Effective June 1, when campus patrons dial 911 from a land line on a campus grid, the call will go directly to the Campus Police dispatcher as opposed to the Raleigh Police Department, according to Sgt. Jon Barnwell of Campus Police.
“In order to better serve the student population without them having to relearn an on-campus emergency number, we have managed to get assistance from the county and the city to make us a 911 primary emergency dispatch center,” Barnwell said. “This includes fire, police, medical and hazardous materials.”
According to Barnwell, the current process involving 911 dialed calls is more complex than it should be.
He said that when 911 is dialed from a campus grid, the call goes straight to the Raleigh Police Department’s dispatcher which they then transfer to the Campus Police.
In turn, he said, response time is lost.
“If you dialed 911 from campus it would go to the City of Raleigh and it would be transfered back to us, so we could lose a little time in our response — we are actually offering better service to the campus community by becoming 911 primary,” Barnwell said. “Not only does it allow 911 to come directly to us from a campus phone, but it also allows the campus community to remember the number they grew up with.”
He added that the main reason the system is being changed is because people don’t always use or remember the Campus Police emergency number.
“The biggest issue was that we were having people call 911 and it was going to Raleigh,” he said.
He also noted that the new number will help students transition between on-campus and off-campus living because they won’t have to memorize a new number.
“It will be a better transition for on-campus residents during their freshman and sophomore years that migrate off to apartment living around campus — there is no mix-up of emergency numbers,” he said.
The new system being implemented on June 1 will not yet be pertinent to cell phone use.
“Where it does become an issue — from a cell phone, 911 is still going to go to the City of Raleigh,” Barnwell said.
He noted that eventually the system will accommodate 911 cell phone calls and route them directly to Campus Police, but that technology is a little ways off because there are a lot of logistics in rerouting cell phone grids.
Barnwell emphasized that students and campus community members need to program the current 515-3333 emergency number into their cell phones for quick dialing and to prevent them from having to remember the number.
He stated that the new system provides an enhanced level of service to the campus community and he said he thinks it will be “well accepted” on campus.
Students said they are glad the number has been changed, but their main concern is that some form of assistance responds promptly when they dial 911.
“Just as long as [Campus Police] gets there as quickly as the [Raleigh Police] — I don’t care who helps me,” Hannon Norton, a sophomore in communication, said.
Lillie Robertson, a junior in communication, echoed Norton’s thoughts.
“As long as they get here as fast as they can it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I never really thought about it.”
Other students noted that they don’t know the Campus Police emergency number and are unsure of the differences in service of Campus Police and RPD, indicating that they didn’t know the calls that go to the RPD are transfered back to Campus Police when 911 calls are made from campus.
“I don’t know the [campus] number off-hand, and in a real emergency I would dial 911,” David Joyner, a junior in civil engineering, said. “I just hope that the Campus Police would be able to provide the same amount of service a regular 911 call would give.”
He also indicated that he doesn’t mean to sound like he is “defacing” the Campus Police.
Nick Prieto, a junior in criminology, said the new system is a good idea because students are used to dialing 911.
“It is a very good idea, since 911 is an emergency number that we are all familiar with,” he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there have been several instances where someone, be it a student, staff or faculty member have needed to contact Campus Police for an emergency, but not had access to the 515-3333 number.”