not call 911, but some of the &#8220;biggest offenders&#8221; of inappropriate calls are adults, Rosencrans said. Less pressing public safety inquiries or notifications should be conveyed through the center&#8217;s non-emergency line, (570) 819-4916, or directly to local police, he said.</p><p>Accidental calls to 911 also tie up telecommunicators because they are required to call back all numbers logged as hang-ups to verify whether or not there was an emergency, he said.</p><p><strong>New initiatives</strong></p><p>The center has launched several new initiatives to improve services, including a full analysis of all addresses tied to landline phones &#8212; a project that is among the county manager&#8217;s latest 90-day goals.</p><p>Addresses for around 160,000 landline phones, including IP phones, will be loaded into a software program that flags those that may have incorrect municipalities on record, possibly due to postal addresses or other billing locations that don&#8217;t match the correct physical location of a phone, he said.</p><p>Errors could pose a problem because many municipalities, some neighboring, contain the same street names, Rosencrans said.</p><p>All address discrepancies will be corrected with phone companies to ensure the accurate location pops up on on call center screens, which is particularly important when callers are unable to speak or unsure of official municipal boundary lines, he said.</p><p>&#8220;We are taking the aggressive effort to scrub and verify the data. This would be impossible to do without a software report because we don&#8217;t have enough staff to manually check 160,000 phone records,&#8221; Rosencrans said.</p><p>A section of the county&#8217;s Emergency Management Agency on Water Street in Wilkes-Barre also is being converted to a new backup 911 center to prevent service interruptions if the Hanover Township center must be closed for an emergency, he said.</p><p>The council also earmarked $850,000 toward a 911 project to upgrade public safety tower sites and radio communication.</p><p>Staffing turnover and shortages also have been addressed, largely through council-approved compensation increases, Rosencrans said.</p><p>Five remaining telecommunicator vacancies should be filled by net month, he said.</p><p>&#8220;At one point, we had 25-plus vacancies here,&#8221; Rosencrans said. &#8220;We&#8217;re really starting to chip away at staffing issues and keep quality people.&#8221;</p><p>The center, which opened in June 1998, employs around 90 workers and provides police, fire and emergency medical dispatching for more than 200 agencies throughout the county, he said. Between 95 and 97 percent of its more than $6 million budget is covered by a $1.65 monthly fee on phones.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Rosencrans </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_Rosencrans-Fred-cmyk-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Rosencrans </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_Luzerne-County-911-1.jpg">
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Jennifer Learn-Andes</p><p>jandes@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Luzerne County 911 texting option utilized nearly 500 times in 2016